Page 131 of Vicious Kingdom

Because lying next to me was exactly that.

I opened the door, a smile on my lips ready to greet her.

Only to find the main floor empty.

Maybe she was napping. I walked up the stairs only to find the guest room door open. The space unoccupied.

As I checked each room, my heartrate doubled. Where the hell was she? This was a large, luxury unit, but in terms of living space, there weren’t many places for her to hide.

Returning to the kitchen, I pulled up the trackers. They all said she was here.

Had she found them and left? There was no way.

The last one said it was here, but farther from the main area than the rest. No, she had to be in the building.

I rushed from the front door, stabbed the elevator in the hall, and shifted back and forth.

The amenities on the second floor were the next logical places, but as I waited for the lift, my gaze snaked to the roof access at the end of the hall.

There was no conceivable reason for her to go there, but something inside me told me to check. I rushed down the short length of hall. Mine was the only unit up here, so it wasn’t like she was with a neighbor. But the more I thought of it, the more logical it seemed. I flew up the maintenance stairs and burst out the door.

Chicago’s wind snapped in my face, a suffocating, brutal greeting. The midsummer sun might have set an hour ago, but it didn’t take the sweltering heat with it. No, that lingered in the crevices, baked into the very material this structure was made from.

Just when I thought the roof was empty, I heard it.

A sigh mingled with the breeze.

I looked around a ventilation chimney, and there, curled into a ball, sat my wife.

Heart in my damn throat, I scanned her for injuries. Seeing none, I approached.

“Hi there, little one,” I said softly, not wanting to frighten her.

Annaliese turned. Her face was tearstained. Her eyes were puffy.

My knees cracked as I knelt in front of her. I was about to demand what happened, but my tongue resisted the urge from my mind, and what came out instead was something better.

“I missed you today, Anna.” I held out my hands, palms up. “I was hoping we could make that dinner we never got to last night.”

She sighed, body trembling. “Why would you want to do something as mundane as cooking with me?”

“Because,” I said simply, “I enjoy spending time with you. It’s all I could think about.”

She snorted in disbelief.

“I cut a meeting short to come home early,” I added, letting her know the truth. It was pathetic. The business partners who’d taken over a business I was restructuring would have mocked me if they knew why I called the abrupt stop to our meeting. But Annaliese needed to know. It was time I started telling her how important she was, how I valued our time together.

“We can sit up here, if you’d like, but the AC is on downstairs.” I pushed my hands a little closer to her.

Annaliese looked at them, then lifted her gaze to meet mine—then began a fresh burst of tears.

“Cara mia,” I groaned, feeling a terrible weight of grief. “You can come to me. I’m strong enough. Strong enough for both of us.”

The shake of her head covered her face in the short strands of hair. I pushed them away.

“Do you…have a…tissue?” she stammered.

“Merda, no.” I shrugged out of my suit jacket and offered it to her.