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But then my Ella is resourceful. She’d never surrender without a fight. Despite my annoyance, I can’t deny I’m feeling proud of her.
“Keep searching.” I hang up, my teeth grinding together.
She’s still here. I feel it in my soul. My hand slips into my pant’s pocket, my fingers caressing the precious metal. It grounds me.
I turn to Uberto, who’s speed-typing on his computer keyboard, his gaze riveted to the row of monitors in front of him. We borrowed the surveillance van from my cousin in Chicago. It’s come in handy.
We got a visual on Ella with some other woman on board Neptune’s Princess earlier, but nothing since.
Ella looks different now. Her hair is shorter and dyed chestnut-brown. Her facial features appear different too. Makeup tricks, Uberto tells me. It fools facial recognition software. It certainly has worked so far.
Uberto has been developing his own software in conjunction with two other hackers. They’re set to make a fortune with it. We’re testing it here. No disguise can hide her from me now.
But even without it, Ella couldn’t deceive me. I would recognize her anywhere, no matter her disguise. My body doesn’t lie, my reaction to her nearness a guarantee.
Uberto didn’t have to point her out walking down that corridor; my gaze had already been drawn to her on the screen.
My heart exploded with the relief of having found her. She looked up toward the cameras just once and quickly dropped her head. But that one time was enough to pierce my soul with her essence again.
My princess.
Uberto took a screenshot and distributed it to all our men. We’re monitoring every possible exit off this ship, and all my guys are equipped with cameras, recording every person leaving and feeding it back to Uberto’s facial recognition software.
If Ella tried another disguise, we would know within seconds and stop her.
She can’t escape this time. Her only option is to hide on the ship. However, that won’t be a viable solution for long, as some of my cousin’s men will also join the search on board when they arrive.
“Call me as soon as you’ve got anything,” I tell Uberto and open the sliding door to step outside.
Bright sunshine hits my eyes, and I blink a few times as I let out a long breath.
My body is coiled tight with tension. It has been since the day Ella ran, and it only intensified with our arrival in Halifax yesterday.
We’ve been monitoring the progress of Neptune’s Princess. When it anchored around five this morning, we were here, waiting to spring into action.
I’m not going to let Ella slip through my fingers again.
Freemont Security tried hard to steer me in the wrong direction. And they succeeded for far too long. I believed Ella was hiding in the Austrian Alps. I’m pissed thinking about it.
They will pay for that. But for right now, all that matters is to recover Ella.
Antonio appears by my side, typing on his phone. I look at him expectantly.
He shrugs. “Nothing new.”
We walk along the wharf, the ship parked alongside us. I stare up at it, willing Ella to appear.
I want her back—now!
The time without her has been torture. Not knowing how she is, or if she’s still mad at me…
I’m still none the wiser as to why she ran. But whatever the reason, we can work it out. We have to because I’m not letting her go.
She’s mine, dammit.
We’ve reached the backend of the ship, and I check in with Luca and his men. They’re keeping an eye on the cargo hole, checking whatever comes off the ship.
“It’s been quiet,” he says. “Only garbage carts were taken off.”
