Page 169 of King of Envy

Despite Sean’s earlier apology, I was clear-headed enough to recognize that what happened wasn’t his fault; it was mine. I should’ve been on top of it. I should’ve made sure she was safe before I let her go, I should’ve warned her about the Brotherhood, Ishould’ve should’ve should’ve.And now, it might be too late.

A sour feeling spread through my stomach. “Were you able to trace her steps and find out where she was last seen?”

He hesitated. “To a point. I have the entire team working on it, but it’s a lot of footage. That’s assuming she went missing somewhere thathassurveillance. A lot of businesses in the area don’t have CCTV.” Sean opened his encrypted laptop, which he’d set up on my desk. “However, we realized Beaumont’s headquarters was a ten-minute walk from the café. Given her current complications with the agency, we checked the building’s cameras just in case, and…” He pulled up a video.

The man onscreen faced away from the camera, but I’d recognize that overly gelled hair and flashy Rolex anywhere. He was smoking a cigarette. A few seconds later, Ayana entered the frame. Her eyes appeared swollen, and she was holding a cardboard cup from the café.

A star-bright wave of pain blazed through me.She’s fine. She’s okay.She had to be.

The two appeared to have a heated discussion before Ayana walked off with a defiant expression.

“Unfortunately, there are no other surveillance cameras nearby, so we couldn’t trace where she went afterward,” Sean said. “But I have people manually checking the area in case she left any clues.”

“Update me as soon as they findanything. Until then, bring Hank to me,” I commanded. “Immediately.”

“Done.”

After Sean left, I paced my office and tried to control the nausea rising in my throat. I could control myself when I was giving orders and formulating plans, but with nothing else to do except wait, a yawning pit had opened in my stomach.

Ayana’s conversation with Hank was the last time she’d been seen. According to the video’s time stamp, that had been twenty-three hours ago. An eternity in my world.

There was a slim chance she’d willingly gone off the grid without stopping by her apartment to grab her stuff first, but my gut told me that wasn’t the case.

She was in trouble, and if whoever took her harmed a single fucking hair on her head…

My heart hardened into black, pitiless ice as I stared at the grainy image of Hank onscreen.

God himself wouldn’t be able to stop me from taking my revenge.

CHAPTER47

Ayana

Ismelled the blood before I opened my eyes.

It reeked of metal and death, and the scent was so thick and pungent I couldn’t draw a single breath without it choking my lungs. Every inhale felt like I was snorting copper straight into my nose. The phantom taste settled on the back of my tongue, and I had to fight the urge to gag.

My gut churned. I squeezed my eyes shut, terrified of the gory scene that awaited me when the smell of blood was so strong, but I couldn’t stay in the dark forever. Not when someone had grabbed me off the street and taken me to…wherever I was.

They must’ve injected me with a sedative because a headache pounded behind my temple, and sensation was just starting to creep back into my arms and legs.

I braced myself and slowly opened my eyes. I blinked away the grogginess until the room came into gradual focus.

I was tied to a chair in the middle of a wide aisle. Rough rope bound my wrists behind the chair, and my feet were similarly shackled to the chair legs.

Dust motes swirled in the weak beams of sunlight slanting through the room. It appeared to be a warehouse of sorts. Soaring ceilings, concrete floors, grimy windows perched high on bare walls. Shipping containers were stacked around me, obscuring my view of anything not in my direct vicinity.

And lying right in front of me, less than ten feet away, was a dead body.

Correction:piecesof a dead body. A torso, an arm, and…

My stomach rebelled. Bile sloshed up my throat, and I retched with a gagging sound.

I wanted to close my eyes again and pretend it wasn’t there—pretend I was safe and warm in my bedroom, with my comforter pulled up around my chin and my favorite lavender aromatherapy candle burning on the nightstand—but I couldn’t look away.

It was the photos from the envelope come to life, only this was a different man. I couldn’t tell who it was. His face was turned the other way, which was a small blessing. I didn’t think I could handle a pair of lifeless eyes staring at me while I awaited whatever horrible fate my abductors had planned for me.

I sat frozen in terror, convinced that whoever was responsible for the man’s gruesome death would turn the corner and hack me to similar pieces. But several minutes passed, and other than the ragged gasps of my breaths, I couldn’t hear a single sound.

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