Chapter 34

thirty-four

Nevaeh

The sky is gray, but beautiful as I sit at the kitchen table with a view of a stormy sea blasting the cliff with salty spray. Outside, wind howls. It’s one of the rare occasions that I’m not listening to an audible book while I work, because I love the howl of the wind while I’m tucked inside safe and warm. And I am safe, because Kane is home. He’s been working out in the gym for the last hour.

I shoot the final files for a book cover package for a sci-fi romance indie author I’ve worked with before who writes the most addictive alien romances out there. It’s a genre that hadn’t been on my radar before her, but now I’m a big fan.

With the last task of the day complete, I close my laptop and lift my half-devoured mocha to my lips, taking a moment to watch the late October waves slamming around in the sea. I don’t hear him behind me until his mouth is against my ear, and he whispers, “I could watch you forever.”

I tip my head back, taking in my shirtless husband. I still can’t believe he’s real. That we’re real. But I’ve pinched myself enough times to know I’m not in a dream.

With a coy grin, I tease, “Consider the sentiment returned.”

He chuckles, but it dies too soon as he takes the seat next to me. “I need to talk to you.”

Oh boy, I don’t like the sound of this.

“About?”

He holds his phone toward me, and I see a picture of a young woman I recognize. A chill moves through my body as my eyes lift to his.

“Why do you have that?”

“Her name is Arianna Newfield. She went missing⁠—”

“Three years ago. It was all over the media.” I straighten, trying not to focus on the unsteady beating of my heart. Back when she first went missing, and her face was everywhere, people had gawked about how much I looked like her. It had given me an ill kind of ick then and I feel that same feeling now. “What’s going on?”

He flips to another photo. This time, it’s a man. He’s tall and broad and would be handsome if his eyes weren’t so empty. “This is Jacob Yancey.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

Kane leans forward, and I sense that he’s getting ready for something. If I didn’t know how ridiculous it was, I’d think he’s getting ready to catch me from falling. But that is ridiculous. We’re both sitting.

“Jacob Yancey is the man Antonio hired to attack you.”

“Wh—what?” I manage to push the word from my suddenly oxygen deprived lungs. But when the vision of Kane, shirtless and looking ready to lunge, doubles, I know I’m close to the edge of panic.

Pulling air in through my nose, I let it out my mouth. In through my nose, out through my mouth. In. Out. In. Out. Inoutinoutinout.

“Nevaeh.” Kane’s hands are on either side of my face now, grounding me. “Look at me.”

I do what he says, feeling myself calm. “S—sorry.”

Shit. Trauma sucks.

“Don’t be sorry.” His lips touch mine softly. “Never be sorry. Not with me.”

God, I love this man. I’ve known it for some time. Felt it deep in my soul. But this, his patience with me, he’s so imperfectly beautiful and so perfectly mine.

“Did Ilya find him?”

“Not yet.” Kane shakes his head. “But he will. We’re all looking.”

I frown. “Who is we?”

“Me and the guys. We’ve all got connections and we’re all doing what we can.”

I give him a smile that feels wobbly. “Okay, then I’m safe.”

A dark shadow spills into the blue of his eyes and he shakes his head. “I have a few things to confess to you.”

I feel the frown, so I know he sees it. “What kind of things?”

Kane takes a breath, sits back in his chair and begins. “Ian had all emails sent to your account routed to him first. He scanned them for malicious content before approving them onto you.” Shock has my lips parting. Kane continues, “He stopped numerous emails from Jacob Yancey over the last month. All of them are threatening. All of them are growing more and more unhinged.”

I shiver. “Okay.”

I’m not even about to get into the kind of violation it was that Ian had all my emails sent to himself for inspection before being sent to me. I should be mad, but I’m not. He hadn’t done it to be controlling. He’d acted to protect me.

I kind of love him for it, but I can’t help but ask, “What does Arianna Newfield have to do with this?”

“She went missing shortly after she broke off her relationship with Jacob Yancey. He’s the primary suspect in her murder.”

“Why haven’t the police arrested him?”

“He’s been off the grid for the last three years.” Kane is watching me so closely, looking for signs that I’m going to break under the pressure of all this.

Instead, I ask, “How did Antonio find him to hire him?”

“The dark web,” Kane explains matter of fact.

The dark web. My mind spins with the horrors of human trafficking. The kind of abuse to children and animals that should have people sent to an island where they can tear each other apart with their sick and twisted afflictions rather than harming innocents. Call me heartless, but I’m for the worst kind of punishment for that type of criminal. They don’t even deserve the hot meal and pillow provided by the prison system—the security of guards to keep them from ripping each other apart.

Swallowing hard, words slip free, “I’m relieved he’s dead. If he could search in such an evil place for someone to hurt me so badly that I’d come crawling back to him—he would have done it again. He would have found something worse in those shadows. He would have done something worse—eventually.”

Kane’s head tips to the side, because this is the first time I’ve bothered to speak of Antonio since Ilya told me, in a roundabout way, that he’d disposed of him. As in killed him.

“How are you doing with that?”

“Fine.”

It’s not a lie. Since returning home from New York, I’ve seen the news reports calling for anyone with information on the missing Senator’s son to come forward. No one has, and no one will.

As his ex-fiancée, the police had come to question me, but since I’d moved on romantically well before Antonio’s disappearance, and I was in New York with my very famous new husband and his band, my presence very public, I’d been dropped as a potential suspect. My parents also had an alibi, as Mama rents a table at a craft fair every second Friday through Sunday of the month to sell her hand-crafted jewelry—and Mama doesn’t attend without her trusty sidekick and partner in crime—Dad.

Last I’d heard, there were suspicions that Antonio’s disappearance had something to do with a political rival of Senator Diaz, as he’d been roughed up before his disappearance and had vehemently refused to speak about it to anyone.

Even Uncle Miguel had been crossed off the potential list of suspects, although he’d also been questioned at Senator Diaz’s demand. But the MC club had been having a party and Uncle Miguel had been in attendance with not only multiple eyewitnesses to such a claim, but photo proof posted on the date of disappearance—the party bleeding into the day after, again, with photo evidence.

My family would not be blamed for the disappearance of an evil man, and I would not lose sleep over the fact that I held the knowledge he was gone from this earth.

“I mean how are you doing with knowing what my brother did to him?”

I hold my husband’s eyes and repeat, “Fine.”

He studies me for a long moment, and nods, accepting whatever he sees in my gaze. “And now with this? With Jacob Yancey?”

“He’ll get what’s coming to him,” I say confidently, and then shiver. “If Ilya’s the one hunting him.”

Kane’s lips twitch. “Fond of my brother, are we?”

“Actually—I am.”

His smile falls a bit. “Should I be jealous?”

I stand and move into his lap, kissing him softly as his hands come around my waist, and he tugs me closer into him. “Never.”

“Good.” His blue eyes hold mine, searching mine. “Because I’m beyond in love with you, Nevaeh Isabella Volkov.”

I kiss him again, and for the first time, I whisper, “I’m in love with you, Kane.”

A breath shudders from his lungs, and he lifts me in his arms as he heads from the kitchen to the stairs. He takes them quickly, even though he carries me the whole time. Before I know it, we’re in our bedroom and he’s stripping me of my clothes.

Then my husband makes love to me. Again, and again, and again until neither of us can stay awake a moment longer and we fall into bliss wrapped up in each other. The way I know I’ll fall into sleep for the rest of my life.