She was tucked under the covers, but at the sound of his voice, she squirmed, and slowly pulled the covers down until she could look over the sheets.
“Hey,” he said, trying his best to smile. “How are you? Are you hungry?”
Brianna didn’t reply, not that he expected her to. She just blinked at him. But since she hadn't eaten in a while, he decided he would order for her. He went to the wall and pushed the intercom button.
“Yes, Mr. Kane?”
“Hello, Maria, would be kind enough to send up a tray for Brianna, please?”
“Right away, Mr. Kane.”
He moved back over to the bed. “Do you mind if I sit here with you?” he asked gently.
She shook her head, a tiny movement, but he would take whatever he got. At least she was reacting to his voice, now. The day before she would only stare at him when he was in the room. She would not eat, even though he had brought food up for her and tried to feed her himself. He hoped today would be better.
He sat on the bed, and reached to stroke her hair. She flinched, another tiny movement, but he caught it, and it was enough to pierce his chest. He didn’t stop, though, reaching out his hand to place it on top of her head.
Soon enough, the food was brought. There was a knock on the door, and Samuel turned.
“Come in,” he called.
Maria and Lauren, one of the maids rolled in a cart with the food.
“I brought you a tray as well, Mr. Kane,” Maria said as she set the covered tray on a wooden lap tray and then settled it over Brianna’s lap with a smile.
“Thank you, Maria, just set mine on the table over there.” Samuel gestured to the coffee table in front of his sofa.
Maria nodded and she and Lauren left the room, pulling the cart behind them.
He turned back to Brianna. “Try to eat a little more this time, okay?” Samuel said gently.
Brianna nodded, then moved. Immediately, he reached out to hold the tray steady as she adjusted to sit properly. He worried about touching her because he didn’t want her to flinch from him again. Once she was seated properly, he let go of the tray and lifted the lid off her food. When she tentatively held out her hand, he handed her the fork. Then, he watched her as she ate.
She moved slow, but at least she was eating. Samuel could only watch her and feel worried. The evening before, during the gun fight, he’d been so worried about Adrien and what was going on outside that he hadn't spared much thought, or even a glance, at Brianna. Maybe, if he’d been keeping a better eye on her, she might not have gone off to be alone. Camila wouldn’t have followed her, something that he should have done to begin with, and things would be different now.
I can't change what’s already happened, though. I can only have hope for the future and work on getting Bri better until Camila comes home to us. They had to find her. They had to bring her back, alive. He didn’t know what he would do if Adrien harmed her, but it wouldn’t be pretty.
He had hope that the mercenaries he’d hired would at least find something soon. He’d recognized a couple of them when they contacted him, and they were good men. Men who’d only left the military because of downsizing. Now they worked for themselves, doing jobs only they were trained to do, because there wasn’t anything for them in the civilian world. They’d seen too much to go happily into a nine to five job, living a life with a wife, kids, and white picket fence. If he’d had a different life waiting for him when he’d left the military, he’d probably have ended up joining them.
He’d hesitated hiring anyone else, involving them in the investigation, in case too many people working on it had the opposite effect of what they wanted. But he was tired of waiting. He needed answers now.
The longer it takes, the more dangerous it is.
Samuel was hoping for a miracle.
* * *
A few days passed, and with each one, Samuel’s restlessness only grew. Once again, he found himself pacing around in the living room when his phone rang.
“Kane.”
“It’s Jacobs. I’ve got an update. It’s not good.”
Samuel sighed. “Give it to me.”
“We’ve been over the phone logs. Adrien paid off a couple of the guards to smuggle in visitors and not log them or their calls. He planned this almost from the minute he hit the prison. He was well organized, Kane. The men he freed along with him are spilling their guts. He paid them to attack your estate. Gave them strict instructions to keep the gun fight to the front of the property. We weren’t aware any other convicts were involved until last night, but it appears that he was able to pay a few others who got early release to help lead false trails to help him escape.”
“How in the hell did he pull all of this off?” Samuel swore. “Where the fuck did he get enough money to pull this off?”
“He didn’t even pay them much, Kane. Ten grand to each of their families was all it took to buy their loyalty.”
“Fuck.”
“It gets worse.”
Samuel rubbed his tired eyes. “What.”
“They have no idea what his plan is.” Jacobs sighed. “And believe me, they really have no idea what his plan is. We didn’t go easy on them. They just know nothing.”
Samuel sighed. “Okay, thanks. Anything else?” he asked.
“No. I’ll keep you updated.”
Samuel ended the call and continued to pace.
“Moving around so much isn’t actually going to help you, you know.”
He turned around to find Morganna walking into the room. He’d given her one of the guest houses and some clothes that had belonged to his mom, and she’d showered and changed already.
“Sorry,” he said, forcing his body to go still as he tucked hid hands, along with his phone into his pockets. “I just don’t like being so helpless. There are so many people working on this and no one has found anything yet that will help us find them. I don’t want a week to pass by before we have her back…”
By the way things were going, though, that might not be possible. And it worried him so much when he thought of Camila and how she was doing. What condition was she in right then? Was Adrien hurting her?
Or, had he killed her already?
He usually got to that thought and then stopped any more of those sorts of thoughts in their tracks. He already felt like he was going crazy, but if he thought like that, then he really would be crazy.
“Have you gotten anything at all from the police? Do they at least know where to start looking, or are they still doing a wide search?”
Samuel sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “They’ve narrowed it down somewhat, but not enough. They’re at least positive he hasn’t gotten on a plane to somewhere, but he could just as easily have gotten into a car and driven off. And it’s not like they can search through every building in New York to see if he’s slipped in somewhere while no one was paying attention.”
She hummed, then moved to sit down. In the day and a half since Camila had been taken, he’d noticed how her back kept bowing lower with each passing moment. She was worrying about Camila, just like he was, but he couldn’t imagine the depth of her worry. He hadn't known Camila for that long, less than a year, and they’d been together for even less. But, she was Camila’s mom, and from what she’d told him, they only had each other in the whole world.
“Try not to overwork yourself too much with worry,” Morganna said as she leaned back in the chair. He almost thought she was trying to comfort him. “Try to conserve your energy for when something does happen, all right?”
“I can try,” he said with a sigh, moving to sit down himself. “I’m usually good at sticky situations, but not when it involves people I care about.”
“Camila did say you were in the military,” she said conversationally.
“Yes, ma’am. I was in service for about a decade before I had to come back. Still, nothing in the civilian world ever seemed worse than anything I’d ever witnessed out there, which is probably why I’m used to keepi
ng my cool.”
When it had to do with work or dealing with his family, he was good at it, but not when Adrien did something this bad, and involving their sister and Camila, of all people…
Samuel had never dealt well with losing people he cared for. He still thought about their parents and had regrets for not being there when they passed away. It had been more than a year since he’d seen them when the accident happened, and he never forgave himself for that.
So no matter what, he wanted to be there for Camila, and he didn’t want anything horrible to happen to her. If Adrien hurt her… He clenched his fist and he pressed his lips together in a flat line, afraid to voice his thoughts.
“I can't stay calm, either,” Morganna explained with a chuckle. “I’m just older than you and I get tired with too much excitement, or I would be pacing with you. But… I can't say this is the first time I’ve gone through something like this.”
Samuel perked up in curiosity. “Do you mind if I ask you to elaborate on that, ma’am?”
She let out a sigh. “No need to call me ma’am, Morganna is fine.” She gave him a curious smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Has Camila ever told you about her father?”
He thought back, knowing they had talked about it before. Camila had been worried about how he would react to her telling him her mom was a murderer. She hadn't said that part out aloud, but her expression hadn't even tried to hide it.
“She did tell me some of the circumstances,” he said delicately. “But she did make it clear that he wasn’t around anymore.”
Morganna nodded and heaved a sigh. She appeared to be contemplating how much to tell him.
“You don’t have to—” Samuel reached a hand out to her in comfort.
Morganna looked at his hand and almost smirked, but again, her eyes didn’t reflect any joy. Instead, she appeared haunted. He could almost see the ghost of her husband in her dark eyes. “I never suspected, when I first met him, that our story would end the way it did.” She looked at him, gauging his reaction he guessed, because she continued a moment later. “When I think about it, sometimes, I get sad. Not that I regret the actions I took. Not in the least, he deserved what he got.”
“I’m sure he did,” Samuel said softly, watching her, waiting for her to say something more. He could tell, for the sake of her daughter… for the sake of Camila, Morganna was willing to do a lot.
She must have decided he was worthy of hearing the whole story because she went on as if he hadn’t even spoken. “Around the time Camila was born, my husband and I were having some… financial problems. I didn’t finish high school either, so when I got a job, it was only ever minimum wage. We were fine, but children need a lot of care and a lot of money to raise, you know? So, the funds started disappearing.
“Then one day, something bad happened. My husband was a manual worker, and he found jobs wherever he could, but mainly, he worked in construction. It was a lot of work for not a lot of money, but it was enough for us. Until the company he worked for suddenly closed down, and he found himself without a job. He’d looked for other things to do here and there, but there wasn’t anything steady, and a lot of the time he had to… compromise to make money. Like doing more work for even less money.”
Samuel had never been poor. He was born to rich parents, and even though he’d joined the army, and ended up in places where he got to see how people on the other side lived, he’d never had to experience that sort of struggle himself.
He could imagine, though, the kind of stress a man like that would be under. Having to feed a wife and a child when he didn’t have the funds to take care of them…
“At some point, he started drinking to drown his sorrows away. And because my husband was bringing in less money, I had to increase my work hours. I usually left Camila with a neighbor to look after while I went to work in the morning and got back in the afternoon, but I started working until late. At times, when I was late, the neighbor would leave Camila with her father.”
Samuel’s hands were clasped together, and he tightened them unconsciously, feeling the bad part was about to come.
“So one night, when I got back really late, I found Camila on the floor. Her blanket trailed from the seat, though, and she was wailing with her face red like she wanted to shatter her lungs. She must have fallen. My husband, on the other hand, was laying drunk on the couch, having left her like that. I took her to the hospital because I couldn’t get her to stop crying. She’d bruised her wrist.”
Morganna paused for another sigh. “That was where the relationship between us started going sour, probably, though it did take a while before he hit me for the first time. But once it started, it didn’t stop. Up until Camila was ready to start going to school, and we started having arguments about that, too. By that point, I hated him, and he hated Camila and me. I wanted what was best for the two of us, so I asked for a divorce…”
“And he didn’t take it well,” Samuel finished for her.
She nodded. “Not well at all. He practically lost his mind over it, and I lived in fear of him from that point forward. Before that point, he’d at least tried to hide the hitting from Camila, but after that, he didn’t bother. Sometimes, when he was there and he was arguing with me, he didn’t mind targeting her because he knew it would hurt me more.”
Samuel thought his hands would break under the strain he was putting them through. He couldn’t imagine a man that would stoop so low to try and hurt his own child. Adrien had gone wrong somewhere, but he still remembered how wonderful their parents had been. They were strict sometimes, but they had been loving parents for as long as he’d known them.
He mourned for Camila that she couldn’t have had the kind of upbringing that he did, in a warm and loving family. Just as much as he mourned for his own sister and whatever it was that took away her childhood from her. Or who.
“I would have Camila run to hide,” Morganna said. “So she wouldn’t see the arguments between us. She could still hear it though, and I wanted out of there. But my husband was never going to let us go. We lived in the lower areas of the city, so finding a gun was nothing big back then, though I did have to give up a lot of money for it. I didn’t have the courage to use it right away though, so I kept it locked away in the house. In the kitchen, because it was the one place I knew he wouldn’t look for anything besides beer in the fridge.”
Samuel could practically picture it. A younger Camila, a younger Morganna, and the out of control husband. He could picture the two women living in fear, and it made his heart ache. It was easy enough to picture, because he remembered the fear his own sister grew up with of the outside world. Or the women in the war torn areas he had been stationed at sometimes.
“So a day happened when we got into another argument. Our worst one yet, and I really thought he would try to kill me, then go after Camila when he was done with me. He pulled a knife on me. So, I picked up the closest thing to me, I can't even remember what it was, and I threw it at his head. Then I ran to the kitchen and pulled the gun from where I left it. When I held the gun to him and pulled the trigger… I didn’t even shake, and my aim was good. Got him in one shot. It was the first… and only time I ever shot a gun. And it cost me years with my daughter.”
They were silent for a while, both thinking. Samuel mulled over Morganna’s background that illustrated perfectly what she was willing to do to protect her baby girl from every monster out there, even if she thought the monster was him or his brother.
“I have nothing against you,” Morganna said after a long while of silence. “But if I have even the slightest inkling that I need to protect my daughter from you, I won’t let you anywhere near her. This is your brother we’re talking about, and if it comes down to it, I will take his life over my daughter’s and your feelings.”
She met his eyes, and her gaze was hard. Samuel found it kind of funny, because her eyes looked familiar. He’d seen them in plenty of the people he’d served with in the army, others
who had left before he did, and those that remained as he left. Like they’d seen the pits of hell and it left its mark on them. Like the mercenaries he’d hired to find his brother and Camila. Like his own sometimes when he looked in the mirror after vivid nightmare of his time in Iraq.
His jaw tightened.
“You don’t have to worry, ma’am—Morganna,” he said, correcting himself when he remembered she said to call her by name. “I promise you that I will be getting your daughter back, no matter what happens to my brother. You have absolutely no reason to protect her from me, because we both want the same thing. Camila safe, no matter what.”
In fact, he’d wasted a lot of time worrying then sitting down for a chat. It was hardly the time for it. He got up, pulling out his phone to search his messages to see if any of the mercs had found a lead. If none of them had discovered a thing yet, he was going to increase the pay.
He would make sure Camila got back safe if he had to go out there and look for her himself.
Chapter Twenty
Camila
Camila blinked her eyes open. She didn’t know how many times she nearly fell asleep, but every time, something woke her up. This time, when her eyes opened, she realized she was alone in the room, and wondered where in the house Adrien was.
Not that she was thinking of running away, now. With Adrien having her collared, the second she was out of the house, even if she could hide, he still had the remote with him. All he had to do was press a button, and if he was sadistic enough, she would suffer a lot before she died.
No thanks, she thought with a shudder. If she was going to do anything, she’d have to get that controller away from him first.
She was lying on the couch trying to recover her lost strength. Her body still felt weak after the last time he used that collar on her. If she let him do that to her again, she didn’t think she could take it. Heck, even if she did run, she was sure she couldn’t run far in the condition she was in.
Tangled Obsession: Book 2 of the Obsession Trilogy Page 12
