Page 266 of Sexting His Assistant

I cannot fall apart now.

I take the first few stairs down slowly, careful not to move too fast. At the second-floor landing, one bar appears again.

“Come on,” I say under my breath.

I call Luka again. This time it rings once.

Then the call drops.

“Damn it,” I say.

I look at the screen, trying to decide whether to keep calling or send a text. Typing feels impossible. My hands are not steady enough, and my thoughts are coming too quickly.

I open the message thread with Luka and press the microphone button for speech-to-text.

“Luka, it’s me,” I say quietly. “I’m sorry I left the house. I found Alina. She says Oleg hired her to get close to you, and Misha⁠—”

“Nina?”

I freeze.

My thumb lifts from the screen.

The half-written message sits there, messy and unfinished.

I know that voice. I look down the stairwell.

Meredith is standing on the landing below.

For a second, I cannot make sense of her being here. She’s dressed like she just stepped out of the office, dark trousers, pale blouse, hair pinned back neatly, one hand resting on the banister. She looks calm.

Too calm.

“Meredith?” I ask.

She looks up at me with a small, tired expression. “You really shouldn’t have come here.”

My body goes cold.

I take one step back. “What are you doing here?”

Meredith says, “Trying to clean up a situation that should’ve been handled before you became curious.”

I grip my phone harder. “You?”

Meredith’s eyes flick to my phone. “Put it down, Nina.”

“No,” I say.

She sighs. “Don’t make this worse.”

A hard pressure digs into my back.

I stop breathing. The shape is unmistakable.

A gun.

A man behind me says, “Phone down.”