Page 70 of His Assistant

Rafe is already watching me. “What happened?”

“Sofia’s gone.”

“How?”

“I’m about to find out.”

Tomasso stops pacing a few feet away. “What do you mean Sofia’s gone?”

I look at him. For half a second, suspicion moves through me so sharply I nearly act on it. He called her earlier. He put her on edge. He overstepped in a way I still haven’t dealt with. But suspicion is not proof. Not yet.

“I mean she’s gone,” I say.

He looks genuinely stunned. That means nothing.

“We need to go back to the penthouse,” I tell Rafe. “Now.”

No one speaks on the ride. Rafe works the phones beside me, issuing orders too low for Tomasso to catch from the front passenger seat. Tomasso keeps turning around, asking if we’ve heard anything, if there’s been any movement, if Chiara has checked the roof or the other floors or any of the guest rooms.

He sounds concerned. I don’t trust it.

By the time we reach the penthouse, the building is locked down tight. There are guards in the lobby, guards by the elevators, guards near the service doors. Every man I pass has the good sense to look terrified of my rage.

Smart men.

The elevator ride up is silent. When the doors open, Chiara is waiting in the entryway, her face pale, her arms wrapped around herself. She looks smaller than usual. Younger. Like the little girl who used to pretend she wasn’t scared during storms because she thought I needed her to be brave. The sight of it nearly cracks me open.

“I’m so sorry, Dom,” she says.

“This isn’t on you,” I tell her.

Her mouth trembles once before she presses it flat. “She was so upset.”

“I know.”

I move past her toward the security room, Rafe and Tomasso behind me. It sits on the lower level of the penthouse, behind a locked door past the service hallway. The monitors show every angle of the building. Lobby. Elevators. Private drive. Garage levels. Service entrances. Hallway feeds.

I stand over the security tech’s shoulder. “Pull her floor.”

His fingers shake on the keyboard.

Rafe moves closer to him. “Breathe, Luca. Pull the feed.”

The hallway outside Sofia’s room appears on the main monitor.

Empty. The timestamp rolls forward. One minute. Two. Ten. Then the door opens. Sofia slips out wearing leggings and a sweatshirt, purse in one hand, hair pulled back messily. She looks both ways before closing the door softly behind her.

There is nothing frantic in the way she moves. She is scared, but she is not panicking. She has already decided.

“She’s going to the stairs,” Rafe says.

“No,” Chiara says from behind us.

I turn.

She is staring at the screen, horrified. “She’s going to the service elevator.”

I look back at the monitor.