"What voice recorder? I didn't take anything."
I looked down at my right hand. Crimson was seeping through the fresh bandages again, blooming like roses against white linen.
He resumed his frantic search, overturning boxes, ripping through garment bags.
I looked up at him.
I had never seen Nico Volpe like this.
Drenched in sweat, his tailored shirt clinging to his chest. His silk tie yanked loose, hanging like a noose around his throat. His cashmere coat—worth more than most men earned in a month—was covered in dust and debris.
Disheveled.
Desperate.
Unraveling.
"Where is the voice recorder!"
He stopped his destruction and turned on me, towering over my crumpled form like a dark angel of judgment.
"I told you I haven't seen it!"
I had never been this defiant. Never raised my voice to the heir of the Volpe bloodline.
I braced my left hand against the cold floor and struggled to my feet, forcing myself to meet his gaze. To stand before him as something other than the dutiful wife, the silent shadow, the woman who had sacrificed everything and received nothing in return.
He seemed lost. Unmoored from the iron control that defined him.