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Nothing.
Searched each guard for the familia primum inscription.
Nothing.
He went through the process twice more. Same result.
Lupos wasn’t here.
An avalanche of disappointment blinded him to his surroundings. For days, he’d envisioned drawing the heirloom down from its place of honor and tracing the fine etchings in the polished blade, then smuggling it home.
The whole exchange would have taken less than a minute. A minute toward setting his life back in order.
But Sardoff’s intel had been bad. Despite Zeke’s own insistence that he not get his hopes up, he had. Badly.
The moment his damn eyes started to burn, a small hand curled over his shoulder and a slim body pressed into his side.
“It’s not here?” she whispered, as if she struggled to contain her own disappointment.
“No.” He didn’t even bother trying to play it cool. His emotions were too raw, too close to the surface.
The hand on his shoulder squeezed. “We’ll find it.”
“We?”
She nodded and sent him a conspiratorial grin. “I’m not without resources.”
Words of appreciation lodged in his tight throat. He found her hand and wove their fingers together, and squeezed.
No one but Rohan knew of his quest to find the sword. Although his brother had promised to keep his ear to the ground for any digital whispers, Rohan hadn’t actively sought the blade. None of his brothers had ever felt the sword’s loss like Zeke.
Hell, he hadn’t exactly been looking for it until the team started falling apart. At that point, finding it had become imperative, for reasons he didn’t fully understand.
Sardoff had a lot of explaining to do.
The elevator door opened, and Phin and Kayla spilled into the room. Phin gave him a short nod before striding toward Nicola.
“Did you find the asset?” he asked Liv in a low voice.
“Sort of. I found where it’s displayed. The case is empty.”
“Empty?”
She nodded. “I think it might be one of the twelve items on display upstairs.”
“Dammit.” Now they wouldn’t have an exact location for the doll when they returned later to extract the asset. More than likely, the pieces upstairs would be returned to the museum at the close of the fundraiser, but there were no guarantees.
“Delivered safe and sound,” Phin said to Nicola.
The socialite accepted the gold card and pocketed it. “Thank you.” She sailed up to Zeke’s other side. “Leave it to a man to sniff out my weaponry collection.”
“An impressive display.” He slid his arm around Liv’s waist, wanting her to know that she was the woman—the only woman—on his mind.
“Extraordinary, aren’t they?”
He nodded. “I have a small collection, but nothing like this.”
“Careful, Zeke. Collecting antiquities is like collecting money. You can never have enough.”
