Chapter Three
Sabrina.
I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“I can’t believe you didn’t chip your husband. Don’t you love him?”
I let out an aggravated sigh towards Jonas. “For the last time, it was a recent development.”
Jonas arches a brow. “Yeahhh… I have no idea what that means. I took one look at Raven and fell in love with her immediately. It was instant. She tagged me,” he says dreamily. Raven blushes, sitting on his lap, and he kisses her cheek. What a puppy.
“You understand that isn’t normal?”
He shrugs. “Normal is gross. Give me all your love or leave me alone!”
I rub my forehead as Damon and Parker chuckle. “Jonas, I’m going to say it again—sharing location via phone—normal. Tagging your partner—slightly demented.”
Jonas flicks his meadow gaze to Damon standing behind Parker and waggles his brows. “I’d say it’s proactive.”
“I’ll have you know I also have it on good authority; it only happens in romance novels.”
Parker gasps, just as Damon pulls the microchipping gun away from his neck.
Mine is already in. Damon moves around and gives us instructions on how to use the app.
But guilt does gnaw at me. Jonas is right—I should have done this months ago.
If I had, we wouldn't be having this issue now. I’d know exactly where Maksim is.
I’d be able to sleep. My husband would be kissing me good night right now.
Don’t break.
“Hey, sis.” I can't look at Jonas. “It’s okay. We’re gonna find him. Plus, with Raven, I mean… why do you think I call my baby ‘Karma?’”
I know he's trying to be supportive, but all I can think about is Maksim now that Parker is fully awake and off the oxygen tank.
I don't just want my husband… I need him.
“I missed you, Duchess.” His big hands span my hips and then go around my middle as he kisses my neck from behind. “Coming home to you is the best feeling in the world.”
I turn around in his arms, my fingers crawling up his chest only for them to hook behind his neck, and he leans down to kiss me.
The kiss isn't hot nor brutal. It's a kiss that says a thousand words, relays a range of emotions.
The kind that fizzles and pops, making you a bit dizzy but completely loved.
If I inhale now, it's like I can still smell him.
My heart constricts in my ribcage with both despair and anger. At the base of it, it all comes to one person. Kane. Deconstructing lives to fit his agenda. But why me? Because I rejected him, or because I confronted him?
“Sis?”
I blink up at Jonas.
“We're going to find him,” he reassures me.
I tear my gaze away again. Away from his hopeful face.
I love Jonas. But I can't stand him right now. I don’t need optimism.
I need action. I need… I rub at my eye when it begins to prickle.
“They searched another house today. Every square inch of the yard,” I say softly.
I take a peek at my bodyguard, still bandaged and settling back into his pillows.
He may think he can fool everyone else into thinking he's fine, but I see the way he lightly grasps the sheets in his fingertips.
He's asked both Damon and Dr. Tiliano to stop giving him the pain medication, promising to take it orally.
He hasn't, and he won’t. “Once Parker is healed fully, I'm going to England. I need to be a part of this. I have to find him.”
“We're gonna find him, baby. We have an entire task force out there,” Parker replies gruffly, reaching for me. His grip is still slightly weak. I hold in my frown, only lacing my fingers through his and giving them a squeeze.
That is not the issue. I know I will find my husband.
But I want to obliterate Kane and his entire bloodline.
I want him at my unforgiving mercy for touching and hurting what belongs to me.
I just hope whatever they’re doing to him; Maksim can hold on just a little bit longer.
Damon already knows he’s going to have his work cut out for him. I’ve paid him in advance for the therapy my husband will need.
I make them all leave and settle in beside Parker, doing my best to sleep. But it feels like every noise is heightened, and he’s still attached to the heart monitor. The constant beeping is becoming my personal metronome. It soothes me as much as it irritates me.
I let myself drift, not allowing myself to think of how I was in paradise, literal heaven, and now I’m hanging off the edge of a cliff by my fingertips, trying not to fall into the bottomless pits of hell.
My only saving grace? I have one of my devils with me. And I will do whatever I have to—no matter the cost—to get the other.
There’s a knock on the door later that evening, and Aleksi barges in. “Your mom is here.”
Parker sits up as best he can as Matilda Barclay walks through with Raven behind her.
I have never felt my mother’s presence as mighty as I do at this moment.
She looks regal, ready to take down an entire army, but when her fierce green gaze lands on the man beside me, it softens.
“Parker, lie down. You need your rest. Sabrina,” she peruses me with a motherly intensity and an arched brow.
The kind of intensity that makes you want to shrivel up and disappear. “a word.”
I slip out of bed and peck Parker on the forehead, but he squeezes my hand and doesn’t let go. “Together or not at all, baby girl.”
And there. There is the strength he always lends me, even when I don't ask for it. I nod once. “Alright then. Mum, you should probably take a seat.” I motion to the sofa in the room against the wall, where a window behind it shows the snow has begun to accumulate on the ground. I’ve grown to both love and hate this window.
Love it, because the storms outside are beautiful.
Hate it, because every time it’s bright, it reminds me it’s a new day where I'm without my husband. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve been holding in for the past three years, and due to this, I feel there is a statute of limitations of sorts on being able to be angry with me once I do.
I will allow you time to process and grieve—and possibly any other emotions that are untoward me—to settle down. ”
I glance at Raven, who’s taken a seat at the foot of the bed, and she gives me a small nod of encouragement.
Don’t break.
Matilda sucks in her cheeks, causing her face to thin and angle even further. “And you believe this confession will garner what? My wrath?”
I lift a shoulder to my ear and let it drop with a soft shake of my head. “I don't know what it’ll do, Mother, but believe me when I say I never wanted to disappoint you.”
“Sabrina, you could never—”
I lift my hand to stop her from talking. “Please, Mum, let me say this. Now. While I have the courage.”
Her impeccable brows furrow together, and she waits patiently for me to continue, but my stomach is in knots.
“Do you remember the night you wanted me to go to dinner with you and Derek to meet the prime minister and his barrister wife?”
“Yes?”
“Well…” I proceed to tell her everything.
From faking sick, to having Parker run around all of Chelsea trying to find me menstrual items, to waking up in my bed…
and everything else that came after. Retreating into myself, the number of therapists I went through, losing myself to baking and reading because it felt like they were my only safe outlets.
Then, I go into detail about my marriage to Maksim.
How it was arranged to pay off my father’s debts.
This information is where my mother’s nostrils flare with annoyance.
She knew our marriage was arranged. She did not know the why.
It takes me almost an hour to tell my mother everything.
Including how very quickly I was unable to fight my feelings for my husband and for Parker.
How they, and the support from my friends, have helped me immensely.
With each word, I can feel the boulder of ice I've been carrying on my shoulders melting away. Not completely, but it’s bearable.
I do not shed any tears, but soon, I realize every person who’s been under this roof is now in this room, listening to my story. My heart tumbles just a bit.
Jonas listens, eyes wide. Maverick’s face is relaxed, although not by much. Damon looks so very proud of me. Niko, Aleksi, and Elio look pissed. Even more now than they did before.
“This stays in this room,” I hiss, and they all nod. I haven’t forgotten about my mother’s silence. I return my gaze to hers. “And so now you know everything.”
She inhales sharply and stands. “You were right. I need time to process this.”
Guilt weighs heavily. “Mum, I’m sorry I—”
“You’re sorry? You? You’re sorry you got raped? You’re sorry I’ve been such a shit mum you couldn’t even come to me afterward?”
I groan. “You aren’t a shit mum, I just—”
“My daughter was raped by some fucking twat with a head too small for his body… and she couldn’t even come to me.
For years she kept it to herself. For years she put up walls brick by fucking brick, and I let her.
I didn’t ask. I let you…” Her voice breaks.
“You needed me.” She sits down quickly at the edge of the sofa, hanging her head in her hands, and her shoulders shake.
One by one, everybody leaves until it’s only me and Parker in the room with her.
He rubs his large hand on my back in small, soothing circles.
Parker speaks softly. “Nobody knew, Tildy.”
“It’s true, Mum, I kept it to myself.”
“And you shouldn’t have!” She shouts, but I don’t take it personally. After all, it isn’t me she’s angry at. It’s herself. I’m all too familiar with that. I guess all that therapy with Damon has helped.
“You were dealing with Charlie and book releases and Derek.”
She lifts a dainty hand to her forehead. “Oh my goodness, Sabrina, I love you, but please shut up.”
I shut up.
“Your brother died over ten years ago. I loved him. God, I love him. But I have never not loved you just as much. His absence is horrid. I feel it in my heart and in my gut like a void. Just as I’ve felt you like a void.
All the signs were there, and I was too…
” She shakes her head. “I let you carry this weight alone. And I shouldn’t have.
I should have tried harder to talk to you to understand why you had pulled away from me.
I let myself believe it was because this is the natural course of life.
I pulled away from your grandmother around the same age.
But you and I have never been me and your grandmother.
I should have done anything other than let you be.
So, yes, Sabrina. I have so much I need to process, but it isn’t because I hate you.
It’s because I have to sort myself out so I can help you. ”
I shake my head almost violently. “No, Mum. I don’t want you to be involved.”
“Well, that doesn’t bloody matter now, does it, Tink?!”
“Mum! Stop shouting! You’re upsetting Parker.”
“I’m okay.”
I throw him a glare over my shoulder. “Fine, she’s upsetting me.”
He dips his chin and pats my knee. “There you go.”
“Tell me everything you know. Everything you’ve done. I can put out feelers. I knew this wasn’t going to be a conversation to be had over the bloody FaceTime,” she says with vitriol in her timbre, standing again, wiping beneath her eyes. Then she looks at me, eyes still glistening. “Well?”
I blink. “Well, what?”
“Are you going to show me the information you’ve gathered or not?”
“I…” I look at Parker, my sweet piece of temptation, doing his best to sit up completely. He nods at me, looking exhausted, but I know he’s going crazy just sitting around. “Love, please. You need to rest. It’s only been a week.”
“What I need to do,” he replies gruffly, “is to get walking again. The more I sit around, the more I’ll just rot.”
I look back over at my mother.
“I’ll wait for you with your… lieutenants. What does one call a room full of gangsters? Is it like crows? A murder of Suits?” Mum mutters mostly to herself, walking towards the door. “I think I like that. A Murder of Suits. Could be a good title for a bestseller.”
I don’t correct nor answer her as the door clicks shut with her outside the room.
Aleksi’s house has been swarming with men in all-black tactical gear so much, I almost know every single one of them by name.
The shit of the matter is… I don’t know where to begin.
I know my next course of action is England.
I need to find Kane. Once I find him, it’ll be nothing but an arrow to pinpoint my husband’s location.
Parker grunts as he swings his legs around and grabs the IV pole to stand.
“Ah, shit.” His strong thighs tremble. “DOC!” he roars.
I summersault over to him and spring out of bed, ready to help him even though he is almost a foot taller than me. I’m ready to bear any weight he needs me to.
Damon practically tumbles inside the room. “What’s wrong?”
“Get the fucking tube out of my dick. Where is my prince piercing?”
Damon blushes and looks away from me. “We, uh… had to take it out to insert the catheter.”
“Get it out of my dick,” he grouches.
“Are you sure you—”
“Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.” Parker reaches down and tugs with a wince.
A flustered Damon puts his hands up to stop him. “No! Just—Christ, let me get some gloves. I'll remove it. Sabrina, if you wouldn’t mind giving us privacy?”
I give Damon a side-eye, tip on my toes, and plant a kiss on Parker’s cheek. “I’ll be right outside the door. We’ll go together. Alright?”
“Don’t ever leave me behind, baby.”
“Wouldn’t dare.” I grin, closing the door, knowing I could never ever leave this man behind. Not unless I necessarily have to.