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“Fix it, ’Bastian,” she breathed with mocking gentleness. “Fix having someone kill our baby.” Her voice broke. “Fix that, you son of a bitch. Bring my baby back to me, Sebastian, and then I might, might be able to look at you without hating the fact that you even draw breath. Fix those pictures you sent my parents. Fix stealing every text, every picture of us on my phone.… Fix destroying every memory and scarring my soul until just living hurts,” she cried with such agony … And despair rocked his soul. Their baby …
She turned, running from the arbor, running from him. He heard a broken, dry sob and as though on autopilot raced from the arbor to find her struggling to get back to her feet. She’d fallen on the stones. Her gown pooled around her; her hair had fallen from one carefully placed pin along her shoulder.
Gently, Sebastian eased her back to her feet. When she would have jerked from him, he restrained her, the growl that left his chest holding her in place more effectively, though, as he repaired the hair that had fallen.
He was living in a nightmare.
He could see her pale face, her gray eyes dry of tears but the horror and bitter, furious agony trapped inside her filling her gaze instead.
Their baby?
Someone had killed their baby?
“I hate you,” she snarled again.
Sebastian shook his head. “I didn’t know—”
“Liar!” The agonized accusation was like a slap in the face. “You knew. You knew because I left you that damned test before I left Barcelona. Don’t you dare lie to me.”
Fists clenched, shattered agony and rage burning in her eyes, she swung away from him. Rather than running from him, this time she moved at a fast walk, another of those horrifying dry sobs slashing at his soul as he watched her go.
Their baby? Someone had killed their baby?
The shock that surged through him as she’d thrown those words at him was like nothing he’d ever known. Rage pounded at the shield encasing him, agony was exploding through what was left of his soul, but the calm that descended over him was unrelenting. It pushed aside emotion. Pain, rage, love, hate, it was all pushed aside as he followed after Alyssa, memories of the past eight years crowding through his mind.
Over four months after she’d returned home he’d awakened from a drunken stupor, her pain sobering him in an instant, her horror reaching out to him, strangling him with the agony he could sense her experiencing. Not just the emotional pain but also physical pain. In Texas, Shane had wrecked the powerful sports car he’d stumbled into, trying to race for her after days of attempting to drink enough liquor to make him pass out.
They’d known … But they hadn’t known she was pregnant. She said she left the test for them to find. Whoever had stolen their belongings from her would pay for that one. They had wiped the pictures from her phone, erased the texts.
That was okay; Sebastian had them all. They’d be returned soon.
Until then, he would have answers. Answers that only Alyssa could provide.
Because she’d also said he’d sent pictures and threats. That her parents had received them just before she’d returned home. They had abided by the conditions a blackmailer had set out, but Gregory must have hedged his bets, and his blackmail, by doing the same to the Hampstead family.
They wouldn’t know it was over, Sebastian thought, and for some reason the CIA hadn’t found another overseas account for him. They’d find it, though, he swore as he stepped into the ballroom, tracking Alyssa, stalking her in her attempted escape from him.
There was no escaping him. There was no running; there was no denying the bonds that had linked him and Shane with her for eight agonizing years.
“Sebastian, hold up.” Khalid made the mistake of attempting to stop him. The other man’s hand gripped his shoulder, his dark eyes filled with concern.
Before the half-Saudi could counter the move Sebastian had pushed him to the other side of a thick, heavy column, his arm slamming into Khalid’s throat, pressing in tight as dark eyes just stared back at him, narrowed and assessing.
“One more time,” Sebastian said softly. “Stand between me and that woman, one more time, and by all that’s holy, Khalid, I will kill you. Do you understand me?”
The rage pounding through him, the violence welling from some primitive, previously unknown source, was like a sickness invading every cell of his brain, his body.
Khalid stared back at him, eyes narrowed, his expression thoughtful now when it should be filled with the awareness of death settling over him.
“Understand me?” he asked again, increasing the pressure.
“For now.” Khalid didn’t sound as though he were strangling, but Sebastian knew that breathing wouldn’t be comfortable.
r /> Releasing Khalid, Sebastian slid around the column and moved to catch up with Alyssa. She wasn’t going anywhere. Too much lay between them. Too many questions, too much pain, and far too many fucking secrets.
14
She had to get away from there. Alyssa knew she did. She also had to warn her father of her stupidity. What a wonderful present to give him for his birthday, she thought, amazed at how desperate she had been. So desperate she’d allowed herself to believe she was slipping into a fantasy as Sebastian touched her.
