Page 111 of Gamble with Me

Alice sighed, opened the back door, and called for the bodyguards. Two men with pale faces and severe expressions walked into the kitchen.

“Do you know what happened?” I asked, trying to sound neutral, but my voice trembled, and my eyes were puffy. They surely noticed I wasn’t okay.

“No, ma’am,” they replied in unison.

“Malin or Dorian haven’t called?” I exhaled loudly, hoping for Zyon’s brothers to keep his men informed about the situation.

“No,” one of the guards said, his eyes flickering to the television.

“They broadcast it in the entire country.” I nodded toward the news. The moderator constantly talked about the shooting without saying more than we already knew. “Can it be true?”

“Yes,” the other one answered. “But we don’t know more than you. We have to patiently wait for commands regarding you and your daughter. Nothing changed. You stay here until someone from the Zhumagulov family says otherwise.”

“Someone,” I whispered, hiding my face in my palms.

Alice let the men out and turned off the stove. I sat like a statue in the chair, my mind circling the dreadful thought I didn’t want to accept.

Zyon couldn’t be dead. No. I refused to admit even the slightest chance that his life ended just when our life together should start. Destiny, fate, or God couldn’t be that cruel. We deserved our happily ever after.

“Will you stay with Zara?” I asked Alice, who quietly sat beside me.

“What are you going to do?” she countered, frowning at me.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, raising my eyes to watch the muted TV. “But I can’t just sit and wait.”

“Do you think you can find them?” she groaned in disbelief, firmly shaking her head. “Who knows where Malin and Dorian took him? Where do you want to go?”

“Leave that to me,” I muttered, unable to look away from the screen that showed the shooting.

The channel gained exclusive footage of the unknown person firing at Zyon. He was casually leaving the police station when the gunshot occurred. He didn’t expect it. No one stood before him. His bodyguards were around the car. He was completely exposed to the attack.

According to the news, the sniper hit him in the abdomen, chest, and shoulder. Witnesses reported he was out when his brothers pushed him into the back seat of his car. Some experts claimed Zyon had no chance of surviving this, while another one said there was a possibility if he wore a vest, but he still would need immediate medical attention.

However, he wasn’t admitted to any hospital. An hour after the attack, he or his brothers were nowhere to be found. The ground swallowed them, and my agitation and fear grew rapidly.

Dorian and Malin didn’t answer their phones. The lines were dead. The security team circled the house, the police cars appeared on the street before the front gate, and the media watched the driveway like vultures.

“I’m done,” I stated after another few minutes when Zara disappeared to her new room to go through the book collection with Bluff on her heels. She was oblivious to the turmoil outside. “Please, stay with her,” I pleaded, taking Alice’s hand. “I need to look for something.”

“What?” She raised a brow at me, but I left before she could ask anything else.

I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know where the brothers could be, but I had a hunch. It was just an unexplainable feeling that pushed me to go and try to find Zyon while the same sentence repeated in my head to keep me sane.

Zyon couldn’t be dead.

Without thinking twice, I listened to my instinct and opened the door to Zyon’s office. Like the entire house, this room was also furnished and decorated in dark colors, but I didn’t have time to admire his impeccable taste. I went directly to his massive desk, leafing through the piles of papers and documents. I was looking for the address of the warehouse where we had met before.

I knew Zyon owned many buildings, houses, and lands. He probably hid some of them under shell companies to cover his true wealth. Still, our secret hideout was special, and considering how much effort he put into his stalker’s identity, I assumed the place was perfectly hidden from prying eyes. If he was alive, which I absolutely believed he was, it was the first place to check.

However, the address wasn’t in his notebook, calendar, or files. I looked into everything I could get my hands on, but there was nothing.

Breathing past the helplessness squeezing the life out of me, I tried to remember the route, but every time I found myself there, I was unconscious. There was nothing to recall.

Tears pricked my eyes as I forced my brain to cooperate. I was drained yet willing to go to the end of my strength to find him. But where to look?

Glancing around the spotless office, an idea popped up out of nowhere: My car! It had a GPS and should remember the addresses, so perhaps the information I needed was there.

I almost broke my legs running to the garage so fast. My car was parked behind Zyon’s expensive sports cars and black SUV. I sat in the driver’s seat, firing the engine and impatiently tapping on the screen.