“But Dimitri’s been here,” I snapped, growing more agitated with every new revelation. “He followed us here.” I thought back to the footage of he and Lexi talking on the street. “Jesus Christ, he’s been within arm’s reach of her this entire time.”
He could have done anything to her, right under my nose.
He could have stolen her…hurt her.
Or worse.
“Did she tell you what he said to her during their meetings?” Ace asked. Because he knew I had confronted her.
I ran my hand through my hair. “Just that Sergei had ordered him to keep an eye on her. To keep her safe. And he was trying to tell her lies about us, probably to drive a wedge between me and her.”
Which hadn’t been necessary. I’d done a pretty bang-up job of that on my own.
But now we knew for sure that Sergei had never ordered Dimitri to protect her. And if Dimitri had been lying to her the whole time, that meant…
Lexi hadn’t betrayed me.
She’d kept their meetings secret, but probably because she knew I didn’t trust the bastard, just like she said. She knew I would lose my shit if I’d known he was in the city. She truly didn’t know anything about Raphael’s breakout, and she honestly thought Dimitri had just been doing his job.
What the hell have I done?
“Where is Lexi?” Mom spoke up for the first time, concern marring her features. “I couldn’t find her upstairs.”
As her words sank in, my eyes shot wider and wider until they were the size of dinner plates and my heartbeat tapped like a snare drum in my chest.
“She’s here somewhere,” I whispered. “She has to be here.”
The last time you two spoke, you basically told her you were kicking her ass back to Russia with annulment papers in her hands.
I took off at a sprint for the stairs, vaguely registering the pounding footsteps of my family following behind me. I shoved open the door to the back patio to find the pool empty, same with the guest house. No sign of her in the living room, kitchen, my office. Panic setting in with every vacant room I came upon, I flew up the second set of stairs to her bedroom and found that also empty. In fact, it was completely empty.
Her suitcase was gone.
Her closet cleaned out.
Her bathroom devoid of all toiletries.
My last shred of hope had me checking my bedroom, praying that I would miraculously find her curled up in my bed asleep.
Nothing.
Her fragrance lingered, but there was no Lexi tangled among my sheets. No lacy underwear littering my floor. No sign that she’d ever even stepped foot inside the room.
Lexi was gone.
“No…”
I didn’t know where else to go.
The cab driver had driven around the city aimlessly before I’d eventually given him the address of the Brooklyn Armor House. Don’t ask me why I didn’t just go to a hotel because I wouldn’t have had an answer.
For some reason, the distillery just felt…comforting.
Nico had given me the access codes to the security systems at every property he owned in the city, so I was able to get inside the building without triggering the alarm. I figured I could at least wait here long enough to get my thoughts in order and come up with a plan.
And until Dimitri came to pick me up.
I’d told him in my message to meet me at the distillery.
Because it was time to go home. The home with my father, in Russia. Brooklyn wasn’t my home, and the Rossettis weren’t my family. No matter how much it had begun to seem that way.
No matter how much I want it to be that way.
Of course, Nico’s scent had to be all over the bloody place. The leather couch in his upstairs office smelled so much like him, it nearly had me bursting into tears.
And yet, I still found myself falling asleep on it…
Some time later, a sound from downstairs in the taproom roused me from a light sleep. Blinking my eyes open, I realized someone had entered the building without setting off the alarm. Which meant they had the code.
Nico.
How had he already found me? And why would he even care to come after me? After all, he was ready to pass me back off to my father. Because he thought I was a traitor. Even before tonight, he’d never once indicated that I was anything more to him than a negotiation tactic.