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The nearest phone was in the computer room. Holding the knife in front of her, she made her way through the dimly-lit hallways toward the front stage. She couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder as she navigated the maze of corridors, wondering if someone would discover she’d escaped and come after her. Never had she felt more alone and frightened. The corridor brought her to a passage directly under the stage. She was about to take the elevator to the computer room when she saw the light that sifted through the crack of the trapdoor. A footstep fell on the wood overhead. She stood dead still, careful not to make a sound. It could be Godfrey’s people.
“Oh, God,” a woman said.
“Hush, little witch.” There was a moment of silence. “Shall we move him?”
That deep, raspy voice could only belong to Joss.
Thank God they were here. She rushed up the trapdoor stairs and threw open the flap. It hit the wood with a thud.
“Holy fuck, it’s Alice!”
The bright floodlight at the edge of the stage shone directly into her eyes, blinding her, but she recognized Maya’s unmistakable accent.
She pushed herself through the hole and onto her feet with Maya’s hand on her elbow for support. She blinked a few times for her eyes to adjust, making out Joss’s imposing form and Clelia’s short shape under his arm. Cain stood a short distance away. Disorientated and suddenly too tired to put one foot in front of the next, she stumbled toward him, but Maya held her back.
She turned to look at Maya’s fingers curled around her upper arm with a frown. When she lifted her gaze to Maya’s, she saw something in the other woman’s expression that made her go stone cold. Pity. She searched Joss and Clelia’s faces and found the same. A feeling of dread made her limbs even heavier.
She pulled free from Maya’s grip, looking at her father for an explanation and froze. Behind Cain, in the center of the light, a man lay on his back with a dark circle pooling around him. Something shiny was lodged in his chest. She regarded the scene like a puzzle that didn’t make sense, the meaning refusing to register in her brain.
Cain reached for her. “Alice.” His voice broke on her name.
She sidestepped him, moving closer to the figure on the floor. He wore Ivan’s shirt from the performance. The white fabric was stained with blood. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Ivan. It couldn’t be. She slammed a hand over her mouth.
Please, no.
Cain was next to her, grabbing her wrist and turning it so the knife she’d taken from Godfrey dropped to the floor. Her breaths came in short, hard gasps. She bit down on her lip, her chest heaving as she refused to admit the truth.
“It’s not him,” she said, needing to convince herself.
That handsome, pale face didn’t belong to Ivan. Those glassy eyes weren’t his. His were filled with light. With fight.
“It’s not him.”
Cain pulled her against his chest. “Alice, don’t.”
She fought her father’s hold, needing to get to the body on the floor, but he held her tighter.
“Let me go,” she said, her throat raw, but Cain didn’t ease his grip.
“You don’t need to see this.”
She tilted her head and looked at him with a calmness she didn’t feel, determination searing through her. “Don’t you dare deny me this.”
His expression filled with pain and regret, but his fingers slipped from her arms.
Slowly, she moved closer until she stood over the body. The sweet face of the man she loved more than her own life was twisted with pain, but there was also acceptance in the soft line of his mouth. His eyes were fixed on something in the distance, as if he was already looking away from her into the future. It was his familiar face, his beautiful, broken body.
“Ivan.” His name fell from her lips in nothing but a whisper, but it was a heart-wrenching, suffocating acknowledgement.
Pain couldn’t get worse than this. Her heart burst with an ache as if she’d twisted the knife sticking out of his chest into her own. She stared at his lips that were tilted up in a peaceful smile, and the sudden realization that no sound will come from them ever again, no song, no breath to fan over her face, drove her to her knees.
She dropped down next to him in a strange state of calm, her body functioning on autopilot. Dragging her fingers over his eyes, she pulled them close. The finality of the terrible truth was captured in that one act. Ivan’s last expression was shut from the world forever.
She lowered her head and pressed their lips together. His skin was so warm, so real still. She cupped his face between her hands as her tears exploded in big blobs over his cheeks, rolling into his short-trimmed beard. Resting her forehead against his, she whispered against his lips. “I love you.”
