Cruel Surrender by Terri Anne Browning

Bain

With all options exhausted,I stood outside the Vitucci compound. Moments earlier, I’d seen the limo that held Anya and Nova Vitucci inside enter the gates. I’d watched as Anya had gotten out at the mansion, the main house on the compound. She’d said something teasing to her daughter-in-law that I hadn’t been close enough to hear before shutting the door.

Anya had entered the mansion, and the driver had continued on with Nova in the back. She and Ryan had one of the newer houses on the compound grounds, according to Conor’s inside contacts. Wherever they had hidden Ciana, they were only now returning, which told me nothing. Ciana could have been in Siberia for all I knew, damn it. Now that Anya and Nova were back, I just needed to get them to talk to me.

Whatever they wanted me to do, I would do it. If all they could offer me was one last look at my wife in person—so I could tell her how much I loved her, that I was sorry for whatever I’d done to make her want to leave me—I would take it.

The last time I’d come there, I’d been prepared for war. But this time, I couldn’t use that same tactic. It would only hurt my beauty more, and I’d already promised her I would never hurt her again. Moving out of my hiding spot, I made myself known to the guards at the gate.

As soon as they recognized me, they pulled their guns. “Stop right there, O’Farrell,” someone snarled.

I lifted my hands, showing them I was unarmed. “I need to speak to Anya and Nova Vitucci,” I announced. “Strip me and put me in shackles, I don’t care what you do to me, just let me talk with them.”

My command seemed to confuse them, and given the state I was in physically, it was obvious I was no threat to anyone but myself. Someone grabbed me, patting me down to ensure I wasn’t hiding a weapon. I didn’t struggle, not even when someone punched me in the kidney and then knocked my feet out from under me. Another guard tried to render me unconscious by hitting me with the butt of their gun, but all that did was make me bleed.

I sighed from where I was on my knees. “Are you done yet? You’re wasting time.”

One of the other men spoke into his communication device, telling whoever that I was at the gate and what I wanted. Several minutes later, Anya Vitucci appeared in front of me herself.

“Well, this is a lot faster than I anticipated,” she muttered, staring down at me dispassionately with her cold blue eyes. “You look half dead.”

“I am half dead without her,” I rasped. “She’s the only soul I have. I need her to be human.”

She pressed her lips into a hard line, but after a long moment of silently observing me, she finally lifted her phone to her ear. It rang several times before someone finally answered. “We have company, l’vitsa. Bring Ryan so we can have a chat with him.” She didn’t wait for a reply before hanging up. Turning to the guards who were still standing behind me, she rolled her eyes at them. “Do you feel better now? Did making him bleed a little make you feel like you have bigger dicks?”

They all lowered their gazes, heat filling their faces, their ears turning red.

“Pick your brand-new ball sacs up off the ground and drag O’Farrell inside.” As she walked away, expecting them to do as she commanded, I heard her mutter, “Useless men.”

My legs scraped across the asphalt through my pants as two of the guards dragged me inside the gates and then up the steps to the mansion, but they didn’t take me inside. “You’ll excuse my not inviting you into my home,” Anya said with a grimace. “My daughter is having a friend over, and I’d rather not embarrass her by getting blood everywhere if I have to shoot you in the head.”

I shrugged. “At least I’d be put out of my misery.”

She didn’t respond to that, but she gave me another long, searching look before turning away. Walking to the edge of the top step, she stood there waiting until Ryan and his wife finally appeared over ten minutes later.

My cousin marched angrily toward me, the rage on his face contorting his features. But little Nova, so pretty with her long blond hair and green eyes, jumped in front of him. “Whatever you’re thinking right now, stop,” she commanded, making him take a step back. “I know you dislike him, but whatever else is going on with C right now, she has three beautiful little girls who love their father. And whether we like it or not, this bastard is their dad. Think of them, Ryan.”

He muttered a curse and took several steps back. Thrusting his hands into his suit pockets, he glared down at me.

Turning, Nova stepped toward me. She was even smaller than I remembered, but I was glad to see her alive and whole, even if she was responsible for taking my life away from me. Ciana loved her. The two of them weren’t just cousins—they were best friends.

“How is she?” I asked, needing to know.

“She’s…sad,” Nova answered honestly, making my chest tighten with pain. “How’s your Cori?”

I frowned at the acid in her tone. “Dead,” I told her honestly, making her blink in surprise.

“Dead?” she repeated. “But…”

“But?” Ryan asked behind her when she trailed off.

She grimaced and looked over at her husband. “Ciana said this Cori chick was Bain’s mistress. That he went to Ireland just to hook up with her. Seemed like he was really excited to be seeing her again after so long apart.”

“What?” I bellowed, jumping to my feet. I grabbed for her arms, but before I could touch her, she dropped me on my ass. Stunned, I tried to catch my breath as the reality of what she’d just said continued to crash through me, even as I tried to figure out how that little girl got me on my ass so damn easily. “Why would she think such a thing?” I demanded when I could speak again.

“Plenty of reasons,” Nova said with a shrug. “For one, you said you would take care of this Cori person, but it’s been months. According to Ciana, you don’t normally hesitate to take care of problems, unless you don’t want to do it. She seems to feel that your feelings for Cori were stronger than you let on. For another, C said you hadn’t seemed interested in touching her, and she figured you were desperate for a taste of pussy.”

“She really thinks that?” I whispered in horror. I’d actually made my wife think I didn’t want her. This was one of the worst mistakes I’d ever made with her.

“Apparently,” she confirmed.

“Fuck,” I groaned. “Where did I fuck up this time? What have I done to make her think such nonsense?”

Nova grunted. “I guess you’d have to ask her. That is, if she ever decides she wants to speak to you again. But that’s her decision.”

I scrambled to my knees and clutched at her hands. “Please,” I begged, tears filling my eyes. I didn’t care who saw them. I just needed my reason for living back. “Ciana and our babies are the only good thing in my life. Without her, this life isn’t worth living. I just need five minutes with her. To make her see that she was mistaken about Cori and to fix what I didn’t mean to break.”

“If she wants to speak to you, she’ll call you. Until then, you need to leave her alone.”

“I can’t!” My tears fell freely as I tried to make her understand. “She’s all I have. There is no light unless she’s beside me. Without her, I’m constantly trapped in the darkness, with no way to claw my way out. She’s the only one who can save me.”

“You should have thought of that before leaving her to go shack up with your whore for a few days.”

“I wasn’t shacking up with anyone!” I exploded. “I was delivering the head of the man who was once my best friend, who she corrupted and convinced to betray me. I wasn’t hesitating because I cared about that evil cunt. I was torturing her by sending her a new body part every week.”

“Oh, I like him,” Anya murmured for the first time since her son and daughter-in-law had arrived. “That’s so sick and twisted, I might have to use it sometime.”

“Don’t pretend like you never have before, Mom,” Ryan said, seeming to fight the smile that teased at his lips.

“That’s neither here nor there, l’venok.” She nodded in my direction. “I believe him.”

Ryan released a drawn-out sigh. “Yeah, so do I.”

“What?” Nova cried. “He shows up and produces a few tears, and you’re just going to accept that?”

“No, my heart,” Ryan murmured, pulling her into his arms. “I’m looking at a man who reminds me of myself not long ago. That pain in his voice, the desperation. Look at him, baby. He’s completely shattered. Just like I was when I thought I’d lost you forever.”

Her green gaze drifted over me, but she didn’t seem to believe me as the other two did. “Convince me,” she commanded, her tone taunting. “Make me believe that you love Ciana the way Ryan loves me. If you can, I’ll take you to her. But if you can’t, I’ll do what should have been done when you first broke her heart and put a bullet in your head.”

“You promise?” I choked out, my hope so strong I nearly blacked out from it.

“Promise to kill you?” She jerked ahold of one of the guards that stood nearby and disarmed him of his gun before anyone could react. Chambering a bullet and releasing the safety, she pressed the barrel to the middle of my forehead. Her plea to Ryan only moments ago seemed to be forgotten. “Yeah, I promise.”

“Nova!” Ryan reached for her, but she lifted her other hand, causing him to stop before he would touch her. “What are you doing? Damn it, Ciana has enough shit to deal with on her plate. Don’t add more to it by killing this fucker!”

“Why not?” she asked without looking at him.

“Because she obviously loves him. Why else wouldn’t she tell me about him? If she didn’t love him, she would have told me what he’d done, and I would have put a bullet in him myself months ago.”

“So what if she loves him?” Nova stepped closer to me, her eyes full of hate. “You broke her. Not once, but twice. She’s too good for you. You don’t deserve her.”

“I know,” I told her without flinching as I met her gaze. “I don’t deserve any of her goodness, but it’s all that keeps me going. My heart hasn’t beat right since I left her in Montreal three days ago.”

“Then you shouldn’t have left her. She asked you not to! When the woman you claim to love more than life itself asks you not to go, you don’t fucking go!”

“I know,” I breathed. The pain of realizing I should have listened to the voice that told me not to leave Ciana that morning choked me.

“Nova, baby, don’t kill him,” Ryan urged.

“Why are you so concerned if I kill one of your enemies?” she demanded, exasperated. “It will be one fewer headache we have to deal with down the road.”

“Ciana—”

“Will get over it and move on.” His wife cut him off.

Jealousy over some nameless, faceless prick helping my beauty move on from me was like a physical punch to the stomach, knocking the breath from my body once again.

“I don’t want her to go through the pain of having to get over the person she loves,” Ryan told her in a rush. “I don’t want her to have to experience what I did. She acts tough and fierce, but really, she’s soft and she hurts so easily. Damn it, don’t make me have to tell her he’s dead, Nova!”

She shifted her gaze from me to him, yet I could tell that if I so much as breathed wrong, she wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. This girl might have been tiny, but she was perhaps the deadliest female I’d ever met.

Then Anya stepped closer, and I realized, no, she was the deadliest female I’d ever met.

“Admit it,” Nova commanded. “Stop fighting with yourself, and just say it. You forgive her.”

“Yes,” Ryan snapped. “Okay, fine. I forgive her. I might have even forgiven her the moment you became my wife.”

“But you were just too stubborn to admit it?” she suggested, her tone bordering on teasing.

“Nova,” he growled. “Put the gun down.”

“Only if you promise to go with me to take Bain to Ciana. So you can tell her yourself that you forgive her.”

“I swear I’m turning your ass red later,” he muttered.

“And on that note, I’m going to leave you to it,” Anya muttered as she walked into the mansion.

“Still waiting,” Nova singsonged cheerfully, pressing the gun harder against my forehead, her finger playing with the trigger.

“Fine! I’ll go with you and tell her I forgive her.”

Nova flipped the safety on the gun and lowered it from my head, a beaming smile on her face. “Let’s go, then. I’m sure Bain is anxious to see his little family.”

Ryan let out a long sigh as the two guards actually stepped forward to help me to my feet. “You believed this asshole all along, didn’t you?”

Nova winked at him as she skipped past him. “Maybe, but I’ll never tell.”

Muttering a curse under his breath, he shook his head as he watched her go. “Pack a few things for me,” he called, and she waved.

“Love you!” she answered without looking back.

Sighing, he turned to face me. “Well, don’t just stand there. Let’s get you cleaned up so you at least look alive when your wife sees you again, man.”

I dusted off my hands as I glanced between him and Nova’s rapidly disappearing figure. “That little girl scares the fuck out of me,” I admitted.

A choked laugh left him. “She’s a woman now, but yeah, I agree. She’s pretty terrifying.”