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Scott scowls. “He’s in the basement.”

I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean ‘He’s in the basement’?”

Scott’s eyes dart around. “He said he had to take someone to . . . the basement.”

Meaning the cell.

Something about that is dead-ass wrong.

“I’m going down there. Get the talkies going and help the police evacuate. Don’t let them in my office.”

He nods, and then he’s off, and I gesture for Leo to join me.

“Boss,” he says. “What the fuck?”

“Good question. I want you with me in the basement. Something doesn’t add up.”

“Let’s go.”

I have a private elevator off the lobby, hidden behind a water feature, and we slip back there as a throng of people start to pour out of the resort.

“There’s a fire in the shopping mall,” I inform Leo grimly. “And we don’t have comms.”

“Damien?”

I gnash my teeth. “Most likely.”

When the elevators open, I rush to the metal door that leads to the cell.

“Make sure no one’s in the gym,” I say to Leo, who nods and runs in the other direction, then comes sprinting back. “Empty.”

We walk through the door, and when I turn in to the cell, my blood runs cold.

Spider is alone in the room, strung up, his shirt gone, and his torso has been slashed, but he hasn’t been disemboweled.

“Jesus fuck, he’s alive,” Leo snarls as we rush to my second and work together to get him down. He’s unconscious, but he’s breathing, and I don’t have a way to call for help.

“Let’s get him upstairs and hope there’s an ambulance.”

Forty-Three

RINA

“Bacon, I need to go to the infirmary to check on Stacy.”

I’ve had a bad feeling all evening, since Carson left. Charlie and Mildred both came home, but I haven’t heard a peep from my husband, and there’s a niggling in the back of my head that something is very wrong.

“Ma’am, I’d feel better if you stayed here,” Bacon says. “I can’t reach the boss, and I don’t know what’s up, but something feels off.”

“I’m not the only one who feels it then?”

“No ma’am. Please stay here until I hear from him. I know you’re the boss, and I haven’t been given direct orders from Carson to keep you on lockdown here, but⁠—”

“But your gut says stay. Okay, I’ll stay.”

I nod and walk back to the kitchen, where Mildred is cleaning up from dinner and Charlie is sitting at the island, watching something on his tablet.

“With all of the TVs in this house, you choose to watch the tablet?”