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“I told her everything,” Mano hissed back, trying unsuccessfully to block my fists as they landed on his face.

“I warned you⁠—”

“I told her you were the one who set her up. You were the one who told me to wait for her in the bedroom. You told me to leave a condom wrapper on the bed. You bribed the doctor. You called her a whore in front of the ancestors and her whole goddamn family. Not me.”

Fuck

“And then what happened?”

“Hugo tied me up, stuffed a sock in my mouth, and left me in the closet. And when I see him, I plan to wring his neck.”

“I can’t believe Léonie did that.”

“Well, brother, then you are blind as well as a fool. Because she deliberately set me up. I’m pretty sure they were leaving together. They looked thick as thieves.”

Fuck fuck fuck

I turned and headed back up the stairs.

So my wife had left the lodge knowing I had set her up.

But not knowing why I had done it.

She might even have left thinking I hated her. . .

Fuck.

I called my mother.

“Send every man at home down to the lodge! I need help searching for Léonie.”

My plans were fucking shot, there was no point in the lies now.

“Léonie? But isn’t she⁠—”

“No!” I snarled. “I was lied to. She’s alive out there and I need to find her.”

“But—the Pinoteaux are already trying for our supply lines,” Mme squawked into the phone. “You have to come back here and work on security plans.”

“I don’t care. The top priority is finding my wife! Get them down here now!”

Something caught my eye as I paced the porch. There were two paintings there. One looked like my brother Hugo. The other. . . was Léonie.

And the painter had caught that play of light in her eyes, the way the summer-sky blue had different spots of golden sunshine in it.

“Yeah,” Mano said as he came up behind me. “Looks like we both might be edged out by Hugo.”

“I’m not edged out with my own wife,” I snapped, unease spiraling inside me as I looked at those two paintings next to each other.

I might have fucked up, but Léonie loved me. That was just a fact of nature. I simply needed to see her and explain. . .

Once the Bastide men arrived with my SUV, I sent out specific orders for where and how to search, to make sure that we covered our territory fast and efficiently.

“They might be hiding in an outbuilding or abandoned trailer. Check near streams or somewhere they might be trying to grab a vehicle. I want her found by noon!”

It hadn’t been that long. They can’t have gone that far.

Mano I took with me, and we ascended the narrow path to a nearby peak.