Chapter 14 Kian
Kian
Ex-wife and her goonies. They kidnapped Sienna.
Her words weren’t making any sense, and they didn’t line up with what I knew. Either she was confused or something far worse had happened that Kristoff wasn’t even aware of.
I drew a slow breath, giving her a moment to steady herself.
“When did they kidnap her?” I asked, my tone deceptively calm. I leaned back slightly, fingers steepled. “Where did they take her, and what did they do to her?”
Sophie’s palm drifted over the tablecloth, slow and absent, as if she were grounding herself in the texture while the fabric rustled beneath her touch.
“She’s safe now,” she said at last, her voice measured. She chewed the inside of her cheek, a nervous habit she didn’t bother hiding. “It’s… complicated.”
“I’ll try to keep up,” I said.
“No doubt.” She released a heavy breath, shoulders dipping.
“After Jonathan’s accident,” she said, her eyes flicking away for a moment before returning to me, “while I was in the hospital, Jacqueline, his ex-wife, visited me. She warned me that if I didn’t stop asking questions about the accident and Jonathan, I would regret it.
Barely a month later, Sienna was snatched while shopping in New York. ”
I stayed silent, letting her set the pace.
“A week before that, she’d hacked into a mobster’s bank account on a dare and emptied it completely. So when she disappeared, everyone assumed the two were connected.”
“And they weren’t?” I asked, urging her to continue.
She shook her head.
“No.” Her fingers curled into the tablecloth now. “After my cousin brought her back home safely, I was cornered outside the hospital by Jonathan’s ex.” She hesitated, then added quietly, “I work there as an OB-GYN.”
I knew that, but I nodded nonetheless.
“She had an entourage of scary people with her.” Sophie swallowed. “With a gun pressed against my temple, she said Sienna’s whole kidnapping was my fault because I didn’t stop asking questions.”
She tried to push an unruly piece of her fiery red hair behind her ear and I noticed a small tremor in her hand. She was scared, and it fucking pissed me off that anyone dared to put fear into this otherwise lively woman.
“Ask me your next question,” I demanded, eager to divert her mind from the anguish of self-inflicted guilt while I contemplated all the ways I’d make Jonathan’s ex pay. The woman and her entourage had just signed their death warrants.
She pulled herself together and her eyes met mine with a raised brow. “You’re not tired of this game yet?”
“No.”
A hint of a smile on her pretty mouth reappeared and something inside me eased.
“Okay, Kian.” I fucking loved my name on her lips. I wondered if she would chant it if I fucked her spread-eagle and naked on my bed, her red hair fanning around her head like a halo.
Fuck if… When I fucked her.
I rolled my wrist to urge her on, chasing the images out of my head. “Any day now, Sophie.”
She scoffed, cocking a brow. “I’m trying to decide whether to go easy on you or not.”
“Easy is boring.” I smothered a nonexistent wrinkle from my sleeve. “And nothing is off-limits.”
God, that should have been my sign because I never gave anyone carte blanche.
“All right, then,” she said, folding her hands in her lap. “Do you have children? And if so, how many?”
“That’s two questions,” I said, lifting my brows. I’d asked more than one question mere minutes ago, but I was trying to get a rise out of her to distract her from the heavy admission she just poured onto the table. “A bit greedy, don’t you think?”
She shrugged. “You asked well over the agreed upon limit, so I’ll ask however many I like this round.”
The corners of my lips twitched. “Oh, really?”
“Take it or leave it, mister. You did the same thing and I’m sticking to my two questions.” Somehow, I wasn’t surprised she’d called me out, and it made me like the woman even more. “So, what’s it gonna be?”
The question hung between us, heavy with expectation, and for a moment, I considered answering plainly, but after her confession, I felt I owed her more.
“I have a daughter. Her name is Emory,” I admitted. “Although, I only learned about her and my granddaughter, Amara, much later in life. I’ve also raised twins, Jetmir and Elira, and consider them family, but they are not related to me by blood.”
“They live with you?”
“No, they’re back with their mother, but they visit occasionally.”
“And Emory’s mother?”
I could understand after her encounter with her late boyfriend’s ex-wife why she would be asking questions like that. Being burned made people cautious.
“She died a long time ago.” She nodded, but before she could ask another question, I pivoted. “Tell me something else about yourself.”
And she did. Her answers were guarded, the scars of what had happened to her and her niece buried beneath the many words she’d left unsaid, but I was grateful for them all.