Cruel Surrender by Terri Anne Browning

Bain

Sweat trickleddown my back as I listened to the report from the man who had been watching over Ciana all day. Because of all the cameras inside the medical center, he and three other men had been stationed outside and across the street, watching everyone who came and went from the facility.

Until Darcy had called with her daily check-in on Ciana, I’d had no idea someone had sent my woman flowers. Neither had my men. After I’d gotten off the phone with the NP, I’d sent my people on a quest to find me answers. The flowers had come from a shop twenty blocks from New Hope, but they were closed by the time the men arrived.

One of my men was a skilled hacker and easily found the order receipt.

Jealousy was gnawing at me, making it impossible to think past the death of whoever had dared even to look Ciana’s way, let alone send her fucking flowers. That the sender had claimed to be the one who loved her most only made me sweat more. The guy was a dead man.

“The bodyguard?” I growled when my man finished his report.

“Ralph—”

“I know who he is,” I snapped. “Why isn’t he dead already?”

“The guys we had watching the house as Conor instructed must have missed him leaving,” Brody hurriedly explained. “There has been a new guard with her this week when she went to work. No one thought anything about it until she received the flowers.”

“Find out where that fucker Ralph is. When you find him, you know where to take him.” Hanging up, I went through the pictures Darcy sent me after our earlier conversation. I hadn’t had a chance to look at them yet because I’d been focused on finding out who had sent Ciana the flowers.

There were a few random pictures caught while Ciana was working, but what really grabbed my attention was the ultrasound picture at the end. Darcy had written on it with a silver Sharpie, circling three little spots and labeling them Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C.

The air felt as if it was being forced from my lungs, and I stumbled to the sofa where I dropped like dead weight onto the cushions. Three babies? That was… Fuck. Emotions tried to overwhelm me. I’d only planned for one baby, not three, but I couldn’t say I was disappointed. The more to tie Ciana to me, the better.

But I also knew she must have been scared out of her mind. During our time together on the island, she’d confessed to me that she was terrified of having more than one baby at a time. Because her mother was a twin herself and had a history of birthing twins, the possibility had always existed that Ciana or her sister would end up having twins of their own.

She hadn’t mentioned her pregnancy when we’d spoken earlier, but I knew she wouldn’t. Ciana was still too angry with me and, no doubt, still digesting all these surprises. I wished she would share everything with me, but I had to be patient. As quickly as we’d come together in the past, now I had to take things considerably slower to win her back.

The waiting might kill me, but I would withstand the torture if it meant having her willingly with me once again.

I sat there staring at the ultrasound picture long into the night. I was still in the same spot as the sun came up, and I finally texted the NP with all the questions running through my head. Was Ciana okay? Would this put her at risk? Were the babies healthy? What special care would they all need?

I had a hundred more questions I needed answers to, but those were the most pressing. Thankfully, Ciana’s boss was one of the most experienced ob-gyns in the country, so I knew she would be in good hands with the doctor. That didn’t mean there couldn’t be complications, however.

Fuck. I had to make plans, ensure that all bases were covered so that Ciana and the babies were safe. Not only from complications that might arise in the pregnancy, but from those who would harm them all. I couldn’t let Sheena’s vendetta against the Vitucci family touch the four most important people in my life.

That evening,Darcy sent me her usual report, including the pictures that were my only way of seeing Ciana for the moment. With the pictures was one of another bouquet of flowers.

This time, they were pink camellias, and according to the picture Darcy sent of the message on the card with the flowers, they expressed longing for the recipient. At the bottom of the card was a personalized message.

I have waited for the day we could be together.

Our time draws nearer with each passing hour, my Ciana.

Soon.

“Soon, you will be dead, motherfucker,” I snarled at the picture. Hitting connect on the most recent contact in my call list, I waited impatiently for Brody to answer. “Tell me you found him.”

“We’re on it, boss,” Brody rushed to assure me. “Our hacker has his location narrowed down, but he isn’t currently in the country.”

“Then where the fuck is he?” I demanded.

“Canada,” he muttered hesitantly.

Clenching my hand around my phone, I bit back a curse. “Drag his ass back here.”

“That might not be so easy, boss. We’ve been going through his personal emails, and with the information the hacker got from that, he dug into the guard’s finances. It took some work, but—”

“Spit it out!” I yelled into the receiver, fed up.

“Sheena has been in constant contact with the guard for the past year, and according to his financials, has been regularly depositing money into his account from her personal funds.” He spoke so fast that the words were jumbled together, but I still understood him.

“Ralph was her inside man,” I muttered to myself. I should have known she had every base covered, but I hadn’t figured she would have someone quite that close to Ciana. But if Sheena had suspected the guard’s feelings for Ciana, then she would have been able to easily use him for her own gain, no doubt promising the man he could have Ciana when it was all over.

But that didn’t mean shit in the long run. None of it did. Because I was in charge.

“What about any of this would make it harder for you to get that fucker back here?” I seethed. “You work for me, not Sheena. I run this family. Me and no one else. If you want to continue breathing, you will do as I tell you. Now, get it done. You have forty-eight hours. If he’s not in front of me by then—”

“Yes, sir,” Brody cut in, his voice unnaturally higher than usual in his panic. “I’ll bring him to you personally, boss.”

After I hung up on him, I realized something needed to change. I’d allowed Sheena to think she had control for a while just to keep a closer eye on her. But in allowing her to believe she held some semblance of power, she’d actually wielded it with some of my men.

And now I didn’t know which ones thought she was the one in charge or how far up the chain of command it went.

Which was more dangerous than I ever could have imagined.

Ralph was deliveredforty-two hours later. I stared down at the broken, bloody mess of a man on the metal table. He had bruises on his cheekbones, one eye swollen closed, and a deep gash on his forehead that would need stitching if he lived.

It wasn’t a possibility.

It was obvious he hadn’t come willingly with Brody and the two other men who had dragged him into the old factory where I liked to tend to business of this nature. His left arm was at an awkward angle, suggesting it was broken in more than one place, and his leg definitely shouldn’t have been bent the way it was unless it had been snapped in half.

I had plans for how I was going to kill him, but first, I wanted answers. The moment Ralph saw me, he began to quiver, his body unable to hide his fear. But his eyes were filled with a hatred I knew all too well. I felt the same for him. This man coveted what was mine, and I was about to show him exactly what happened to anyone who got too close to my Ciana.

“I hear you have been working with my granny,” I said casually as I stepped closer to the table he was strapped to. “When did she first approach you?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Ralph spat before shifting his eyes toward the ceiling.

A smaller table was beside the metal one he was laid out on, a number of toys spread across the surface. Without looking, I grabbed the first thing my hands touched, an ice pick, and stabbed it into his right thigh. His scream echoed off the rafters overhead, making the man beside Brody flinch. He was newer to the crew, younger than the other men in the room, but he didn’t look away as I pulled the pick from Ralph’s leg and slammed it back in again.

“Ouch, that must have hurt,” I said with a sympathetic shake of my head. “When did Sheena first approach you?”

“Fuck,” Ralph groaned. “A-about eighteen months ago.”

For the next few minutes, he told me everything about his agreement with Sheena. I stood there, listening, taking it all in, and I realized just how close to real danger Ciana had been with this idiot’s strings being pulled by Sheena. And the fucking Vituccis hadn’t known about the enemy who was watching over their most precious member.

“But she’s your enemy,” I tutted at him when he drifted into silence after spilling his guts. “Why would you work with her when you’re so in love with Ciana Donati?”

Despite the pain glazing his eyes, rage filled his face. “Ciro made it clear before I could become her bodyguard that there was zero chance of a relationship with his daughter. I didn’t have a problem with it back then. She wasn’t on my radar. But have you seen her in action at work?” His pain level had to have been off the charts, yet there was pure awe in his voice as he spoke of Ciana. “How could anyone possibly not fall for her?”

I gritted my teeth, because I had to agree with him. It was impossible for anyone not to love her. Even I had been too weak of a man not to fall under her spell. And I didn’t regret it. She had changed something in me the moment I’d allowed her into my heart.

But even if she had taught me how to love, I couldn’t share her affections. I was too greedy for her.

“You made an enemy out of the strongest Cosa Nostra family in the country so you could have a chance to be with her?”

“I will do whatever I have to just to be with her,” he rasped. “Even work with Sheena O’Brion.”

“What did she promise you in return for all the secrets you told her about the Vitucci security?”

He actually smirked when he looked at me again. The bastard was bleeding all over the fucking place, but he actually thought he had one up on me? “Sheena promised I could pick up the pieces when you broke Ciana’s heart. But I guess she wasn’t all that brokenhearted over you. Other than wanting to leave that island earlier than expected, she didn’t shed a single tear over you. And when she saw Ryan at the airport? The girl was all smiles and practically dancing, she was so happy to see him.”

He hadn’t seen her break down because she hadn’t allowed anyone to see her tears. I’d held her as she sobbed, her heart broken so badly, my own felt as if it were being torn from my chest. Ciana was strong and refused to allow Sheena to win by letting Ryan see how badly she was hurting. But even now, I could feel her pain. It festered like an infection inside me and would slowly kill me. The only cure was getting her back.

Ignoring the jab Ralph tried to throw at me—even if just picturing how happy Ciana had been seeing Ryan had hit a mark or two—I leaned closer. “Who else have you relayed your information to for Sheena?”

His smirk only grew. “Ah, I see. You’ve been losing ground and want to know how far up the ladder Sheena has gotten.”

I grinned down at him. “No,” I said in a low voice. “I want to know who you have personally spoken to so I can put a bullet in their heads like I’m about to do to you.”

“Go ahead, kill me. But don’t lie to yourself about why you’re doing it,” he said with a skeptical chuckle. “Getting rid of me won’t make Ciana love you, though. You might have been able to win her heart at one point, but when you lost her trust, you lost all hope of getting the real treasure. You can’t have one without the other when it comes to her. She’s an all-or-nothing kind of girl. Special.”

“You don’t tell me how special she is,” I snarled, bending so my face was closer to his, while Brody and the others tried not to gulp in fear. “I know exactly how amazing she is. And she is mine. Even if she never comes back to me—” I forced myself not to flinch at the words while silently praying Please, Christ, let her come back to me “—she never would have loved you. No matter what Sheena promised you, Ciana was never yours.”

“She might not be mine,” he said, no longer able to hide the pain in his voice. “But she won’t ever be yours either.”

“She will be.” I bent so I was right at his ear, knowing whatever I told him now wouldn’t leave this room. “She’s pregnant with my babies.”

His body jerked as if I’d stabbed him again, but when I lifted my head to see his face, his eyes were clenched closed. “And how do you know that?” he asked, his breathing labored. “Did she tell you?”

“I have my ways of finding out what I want to know.”

Ralph’s eyes jerked open. “But you don’t see the most important things right in front of you. Like that your biggest enemy isn’t even the Vitucci family.”

“I know who my enemies are.” Sheena was the biggest of them all.

“I don’t think you do.” The dying man said with an almost sad shake of his head. “The worst part is, you’ve only put Ciana in more danger, and I won’t be here to protect her.”