Cruel Surrender by Terri Anne Browning

Bain

I’d gotten so usedto Ciana staying in once she got home that I’d fallen into a routine over the past week. Follow her to work. Wait outside the medical facility until the end of her shift. Follow her home. Once she was behind the gates of the compound, I would return to the penthouse and just stare at her pictures on the wall.

The smear of blood was still there, but two more photos had been framed and added to the shrine. One from Monday, when she’d worn a cute pair of bunny scrubs to work, her hair pulled into a sleek ponytail, and a smile on her face as she greeted someone on her way into the office. The smile was small but genuine, reaching her eyes and making them glow. Fuck, but I’d missed that glow. When I’d seen that it was returning, I’d had hope that she might be ready to forgive me soon.

The other photo was from the previous day, when she’d left the building on her lunch hour to meet her younger brothers for a sandwich at a deli a few blocks away. Her hair was floating around her shoulders, slightly messy and sexy as fuck, reminding me of mornings when she would wake with wild sex hair from my fingers tangling in it during our rougher lovemaking.

The sound of my phone was an unwelcome interruption as I gazed at the newest addition to my wall dedicated to my love. Brody’s name flashed across the screen, and I nearly let it go to voice mail, figuring it was just more bullshit about Sheena and her latest shenanigans with the wannabe Colombian drug lord. Ramirez had lost his cocaine fields when his father died, leaving him with next to nothing from what I’d been told.

“What?” I barked when the ringing began to irritate me.

Brody was already breathing hard. “Boss, Sheena…she and the Colombian. They ambushed a Vitucci limo.”

“And?” I asked, returning my gaze to the wall with all of Ciana’s pictures.

“Miss Donati was in there, boss,” he said as if he were being strangled.

My heart stopped, the world itself seeming to stand still. “What?” I bellowed. “Tell me everything.”

“They destroyed several blocks. There are vehicles backed up for miles. It looks like a war zone.” Brody talked so fast it took all of my concentration to understand him. “After they wrecked the limo, they took the women from the back. I’m still working to figure out where.”

I was already running for the elevator. “Find her,” I rasped out, unable to keep the emotion out of my voice.

“I’m working on it,” he repeated. “But no one is cooperating with me.”

I stepped onto the elevator, my vision narrowing as I tried to think clearly while fighting to remain calm. Fear for Ciana’s safety was making me quake. Not only had Sheena wrecked the vehicle she was in, putting my love’s life in jeopardy, but she could have harmed our babies as well. Who knew what the fuck she would do to Ciana if she survived the wreck.

My knees nearly buckled as the elevator descended. No. She survived. Because if she didn’t, it would be the end of me too.

I couldn’t live in a world where she didn’t exist.

Inhaling slowly and deeply, I pushed back the thought of losing Ciana and focused on the issue at hand.

The full weight of Brody’s words hit me. “What do you mean, no one is cooperating?” I gritted out.

“The men who were supposed to be watching Miss Donati tonight aren’t answering their phones. The only reason I even found out about the accident is because it’s all over the traffic reports on the radio, and the news channels just started covering it.”

The elevator stopped in the lobby, and I stepped out, my blood bubbling over with rage. “I’ll worry about locating Sheena,” I snarled into the phone as I walked out of the building. “You locate the men who should have been watching the Vitucci house tonight and find out why they didn’t intervene when the ambush happened. And I want to know why the fuck I wasn’t notified when she left the compound in the first fucking place.”

She hadn’t gone out except for the trip to California the previous weekend since that night she was supposed to have dinner with her sister and that douche Patrick—who now had to drink all of his meals through a straw. Why had she decided to go out all of a sudden?

I texted my security detail. Minutes later, two guards and a driver pulled up outside my building. As soon as the SUV stopped, I jumped in the back and started barking orders. I’d already sent a text to Declan and Conor, but the time difference meant it was the middle of the night in Ireland.

Conor was quick to reply, however, letting me know he would track the GPS of every vehicle and device that Sheena had access to. Declan didn’t reply. Cursing under my breath, I called him.

“Yeah?” he grumbled, sounding out of breath, and I figured I’d disturbed him in the middle of fucking his latest mistress.

“Sheena took Ciana,” I growled into the phone.

My friend groaned, and then I heard rustling around before he spoke again. “Fuck, mate. Give me five minutes, and I’ll call you right back.”

“Hurry.”

Before Declan could call me back, Conor had two hits on Sheena’s possible location. One was a place in Canada, and another was one of our vehicles, but it was headed south. I owned property in Montreal, Quebec, but Sheena wouldn’t dare go there with Ciana. Not only was the place surrounded by walls all the way around the perimeter, but I had men stationed there already, getting the house ready for when Ciana had the babies.

From the GPS coordinates, I knew it wasn’t a property that I was aware we had connections to, but that didn’t mean anything. Sheena had friends and her own funds. She could do anything and go anywhere she wanted.

Fuck, I should have put a stop to her months before, but I’d been so caught up in keeping close to Ciana that I hadn’t cared what she did as long as she left me alone.

Now she’d crossed a line that she was going to regret. Making a move on Ryan was one thing. Going after Ciana was the final line I was going to allow her to cross.

I was aboutto get on the helicopter when Conor called me.

“The GPS suggests she’s on the move again,” he said with a strain in his voice. “One of our connections with the Canadian Mounties just reported that the house is registered to an LLC, and our tech guys are working on finding who it belongs to. They sent someone to check out the residence, and it’s been demolished. Vitucci was already there. From the number of dead bodies on-site, our guy is going to guess that was where Sheena was. But there’s no one alive there now.”

My heart jumped into my throat. “Ciana?” His pause made me sick to my stomach. “Con, tell me she wasn’t there.”

“No, mate,” he said heavily. “But that doesn’t mean she’s alive. Vitucci could have taken the body. They wouldn’t have just left her there.”

I pressed my palm into one of my eye sockets, knowing he was right. “Find Sheena,” I told him.

“The GPS indicates she’s in the air—not a helicopter this time, but a plane. I’m looking up all of her known associates to see which one has a plane she could be using.”

It was midmorning before Conor got a hit, and I was finally in the air. When I got a text from Darcy, I nearly sobbed, not caring that Brody and fifteen of my men were sitting around me.

NP: Alan is at Ciana’s house. He called me to chew me out for keeping her pregnancy from him. I don’t know what happened, but I do know that her secret is out.

My eyes stung, reading her words.

Me: She’s home? She’s okay? The babies?

NP: She’s home. Alan said that the babies are doing well. I don’t know about anything else. I’m on my way there now to check on her.

Me: I want pictures. And I need to hear her voice. Find a way to get me what I need.

NP: I’ll do my best.

Knowing she was home and the babies were okay, I was able to breathe a little easier. But an hour later when the video popped up in my text thread with the NP, my rage could no longer be contained.

Darcy was carrying her phone in her hand, the camera on, recording everything as she walked into Ciana’s room. The moment my love came into view, my heart stopped. Her hair no longer floated around her shoulders in glossy waves. Now, it was barely an inch long, some places less so. It looked butchered, making her seem smaller, fragile.

“How are you feeling?” Darcy asked quietly as she sat on the edge of Ciana’s bed.

“Numb.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, and I focused on the dark circles under her eyes. “I…I lost someone important to me last night.”

“I’m so sorry,” the NP said sympathetically, hugging her. “Do you…want to tell me about it? Maybe it will help.”

“No,” she said with a hard shake of her head. “I-I can’t.”

“Okay, I’m not going to make you.” Darcy’s voice turned soothing. “Alan said you have injuries. I’d like to check them out if that’s all right with you.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said, but there was zero energy in the reply.

Darcy shifted and pulled the covers off Ciana before lifting her nightgown. She wore a white bralette with little pink flowers on it. But then the camera shifted, and for the first time, I saw Ciana’s pregnant belly. It was adorably distended, a few lines stretching up under her navel…

Then I saw the welts. Angry red burns on her stomach, chest, and arms. Each of them was nearly identical, round, about the size of a quarter. Some were blistered worse than others and were oozing. But Ciana didn’t so much as flinch as Darcy examined each one, applying medication as she went, before dressing the worst ones.

“Are you ready for me to check the babies’ heartbeats?”

Ciana touched her hand to the bottom of her belly. “They didn’t move for the longest time last night. I thought for sure I’d lost them. But then Alan touched something to my belly that must have woken them up, and they started dancing again. I haven’t been bleeding, and he said they were fine.”

“I brought a Doppler just in case you wanted to listen,” Darcy told her gently.

“Yes, please,” she whispered thickly.

When the sound of my children’s heartbeats filled my phone, I clenched my eyes closed to contain my tears. “Christ,” I groaned.

Seeing what Sheena had done to the mother of my children, how wrecked Ciana was not only physically but emotionally as well, I knew what I had to do. Despite how hot my blood was boiling right then, an odd calm settled over me as I accepted the inevitable.

Sheena had just run out of time.