Brianna stepped out of the sitting room, drew the silenced pistol from her hip holster, and called out to the butler.
He was standing in the foyer corridor, looking a little anxious, craning his neck up at the workers dismantling the chandelier. When he heard her call, he turned around at once and said, "What can I—"
A bullet sank into his forehead.
The renovation workers in the foyer heard the sound and broke into a panic. "What happened?" "Did you hear that?" The murmurs rippled beneath the ceiling like the uneasy hymn of an anthill.
When the butler's body hit the floor with a thud — his head landing just inside the foyer — someone was so startled they fell off the scaffolding and cried out in pain. But the cry didn't last long before a gunshot cut it short, ceding the stage to his coworkers.
Some tried to run. Some tried to hide. One lunged at her. But this wasn't an action movie, and the human body, faced with a bullet, was laughably, absurdly slow.
