“Get up,” I said.
Two hands appeared from under the desk, and a man stood slowly. Werner Kessler, with his sleek blond hair in a chaotic mess, and his tailored jacket.
Rage, hot and fucking enormous, flowed through me. This was the man who’d written the check. The man who’d putRichter in Michigan and London and Prague. The man who’d decided his ridiculous claim to a lost empire was worth dragging Grace into a car. And despite all the money and bravado he used to support his claim, when the breach came, he hid under the furniture.
I holstered my weapon and took the half-step I needed to get a fistful of his jacket and shove him against the edge of the desk. “Where is she?”
“I’ll pay you! Whatever you want! I have gold in my safe room!”
“Where is she?” I shouted, inches from his face.
“The wine cellar.” His words tumbled out. “Main corridor, past the kitchen, there’s a door to stone stairs. When the police arrived, I— I— I only wanted the egg. It belongs to me. To my family. My grandmother used to?—”
I pulled him off the desk and slammed him against the wall next to it. I wanted to do more. But Grace was in the wine cellar, and she needed me. “Aleš, deal with him.”
Suppressed pistol raised. Down the corridor. Past the kitchen with copper pots hanging over a central island. Past a pantry. And there, I found a heavy wooden door, recessed into the stone wall.
“Arthur, I’ve got the wine cellar entrance. Grace is below.”
“Copy. Hold for support. Radek is?—”
“Negative. I’m going.” I should have waited. Every instinct I’d built over fifteen years of operating told me to wait. They reminded me not to enter an unknown space without someone covering me. But the stronger instincts—the ones I’d built since walking into The Velvet Bean for the first time—reminded me that Grace was down there, waiting for me to come for her.
Chapter 36
Grace
I saton the cool stone floor with my back against the thick wooden door. The chair I’d swung at the door had finally given up, and pieces of it littered the space around me. One full leg clung to part of the seat in my right hand.
My hands were a mottled mess of red wine, blood, and simple exertion. What was I going to do next? Keep waiting? Who even knew what was going on outside the wine cellar?
I made myself stand up and scanned the room for what must have been the tenth time. Pendant lamps hung above a long table, joining with the wall sconces to cast a warm glow over the room. Bottle racks ran from floor to ceiling along every stone wall. Hundreds of bottles. At least tens of thousands of dollars of wine.
It was the kind of room you booked for special occasions at a fancy restaurant. But this wasn’t just ambiance. It was a hidden space in a basement where a ridiculously wealthy and obviously unhinged man had forced me.
I dropped the chair leg and crossed to the nearest rack. I pulled a bottle off a shelf where it sat alone with spotlights highlighting it. A heavy bottle of dark wine with a label that readDomaine de la Romanée-Conti from 1945. It wasn’t one of the thousands in the little racks. This one was a treasure. Werner Kessler probably kept track of it by serial number.
Fuck you, Werner!
I launched the bottle across the room, and it smashed against the opposite wall. The glass shattered, red wine sprayed across the stone wall, and the smell of it filled the room.
For three whole seconds, that was enough.
Brilliant, Grace. Really productive. He’s upstairs with your egg. He’s not going to notice.
I sank back down to my spot by the door and picked up the chair leg. Someone would have to come eventually, and that leg would crack across their skull.
Hours ago—or probably thirty or forty minutes in reality—Richter had forced me into the room so the visiting police wouldn’t find me. I’d screamed, pounded my fists against the door, then slammed one of the wooden chairs into it over and over. But no one came. The logical part of my brain had reminded me that if they could hear me from here, Richter would have locked me up somewhere else.
Then ten or fifteen minutes ago, somewhere above me, there had been an explosion. How close? No idea. Could the police have done that? Or was it Garrett? I’d swung the chair at the door harder, shouted until my voice was hoarse, and all it left me with was a sore throat, a broken chair, and fists that were so swollen it hurt to hit the door.
And everything was silent.
Whatever the explosion had been, no one had come down here to find me.
I pulled my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. The shorts had seemed like a good idea at Henri’s, given the heat, but the cellar was cold, and the stone floor was even colder.Get up and sit in one of the chairs, at least. But if I did, Imight not hear someone in the hallway outside of the cellar. The massive door’s bolt was heavy and made a loud creak, but I had to be ready when someone opened it.
‘I’ll come for you,’ Garrett had said. I hadn’t been able to hear it over my own pathetic little whimpers while Richter shoved my face into the glass, but I’d seen his lips form the words.
