Cruel Surrender by Terri Anne Browning
Ciana
I was stillwide awake when Bain left before dawn the next morning. I hadn’t even tried to sleep all night, knowing there was no use. My heart was more broken now than it had been when I’d realized who he really was back on the island all those months ago.
When Kella had started crying in the middle of the night, he’d gotten up without even checking to see if I was asleep. Through the baby monitor, I’d heard him change her then feed her a bottle of the breast milk I pumped every day while he rocked her back to sleep. By that time, Elda had started to whine, and he’d done the same for her.
She was always a little more difficult to get down again, and she loved the sound of her father’s voice, so he’d spent over an hour murmuring softly to her. Telling her that he was going to be away for a few days, but that “Da-da loves his little princess” and he’d see her soon. The way Elda would coo at him had broken my heart that much more. All three of the girls adored him, but Elda and Kella got all googly-eyed whenever they saw him. Alessia loved him just as much as they did, but she would rather be with me than him.
Something he liked to joke about, because she really was just like him. Not only did they both need me so desperately, but Alessia looked more like him, while Kella and Elda had more of my features.
At least, he’d used to need me desperately. Maybe that had all just been part of some kind of sickness he’d had for a little while, though. Because, obviously, that was no longer the case.
He hadn’t even kissed me goodbye before leaving. Fighting tears, I waited until I heard the helicopter take off at the back of the property, transporting him to the airport, before I got up to start my day.
As if they could sense how broken I was, all three girls were super whiny all morning, and I just gave up and cried right along with them until I had no more tears left. The day dragged on, and eventually the lack of sleep caught up to me. I fell asleep on the daybed in the nursery where I sometimes napped with one of the babies while breastfeeding.
The sound of something exploding in the distance jerked me awake. Heart racing, I looked around, as if I expected the source of the noise to materialize in front of me. Shaking my head to clear it of the remaining sleep fog, I stood, only to hear the distinct sound of gunfire.
It was close. A lot closer than the explosion, which, until right then, I’d thought maybe I’d dreamed.
There was a safe room in the basement, something Bain had made sure I knew about. Luckily I was still wearing the double baby carrier, and I quickly put Elda and Alessia into it, cradling them to my chest, before picking up Kella just as I heard shouting downstairs.
Fuck, whoever had come was moving fast, and I didn’t even have time to comprehend the full magnitude of what was going on. Clutching my children to my chest, I just started running.
As I rounded the corner to get to the back stairs that would take me straight down to the safe room, a small figure dressed in all black appeared on the landing in front of me. Wishing I had a gun—fuck, even the old bat I’d once found in Bain’s office—I stumbled to a standstill.
“Don’t hurt my babies,” I pleaded with the person in black. Whoever it was, they were small, a hell of a lot shorter than I would ever expect someone to be to make it through the army of guards that stood between the house and the gate.
The person in black took two steps closer to me before Brody appeared behind them. He didn’t have a gun like I hoped, but a steel pipe. He swung, catching the person off guard when it connected with their thigh.
Cursing, they turned and pulled a gun from somewhere, shooting Brody in the shoulder. He dropped, but he’d been hit in the right shoulder, so I knew he wasn’t dead. Still cursing, the person in black pulled the ski mask off their head, and my knees nearly gave out when I saw their face.
No, this was a dream. Or a nightmare. But it sure as fuck wasn’t reality.
How else could Nova be standing in front of me, breathing hard as she kept her gun raised for a moment before dropping it to her side and running toward me? “Ciana, snap out of it,” she commanded when she reached me, taking hold of my elbows. “You’re not seeing a ghost. I’m real. Now get your ass in gear.”
“N-Nova?” I whispered, still not convinced this was real. “H-how?”
“Long story, C. One I really don’t have time to tell you right now.” She glanced down at my girls, her green eyes softening. “Oh wow, they are gorgeous.” She dropped a kiss on Kella’s cheek. “But we have to get out of here. Now.”
Everything was a blur after that. Somehow we made it out of the house and into the back of a military-grade SUV. I wasn’t really surprised to see Tetka behind the wheel, but I couldn’t tear my gaze off Nova until we got to a small airstrip about fifty miles away.
Once we were on one of the Vitucci jets, going who knew where, I was finally able to process what was going on.
Oh fuck. I’d left.
I’d actually left Bain.
It was something I’d been contemplating doing the last two days, but I hadn’t even imagined how I would accomplish it. Not only because I had nowhere else to go, but because I didn’t think Bain would let me take his daughters away from him. No matter that he didn’t want me any longer, he loved his girls.
I began to shake, knowing I’d just made an enemy of my husband. He would come for us. For the girls, at least, and because I would never leave them, I would have to go back to him.
“He had one of his men put a sniper on Ryan when he came to get me,” I whispered, wanting them to understand. “He said if I didn’t do what he wanted, he’d kill Ryan and send Anya his head. He showed me Sheena’s, so of course, I believed him.”
“No one is blaming you, myshka,” Tetka said soothingly, rocking Elda in her arms while Nova cuddled Kella. “I knew there was a reason you wouldn’t come with Ryan.”
“Don’t worry about anything,” Nova assured me. “You just concentrate on taking care of these beautiful girls and yourself. We’ve got everything else handled.”
Not worry? How did she expect me not to worry? Bain wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who got in his way to get the girls back. And Tetka wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who threatened her family. I didn’t want anyone else to lose their lives, not even the man who had broken my heart yet again.
The thought of Bain dying made it hard to breathe. Fool that I was, even knowing he’d left me for his mistress, I still loved him.
Pushing those thoughts away, I looked between my cousin and Tetka. “He won’t just let me go,” I warned. “If he’d been home, things would have gone a lot differently when you two burst in like that.”
Nova smirked at me. “Good thing we knew he wasn’t home, then.”
“How?” I asked, surprised.
“Everyone has a price,” Tetka muttered. “And I can be very persuasive when I need to be.”
She’d lived in the same house as me since I was four, so I was well aware of her forms of persuasion. And they had little to do with her charm or money. “How many people did you have to kill?”
“As many as I had to,” she replied in a gentle voice, rubbing her nose against Elda’s, making her coo happily. “And I will kill many, many more to keep you and these angels safe.”
“What will you do when Bain comes for us?”
Meeting my gaze, she slowly released a heavy breath. “As Nova said, don’t worry about anything. He can come for you all he wants, but he won’t ever find you.”
The flight to Russia was long, but Nova kept me distracted by telling me all about what had happened to her following Sheena’s ambush back in June. How she’d been taken to Colombia with Calista. Cali had delivered a baby girl as well, but she’d been so early and so tiny, she was still in the NICU back in Bogotá. Baby Justice was doing much better these days and hopefully would be home where she belonged soon.
After Nova told me about her adventure, I thought it was only fair I told her about life with Bain.
“He…he really isn’t as bad as everyone thinks,” I admitted. “He threatened me with the sniper on Ryan, but afterward, when I was so sick I was having cramps from dehydration, he confessed he hadn’t actually done it. I…” I swallowed, closing my eyes against the pain of what a fool I’d been. “I gave him a chance. He was so good to me, and we were happy. Until…”
“Until?” Nova asked, her eyes full of sympathy when my tears began to fall again.
“Until I heard him on the phone a few days ago. He went back to Ireland this morning. Back to his mistress.” I nearly choked on the last word, my sob wrenched from my soul.
My cousin wrapped her arms around me lovingly. “Shh, it’s okay. You don’t ever have to see that bastard again. Unless you want to.”
I nodded, soaking that in.
Unless I wanted to.
But the trouble was, I didn’t know if I ever wanted to see him again or not.