Chapter 37
37
BENNETT
I t’s close to four in the morning and the house is completely silent. The only noise that is seeping through the walls is of the birds that are starting to chirp outside.
Even though the bird chirps are nice to listen to, and the silence helps clear my head, I can’t help but to wish for some noise.
Kids screaming.
Them laughing.
Anything would be better than the silence right now.
But the ones that make noise are sleeping and after the night they had, they are going to be sleeping for a while longer.
Taking my eyes away from the night covered property that I’ve been staring at for the past hour, I turn to look over at the bed behind me.
Once the doctor that I have on call gave Ella the all clear, we went back to the penthouse to grab the kids and Henry to come back to the manor. Ella was tired and wanted to sleep but didn’t want to do it where she was reminded of the night’s event, so we came to the manor.
After having some tea that Henry made, she came to bed and qucily after Charlie, Drake, Samantha and Grayson climbed to bed with her and haven’t left her side.
As much as I wanted to sleep in the same bed as my wife tonight and make sure she was safe in my arms, I let the kids have their time with her.
I look over at each one of their faces and they don’t have to be awake for me to know that Sam, Grayson and Drake love Ella dearly. If we hadn’t gotten to the office building when we did, and something had happened to her, they would have been devastated. To them, she is just as much family as me and Henry.
Knowing that the kids love Ella makes my anger about this whole thing even worse. Marisela and Peter almost took someone out of my kids’ lives that they care about and love and it wasn’t even a second thought. And for that, my hatred for them will never disappear. I will hate the for the rest of my life. Hill will be easy to forget, now that he’s dead, but Marisela is still out there and when he inevitably pops up again, I will try my hardest to destroy her.
Feeling my anger come up to the surface, I decide to take a break from my watch duties and head downstairs, but before I do that, I walk over to the bed and place a soft kiss against Ella’s temple. I tried not to wake her, but when I pull back, I see her beautiful eyes staring back at me.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll just be downstairs.” I whisper.
She gives me a nod and cuddles deeper into the hold that Charlie has on her.
When I get downstairs, I’m met with a familiar scene from a few months ago. Henry siting at the kitchen island with a cup of coffee in his hand. The last time we had a morning list this, I just had a nightmare and had a snoring ten year old in my bed. It’s crazy how much has happened since then. The only difference between that time and this one, is that Elliot is sitting right next to him.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I say, walking over to the coffee maker and pouring the first of many cups I know I’m going to drink this morning.
Elliot is the one that answers. “Never actually went to sleep.”
“That would make three of us.” I say, taking a long gulp of coffee, the hotness hurting my throat but I don’t care.
“How is Mrs. Lane doing?” There is sadness in Henry’s eyes and I hate it.
“Sleeping, but she’s still shaken up. It might be a while before she can be herself again.”
What she went through was fucking traumatic. Not only the kidnapping part but also watching get shot and die in front of you. That stays with you forever. I just have to hope that she is able to get through it.
“I’ll come in to the office and help out while she adjusts.” Elliot throws out, catching me by surprise.
He never wants to work at the office and the fact that he is offering to do so know is surprising.
“I appreciate that.”
He gives me a nod and goes back to drinking his coffee.
Henry is the one to speak next.
“Sir,” he starts, clearing his throat a few times before getting the words out. “I would like to apologize again about not telling you about the tracking device. Once you got older, I should have, may be then we would have known that Ms. Serrano had resurfaced.”
When I first learned about the tracking device, I was angry. Henry had a way of finding Robert all of this time and I didn’t know. But I’ve spent the last four hours in my head and that tracking device was front and center. And I realized that I had no right to be angry.
Robert left when I was eight. At that age I wasn’t looking for my brother, I was just hoping that he would come home one day. I’m sure that I didn’t even know what a tracking device was. So Henry telling me would have made no sense, especially if the device stopped working after three years. Would have it been nice to know when the kids came to live here? Yes, but even then nothing could have come from it.
“You don’t have to apologize, Henry. I understand why you kept it from m. I had no right to get angry last night.”
He gives me a nod and takes a sip of his drink. His eyes are still filled with sadness which tells me that he is going to continue to beat himself up over all of this.
“What happens now? What are we going to do about my mom?” Elliot asks after a few minutes of silence.
I wish I had an answer. I wish that I could tell him that I will stop at nothing to find his mother and make her pay for her part in last night’s events.
But Marisela is unpredictable. It could be a few years before she pops up again. We can’t be sitting around and waiting.
“There’s not much we can’t do. We know that she out there, and she knows that we will be on the look out, so she isn’t going to try anything soon. We’ll just have to up security and be vigilant. If anything happens, we have to communicate it, otherwise she will catch us by surprise again.”
He doesn’t say anything. For a few seconds, he sits there and takes my words. Eventually he gives me a nod.
“How did she and Peter Hill even team up for this? That seems like the most unliking paring and fucking random.” Elliot throws out, asking the same questions that came to my mind when I saw Hill in that building.
Thankfully Ella filled some of the blank spaces on the way home last night.
“Apparently the dark web connects people in the most unexpected way.”
I would have never put the two of the together, but I guess it made sense. Now I know what Marisela did before showing up at my office. She was plotting with Hill.
I should feel that the man is dead, but I can’t. I feel bad for his family, enough to ask Henry to pay for the funeral so that they don’t have to but not for him.
For a few more minutes, we continue to sit in the kitchen and finish our coffees. Sometime around five in the morning, Elliot excuses himself, saying that he is going to try to get a few hours of sleep and a few moments later, Henry does the same.
Not me though,
Instead of going upstairs and going to sleep in Drake’s bed, I head into the study.
Now that I know what Marisela was after thank to her telling Ella almost everything, I have to move things around to make sure that the kids are protected. And that includes putting in place a plan of what happens to the title of CEO if something ever happens to me.
I’m going to make sure that the title falls to someone that will protect the company and not a slimy bastard like Hill. If his plan had worked out, he would have destroyed the company within a year.
I’m in the middle of sending an email to my lawyer, asking him to make a few changes, when the door to the study opens up.
Given the time of day, I half expected it to be Henry, but to my surprise, it’s Ella standing at the door.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping.” I say, leaning back in my chair and taking her in.
She’s not hurt. There aren’t any cuts or bruises on her face, but I know what she went through took a toll on her.
“Little snores woke me and couldn’t go back to sleep.”
The damn kid snorlax. We’ve taken him to the doctor, but we have yet to make another appointment for the recommend surgery.
“How are you feeling?”
“Okay.” She says she walks over to me and settles herself on my lap.
I press my mouth to her hair. “I’m going to need more details than that.”
She lets out a sigh, but she answers. “Even though I was just strapped to a chair, my body feels like it was put through the wringer. That and my head still feels cloudy.”
I wish I could give her something for that, but I have no idea what the fuckers gave her or how much.
“It will go away soon, I promise.”
She hums against my chest and doesn’t say anything or even move for the next few minutes so I start to think that she fell asleep.
But of course, that isn’t the case.
“Bennett?” She says, lifting her head up from where it rest against my chest and looks up at me.
I can tell that she has something on her mind. “What is it?”
She almost looks scared when she talks. “Marrying you was the best decision I’ve ever made.”
Her word make my heart beat faster.
I give her a smile. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because that’s what I wanted to tell you while I was strapped to that chair. That and that I loved you. And since I already told you those words in the car last night, I wanted to give you the rest.”
I place my hands on either side of her face.
“Choosing you as my wife was the best decision I ever made.” I give her a chaste kiss.
The way she smile at me when u pull away is one that will be in my mind forever.
“You never had any doubts?” She asks, as if she wants to believe me but something is telling her not to.
“I did. Last night some even tried to slip through. I kept thinking that if I hadn’t married you then, you wouldn’t have been put in the situation that you were in. That if I hadn’t married you, then you would have been safe. But the more I thought about it, the more I got angry with myself. I hated thinking that because when it came to you, there weren’t any regrets and there never will be.”
Her lips land on mine fort a soft kiss.
“There is also something else that I wanted to tell you. I thought about it the whole way home but I didn’t know how to bring it up.”
“What is it?”
Tears spring into her eyes as she gets ready to talk. “I don’t want this arrangement to end at the two year mark like we agreed. In such a short time, you made me feel like I was actually worthy of something. You made me feel like safe and wanted and I don’t want to let that go. I don’t want to let you go. I want to stay a Lane and be a part of this family and go to work with you every day and go on trips and everything that comes with being your wife. I don’t want the two year mark to come and have to walk away from that. I don’t know if I’d be able to. It would break me and I would never recover.”
She wouldn’t be the only that would break if we ended this when we said we would.
My whole fucking life would be shattered into a million pieces and there will be no way to ever put it back together.
I need Ella in my life. Now and until the end of eternity.
“Baby,” I say looking into her eyes. “Two years with you would never be enough for me. And when the time came the only way one of us would walk away would be if we wanted to. But if you don’t want to and neither do I, then we can throw that agreement out the fucking window.”
“Really?”
“Really. You’ve been mine since day one, Ella Vincent. I just hope you are ready to belong to me forever.”
Her hands land on the side of my face. “I’m ready.”
“Thank fuck.”
My lips smash themselves to hers with urgency. Even though my lips were on hers a few minutes ago, it feels like I haven’t kissed her in forever.
And forever it will be for us. No of this two year only shit.
The only thing that I have to worry about now is making sure that she and the rest of our family is taken care of for the same length of time.