And yet, she hadn’t come out onto the balcony.
I waited, rocking a bit from my heels to my toes on the pebbled ground. We had forty-five minutes before the early public ticket holders would be allowed in. There was no rush.
I wasted time slapping my hand against my thigh in a counterpoint to my heartbeat.
And yet Lexi still didn’t appear on the balcony.
I texted her again. Lexi, angel, tell me you’re all right.
Three more minutes passed.
No texts.
No one emerged onto the balcony. No one moved behind the windows.
“Subba,” I called out, not looking away from the stone balcony that seemed entirely too unoccupied. “Do we have a location on Lexi?”
Over by the house's door, Subba touched his watch, muttered, then waited, then did it again and again, and then his eyebrows dipped with concern. “Her team isn’t answering. No location on the map. We’re going in.”
I ran.
As we entered through the front door, the entry hall with its long table and hearth was still, too still.
Orderly.
No signs of struggle.
But no one wasthere.
Two members of Lexi’s security detail should have been standing in that room, guarding my wife.
Nothing moved in the air or the floors above us.
On the wooden staircase, something dripped.
Dark liquid.
Slow and sticky, it dripped and fell onto the stone floor, splatting wetly.
All of us darted for the stairs.
Subba turned and shoved me.“Get out!Sandip, get him the fuck out! Full team, take Nico to the cars and the secondary location!”
My ears thundered with my pounding heartbeat. “No!Where’s Lexi?Now!”
The world stilled as I broke away from their hands because the one-lane stairwells were too narrow to surround me, and I scrambled up the steps, shouting Lexi’s name, praying that I would find her hiding.
Although my throat was clenched, my voice tore through, and I called her name over and over, praying she would answer.
Blood smeared the stone floors just past the landing to the second floor.
The three men of her security team were wadded on the floor like trash just beyond the staircase. Blood pooled on the stones from stab wounds in their chests and necks but was now stagnant.
Aymeric was crumpled on his side, dark eyes blank. Blood smears tracked where his legs had spasmed.
Other men, strangers, lay there, too. I didn’t give a shit about them.
Konrad Blom was turned away from us, lying contorted, limbs snarled, blood under his shoulders. I knew the back of his neck and clean-line haircut from sitting behind him as he drove.
