Chapter 27
casa di giulietta
NICOLAI
We walked toward Juliet’s House the next morning, strolling through the narrow streets that laced the old town like an anthill. Those one-horse carriage lanes were now sidewalks where tourists usually throng, gazing in the windows at the tourist baubles, clothes, or mountains of sweets.
But at eight o’clock in the morning, we had the cobblestone pedestrian malls mostly to ourselves.
Lexi skipped steps, almost dancing, her mahogany hair bouncing with dark curls that drew my gaze every time she moved, as she stared up at the ancient buildings around us.
That night, we would go to the Verona Arena, the city’s well-preserved Roman amphitheater, to watch the opera La Bohème. The Shakespeare Festival wouldn’t begin until late July, so we would return for that.
Our security guards fanned out as we walked along the Via Cappello, and so Lexi and I walked hand-in-hand, pretending to be normal people.
Most of the shops and take-away restaurants hadn’t yet opened for the breakfast crowd, though I did manage to find one cafe catering to locals and bought us pastries and cappuccinos.
As I’d suspected, Lexi was entranced by the medieval old town of Verona. Her joy was infectious, and I found myself laughing aloud as we looked around.
Oh, if we’d only met like this, everything would have been easier.
When we reached the Casa di Giulietta, Juliet’s House, we stood on the street outside the first set of gates, waiting for the docent to twist the key in the iron lock to open them for us.
A few tourists clustered near the sweets shop, watching us. They were doubtlessly discussing whether they could also sneak into the crowded tourist attraction before opening hours.
No, it was open for just my wife and me.
“Can I go on inside first?” Lexi asked. “Surely, if you saw me for the first time when you were in the courtyard and I was on the balcony, I must have already been inside Juliet’s house when you walked in.”
“That’s logical.” The courtyard was enclosed on all sides by other medieval buildings, none of which were open to the public yet.
No one else had been let inside.
Of course, she would be safe in the locked, inaccessible courtyard surrounded by thirty-foot medieval walls.
I gathered her into my arms and kissed the top of her head, and then on the oddest impulse, I lifted a lock of her long, dark hair and kissed the curl around my palm. “Go inside, then. I’ll give you a few minutes, and then I’ll come inside the courtyard for your grand entrance on the balcony.”
“Don’t peek!”
Lexi scampered under the carved Capulet coat of arms and through the arched tunnel, ten feet through stone defenses, and into the small courtyard.
That odd white pail of a purse swung from her wrist. She might have brought one of Clemmy’s new purchases, but no matter. Clemmy would persuade her to use them in due time.
Three of my security detail trailed Lexi as her personal bodyguards.
I wasn’t going to let her walk about entirely alone, even if the area had been locked off all night.
The whimsy of restaging our supposed meeting struck me.
I didn’t do whimsy, or delight, or spontaneity.
Except with her.
With her, I seemed to always be on the verge of smiling, and it made me feel rather lighthearted. She had called me unserious. None of my other friends would have applied that term to me, ever.
Lexi had also mentioned she’d never been to a Disney park. Next week, I had every intention of renting Disneyland Paris for a late-night jaunt so we could enjoy some fun.
Did I abhor her sheltered upbringing, and was I saddened by the way she’d been taken advantage of?
Of course.
But it gave me a lot to do for her, and I wanted to show her everything in the world.
I stood outside the arch and ticket booth for the Casa di Giulietta, waiting on the Via Cappello, while a few more tourists strayed in search of breakfast and coffee.
My security operator Abimbola chatted with the docent who’d let Lexi through the portcullis and shut it behind her. The woman leaned against the iron grate, her hands behind her back, fluttering her eyelashes as she gazed up at Abimbola with big doe eyes.
Ah, there she went, twirling her hair on one finger.
Abimbola just smiled and spoke slowly in his deep bass voice with a deliberate Yoruba accent.
He was attractive to women just walking down the street, but as soon as he opened his mouth, women loved him.
Aymeric and Konrad constantly gave him shit about it, but Aymeric was an incorrigible flirt, too.
Too often, my security team treated my safety like a singles cruise.
Their distraction made them a lot easier to slip away from when I wanted to go walkabout, but with Lexi also at risk now, they’d need to shape up.
Lexi was, of course, safe within the high fourteenth-century walls, but already, I wanted to see her on that balcony, gesturing to the rising sun instead of the moon.
I just wanted to see her.
I gave her ten minutes to explore the medieval tower house on her own before I had the docent let me in to stroll inside the pebble-paved courtyard, the stones a little slick with morning dew under my loafers.
The statue of Juliet, installed only fifty years or so before, beckoned me inside.
Lexi wasn’t standing on the balcony yet.
No matter. I could wait. The antique stonework was interesting to look at.
Five more minutes passed.
I texted her. I’m here in the courtyard.
The tower house was three stories tall, each room with high ceilings to allow Italy’s summer heat to rise. Every space inside had interesting historical or cinematic displays. She’d probably gotten sidetracked. It was easy to do.
Minutes passed.
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 was there.
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.
Subba and the others followed me up, weapons out. “Let me take point! Nicolai! For fuck’s sake, Nicolai, at least let me go in front!”
I galloped up the steep steps by twos and threes to the third floor as fast I could manage.
On the top floor, I glanced out the window as I called and searched. Three of my other men who’d been with me ran into the courtyard, scanning.
Abimbola was talking on his phone as he searched the sky.
Sirens wound up in the distance.
I stood at the top window of the building, my hands pressed against the anachronistic glass, staring in horror at my security men far below, wandering fucking aimlessly instead of finding her.
I knocked over a chair looking under a table on one level, stripped back bedsheets from an obviously empty bed on another.
I should have made her leave me when I’d received the video. I should’ve been the frigid bastard that I was to everyone else. I should have hurt her feelings and watched disdain grow in her eyes.
Ueli should have dragged her away and dumped her and her beater car in a back alley of Las Vegas, where she would’ve been safe from my world. I should’ve screamed at her and said unforgiveable things to make her leave me.
That lawyer of hers should have earned her goddamned Birkin purse and convinced Lexi to get the hell away from me.
I’d been too selfish to be the man who could drive her away because I couldn’t have borne the anger in her eyes. I was an idiot.
I was in Hell.
My phone rang in my hand, and the screen lit up.
Unknown number.
I juggled it, shouting and running my thumb over the slider at the same time. “Lexi? Lexi!”
A Russian man’s voice, hoarse with late middle age and a lifetime of scalding vodka, said, “She is gone. You will not find remains. You should plan rest of your life.”
A woman-sized hole ripped in my world, sucking my soul into darkness.
Air ceased to exist in my body. My lungs and heart collapsed inward, and I choked.
No. Don’t.
Come back.
Horror struck me, that Volkov, for surely I recognized Volkov’s voice, had murdered her.
He’d taken her from me.
I would annihilate him, and Alina, and everyone else he loved. Not a smear of them would remain.
The stone floor of the third level of Juliet’s House rushed at me. I shoved it away with my hand but couldn’t fight its gravity. The stone floor froze my hand and grew up my arm to my heart.
My forehead pressed the stone.
A picture flashed on my phone screen.
A woman with dark, unseeing eyes lying on these pale terra cotta stones, scarlet blood sticking to the porous rock and the curves of her face I’d touched that morning.
My heart—
Her slack mouth, empty of breath.
Her gaze, unfocused.
Her soul, fled.
Her blond hair—
My heart stuttered, almost restarting from the jolt.
Blond.
The phone screen blackened as it turned off.
Blond.
It was a fake.
They’d deep-faked the picture, taking images from our wedding video and the pictures at the Omnia.
They hadn’t noticed that Lexi had dyed her hair a rich, lustrous brown that Sunday afternoon before the cotillion, as I’d nuzzled just that morning in bed, as I’d kissed a lock of it before she’d walked inside Juliet’s House.
The picture was a fake.
An AI-generated deep fake.
They had her or they didn’t, but this picture of a dead woman was a lie.
Lexi might still be alive.
And I would spend every cent I had, every minute of my life, call in every favor, blackmail everyone I knew with their most vile secrets, and tear the world apart until I found her.
I scrambled to my feet and tore down the stairs.