Page 134 of Pink

She didn’t look his way.

He didn’t need her to.

At the end of the stage, her hands met her hips for one pose, and then a second. Her left hand popped up to give the crowd the peace sign, earning another round of applause before she spun around just as fast and headed back down the runway.

“Well done, Gigi,” Andino’s wife said at Lev’s side.

“She’s … the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

Haven only nodded in response.

Before he knew what happened, Gigi was at the start of the runway again and then she disappeared off to the side. Another model came out through the drops of shimmering fabric but Lev didn’t care to watch anyone else.

He counted down the minutes.

Nearly an hour until the last model had made her final walk, the singer had sung her way through every hit she had in the last five years, and it was Gigi’s turn to come out again to close the show as she had opened it.

Except the last model disappeared off to the side like every other one, but Gigi didn’t burst through the shimmering wall of fabric like she had before. Ten seconds passed.

Then another few.

Murmurs passed through the crowd. The singer at the middle of the runway even glanced back over her shoulder as she started to close in on the end of her song, clearly knowing something wasn’t right.

Lev didn’t wait to leave his seat. He wouldn’t wait another ten seconds when his heart and soul already knew … everything was wrong. There was no way Gigi would miss her mark.

He could feel it. Deep in the pit of his stomach. Echoing within his chest. Flooding his veins with every beat of his heart.

It felt like emptiness.

Propelled by a force that wasn’t his own down the aisle of chairs, past people with faces he had only seen on television before that moment, he made a beeline for the section where men in black suits stood shoulder to shoulder like a wall.

“Lev!” someone called behind him.

To his left, the models started walking out in a long line. One after the other. The official end to the show, but it wasn’t right.

It just wasn’t.

Where was Gigi?

“Sir, you can’t go back—”

The man in the suit with the comm in his ear didn’t even get to finish his sentence before Lev’s fist met the man’s face.

The guy hit the floor.

Before anyone could grab him, Lev stepped over the groaning, bleeding man and headed backstage. He heard the yells behind him, felt the arms reaching for him, but he just kept moving. One step after another. Each one had his heart feeling more and more hollow.

The security backstage moved a lot faster than the ones he’d passed earlier. And he quickly found out why, too.

“Gigi is gone,” someone said. He didn’t know who. Did it matter? “Nobody can find her.”

Red tinted his vision.

The rage swelled.

And then Lev was taken to the floor from behind. It took three security guards to keep him down, and he made sure they fucking worked for it, too.

The assholes.