Page 68 of Vance

Come on, sweetheart. Pick up.

I pace along the edge of the desk, my free hand slipping into my pocket as my jaw tightens with every unanswered ring. When it goes to voicemail again, I place the receiver onto the cradle.

Morris appears in the doorway a moment later, his surgical scrubs stained with my brother’s blood. The bags beneath his eyes exaggerate the exhaustion etched across his face, making him look every bit as tired as I feel. “You should get some rest,” he insists, leaning against the doorframe. “He won’t wake for a few hours.”

“I have to go.” I shove out of the chair behind his desk, the legs scraping softly over the floor. Reaching into my pocket, I pull out my keys and move toward the doorway. “If anything changes with Beckett, call Kaden. He’ll know how to get in touch with me.”

Morris nods when I brush past him and head for the front door, the cold night air hitting me like a slap across the face the second I step outside. I climb into the driver’s seat and slam the door behind me before starting the engine.

The drive home is too long. Every red light feels deliberately placed in my path, each one stretching into an eternity while the empty intersection mocks my impatience. I tap my fingers on the steering wheel, watching the numbers on the dashboard clock crawl forward.

2:17.

2:21.

2:24.

2:27

I’m hours late.

The elevator doors slide open, and I step into the penthouse, expecting darkness. Instead, the lights are on. Every single one. The living room is flooded with a harsh, unnatural brightness at this hour, the recessed lights blazing against the black windows.

Something is wrong.

I know it before I even call her name. My voice carries through the apartment, echoing off the walls before dissolving into silence, unanswered.

My shoes strike the floor in sharp, hurried beats as I cross the living room, glancing into the kitchen as I make my way to our bedroom. When I reach it, I stop dead in the doorway.

“What the fuck…?”

The room looks like it has been ransacked. Clothes are scattered across the floor, while others are strewn across the foot of the bed. The closet door hangs open; the hangers are askew, as though they’d been shoved aside in a hurry as clothes were torn off them.

“No.”

My mind refuses to make sense of what my eyes are telling me, unable to fathom that she left.

I cross the apartment at a near run, unable to get to my office fast enough. Reaching it in seconds, I snatch the receiver from its cradle and dial Sophia’s number. As it rings against my ear, the distinct ringtone of her cellphone echoes from the living room just beyond the threshold.

Dropping my head in despair, my gaze lands on the notepad in the center of my desk, Sophia’s handwriting sprawled across it.

I hope your night with Melanie

was worth it.

I grip the edge of the desk, my knuckles blanching white.

She left. My wife left.

A roar rises from my lungs, tearing my throat raw. It’s violent and broken, ripped from somewhere so deep inside me that it barely sounds human. It echoes through the empty rooms, bouncing off the walls and filling the space she left with rage, grief, and the terrible, crushing weight of understanding. My fist comes down on the desk hard enough to send the notepad skidding across the polished wood as rage surges through me.

Melanie.

She fucking did this…

Though I don’t remember grabbing my keys or taking the elevator back down to the garage, my foot is heavy on the accelerator, and the city is blurring past mere seconds. My hands are wrapped tight around the steering wheel as I speed toward Melanie’s apartment building.

The doorman at her building tries to stop me with a practiced, polite gesture, but I don’t even break stride. Whatever he sees when I glare at him makes him take a resigned step backward. Forgoing the elevator, I take the stairs, traversing them two at a time. The frantic pounding of my soles up the flights echoes the heated fury of my heart.