Chapter 8
Found
Seeing Jaden back in our bed brought a small sense of warmth and stability into my life. I needed her up here where I had better access whenever I wanted. It pained me to keep her down in the infirmary, but it was the best place for her. Especially since it meant she would be far away from me.
The last time she’d been this injured, Sid had recommended that I stay away from her.
We both agreed that my presence often brought her anxiety, and stressing her out in any way during such a vulnerable state was not conducive to her recovery.
As much as I loved to terrorize my wife on the daily, it was only enjoyable when she could actually fight back.
So like last time, I stayed away…at least as much as I could withstand.
Most of my visits occurred while she was asleep to avoid disturbing her.
But that meant I would just stew in my unrelenting anger, watching her eyes wince at the slightest movement.
No matter how many times I relived the moment of ripping apart the bodies of the men responsible in my head, it was never enough.
Truthfully, it wasn’t like I deserved the peace anyway, so I clung to that toxic cloud that followed me everywhere, reveling in its righteous punishment.
My failure was a knife digging deep into my back, and no matter what I did, I just couldn’t reach it to rip the fucking thing out. It dug at me deeper every day.
I could teach Jaden everything I knew, train her to be the most lethal soldier alive, make her the most formidable opponent the world had ever seen.
I could give her every resource imaginable to defend herself against any single threat that came her way and be wholly confident in her capabilities.
But the one thing I couldn’t do was make her fucking bulletproof.
Even with all the skills and resources in the world at my disposal, I was still bound by the limits of the human body.
But Jaden was strong. I’d made damn sure of that.
And if she was strong enough to survive me, then she could survive a fucking bullet.
God knows I’d lost count of all the ones I’d taken over the years.
But now that Jaden’s fractures were mostly healed, she was no longer in that fragile zone of potential infection or other complications. We could finally move on to the next step of her recovery. And I fully intended on participating.
“Sir! We finally found it,” Eric said as he rushed into my office, his face lit with an excitement that didn’t fit him. Missing significant portions of his ears did him no favors, but somehow, he still found a way to make himself useful.
Sitting back in my office chair behind my desk, I held my hand out.
He hurried over and placed a small red velvet box in my waiting palm.
When I lifted its lid, satisfaction swarmed as I looked down at Jaden’s missing engagement ring, the one she told me had been stolen by Tony Graves’s men when he made the grave mistake of taking her from me last year.
I’d had every single man, woman, and child I could think of looking for this damn thing, refusing to allow anyone to steal from me.
“Where was it found?”
“We traced it down to the shadiest pawn shop I’ve ever seen in Tempe, Arizona. Found the new owners pretty quickly and collected without issue.”
I nodded. “Good. Did you find out who originally had it?”
Eric shrugged, a frown tugging at his lips. “The security cameras didn’t get a good look at her face. She used a common name. But the shop owner remembered she was a real pretty blonde.”
That caught my attention.
“I want that security footage. And I want it yesterday.”
Eric nodded quickly. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled and rushed out of my office.
My gaze swept across the room as Eric shut the door behind him, the doubt and paranoia slowly sinking into my skin like a toxin. Denial tasted just as bitter, a refusal to accept even the slightest possibility.
A heavy sigh escaped me as I stared at the ring, rolling the tiny thing between my thumb and forefinger. It was a long shot. There were a lot of pretty blondes out there. But as suspicion ate at me, I needed to be sure.
Kayla’s body was never found. Jaden claimed she had to have died from all the blood she found in the room Kayla had been taken to at that storage facility.
Maybe she’d been moved and killed somewhere else.
Or maybe, by some divine miracle, she escaped them.
Maybe Kayla was alive after all. But if that was the case, and this blonde at the pawn shop was the same girl, why would she have Jaden’s ring?
The thought chewed right through my skull, burrowing deep enough to drive me insane. Maybe Jaden knew Kayla was alive; maybe she didn’t. But if she had lied to me, knowing full well Kayla was alive, then I had to assume the worst—that Jaden had assisted in her escape.
My blood boiled at the thought. I had been so awestruck at the sight of my little warrior of a wife, covered in blood and dirt, with a rifle over her shoulder and a bloody machete in her hand, her hair wild and flowing while a building went up in flames at her back.
I’d never been so caught up by a singular moment when time stopped and all manner of thinking with it.
I could have been stabbed in the chest and never have even noticed.
That particular scenario, that split second of distraction, would have been the only opportunity that would have allowed Jaden’s lie to pass right by me unnoticed. I’d been a dumbstruck fool, but only momentarily. If anyone could accomplish such a thing, it would be Jaden.
But even so, it was an incredibly curious thing to consider. If Jaden had assisted, why hadn’t she gone with Kayla? What made her stay behind?
She had to know I would find her. Even without the collar tracking her, Jaden could never escape me for very long. She’d never feel peace again, knowing she’d spend what little days she had left constantly looking over her shoulder, never being able to rest in one place for too long.
None of it would be worth it just for me to find her and drag her right back. And if she thought our time in the basement had been bad, she had no idea the lengths my cruelty could go. I would have made our time down there look like a fucking carnival.
And hopefully that had been the deciding factor if Jaden had helped but still chose to stay behind.
Because she fucking knew better.
She knew it wasn’t worth it. And if that was the case, then maybe I could forgive her for her deception, for the hand she played in Kayla’s escape.
Because if Jaden was too afraid to run from me, knowing what the consequences would be, then there would be quite a victory celebration in my future.
Because even when given the chance, she chose to stay instead.
And that was the trust I had been longing for since day one.
But that was the rare optimist in me. There was another possibility storming in the back of my mind that was utterly ridiculous to even entertain. Jaden’s ex was still as elusive as ever, somehow still capable of evading my grasp at every turn.
If Kayla had lived and was smart, she would know she would never be able to return to her life before. Which meant she would have to find refuge on her own, or she would do what any spiteful bitch would do—seek revenge.
And who better to assist with that than the same man still searching for the woman who had just guaranteed Kayla’s freedom?
It was a wild theory, but I always considered every possibility imaginable, no matter how outlandish.
But if that were the case, then perhaps I’d finally be able to kill two birds with one very large, jagged stone.
Looking down at my watch, I saw that there was still an hour before dinner. Heat bloomed in my chest at the thought of coaxing the truth out of Jaden, missing the way her body trembled in my arms when I confronted her.
The fear in her eyes did things to me I still couldn’t explain, always pushing me to the edge of losing control. It was a fucking aphrodisiac I couldn’t get enough of, watching those pretty hazel eyes widen and gloss over, her pupils dilating. She was so beautiful when she was terrified.
A fresh idea had my ass out of my chair and around my desk to head straight upstairs to my ensuite bathroom.
“Out,” I ordered as I passed by Clive and Owen at the door and moved straight for the bathtub. I heard the bedroom door shut as I turned on the faucet and began filling the tub with hot water and the vanilla bath oils and salts that made Jaden’s skin feel like fucking silk.
I could feel her suspicious eyes burning into my back as I turned the faucet off when the tub was full. I then took the ring from the box and tucked it in the corner ledge of the tub out of Jaden’s sight.
Returning to the bedroom, I began to loosen the tie around my neck as I made my way over to my wife’s side of the bed.
“What’s going on?” she asked me casually, trying to keep her voice light.
Pulling the tie away, I removed my jacket and started unbuttoning my shirt.
“I thought we’d take a bath together before dinner,” I answered, tossing the shirt on the floor.
Jaden’s eyes roamed over my body as I kicked off my shoes and moved for my belt next, her little pink tongue sticking out to wet her lips. I kept my smirk to myself.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she asked as she watched me step out of my pants.
“You’ll be fine,” I said as I removed the rest of my clothes and reached to grab the hem of the long nightgown she’d been wearing. She didn’t fight me as I gently pulled the gown from her body, her bare skin making my cock harden immediately.
Lifting her from the bed, I carried her to the bathroom and carefully eased us down into the steaming tub.
Jaden gasped as the water hit her skin but said nothing more as I gently placed her between my legs. Pulling her shoulders back, I had her shift more of her upper body weight onto my chest instead of her pelvis.