Twenty-four hours had crawled by, each one heavier than the last, and still no sign of Adrienne.
Lorenzo stood at the window of his study in the Morelli Estate, the Pacific a dull gray smear beyond the glass. The bottle of whiskey in his hand was half-empty, the label peeling where his thumb had worried at it for hours. His shirt was unbuttoned, tie long discarded, hair falling into bloodshot eyes. He looked exactly like what he was: a man coming apart at the seams.
The house was full of people—guards, staff, friends—but no one spoke above a whisper. They moved like ghosts around him, delivering reports, pouring coffee they knew he wouldn’t drink, stepping carefully over the invisible cracks in the floor that might set him off.
Sebastian collapsed onto the leather couch with a groan, ru
