Scorned Love: An Enemies to Lovers Romance (Scorned Fate)

“You nearly fooled me,” Edward said.

We were in Edward’s SUV when I came to. From the snatches of conversation I’d gleaned from my groggy wakefulness, Pancho destroyed my phone. And we’d been driving for a while. At one point, we took cover in a building garage.

After tasering me, they shot me up with a drug that paralyzed my limbs. I was awake and aware, but I couldn’t move. It was the most horrible feeling ever. Like I was stuck in a nightmare. But in this case, the nightmare was real.

My wrists were bound as well as my thighs above the knees. I could tell it was Edward who did it unless Pancho was familiar with the double-column tie called Shibari, a popular form of rope bondage. I could not move, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t feel emotions. And what I was feeling was fury. I clung to my anger so I could keep down the bubbling panic. Nico must be losing his mind. But I had no regrets because if what I had sent Trevor absolved Nico of Joe Rossi’s murder, then everything was worth it.

I sat against the corner of the SUV, my feet draped on Edward’s lap. He’d removed my sneakers, and he was drawing circles above the rope that secured my ankles.

“Pancho never trusted you,” he continued. “He’d confirmed with IT that there’d been a security breach in my apartment’s network.” Ice entered his tone and his gaze froze over. “You’ve been busy, sweetheart. Downloading a ton of data from my laptop. It doesn’t matter now. It makes my choice easier.”

All I could do was stare at him. A cruel smile slashed his lips. “I’m going to free us.”

Free us. What did he mean?

“Sir, the plane is at the airfield,” Pancho said. “We’re heading there now.”

“Good.” He turned a satisfied smile my way. Edward didn’t seem perturbed at all for someone who was going down for Joe Rossi’s murder. “I guess I won’t ask you how you feel about running away with me?”

Oh, God, no.

“See, I can be romantic. Some might think, I’d go to Mexico or Belize or Costa Rica. But I’m not taking any chances.” His smile sent chills through me. “Tunisia. No extradition and it’s a beautiful country.” He leaned in and cupped his ear. “What? You don’t want to leave your precious De Lucci?” He leaned back in his seat. “Tough, my pet. I’ve been patient enough. You think I haven’t tried to replace you?” His fingers squeezed my toes in a distressed manner, and I had a split second of ambivalence, of whether I was glad he had numbed me to all pain, or I wanted to feel everything.

Feel alive.

Feel hope.

“I have,” he continued. “I even took a wife. And it worked for a while.” He released my feet and surged across the seat and snatched me, dragging me close, so we were face to face. “It worked until I saw you gaining success on that idiotic social media app. My kitten was surviving without me and it ate at me.” He bared his teeth like a snapping rabid Rottweiler. “It ate at me that you didn’t need me anymore. You weren’t supposed to thrive without me.

“So yes, every roadblock I could think of, I threw at you. But you always came out on top.”

He shoved me away. “As your Dominant, it is my duty to see to your welfare.” A growl vibrated in his chest.

I’m not a fucking submissive, my mind screamed.

“I should have done this before you opened that stupid boutique in Manhattan, but I couldn’t find an opening or a reason to get back into your life.” The disgust on his face slowly smoothed to one of stoicism. “How much farther, Pancho?”

“Exit coming up.”

The SUV turned onto a paved private road. A facility with high steel mesh fencing stood in the middle of acreages of land. A warehouse. No. A hangar. Pancho did mention a plane.

“I could have used SMG’s airfield, but that would be where the cops would look first.”

When the SUV rounded the hangar, a couple of vehicles were waiting.

“Ah, my men are here.”

My anxiety surged to super-stressed levels. Frustration gnawed at my insides that I couldn’t do anything to free my feet, that I couldn’t do anything except blink. Tears stung my eyes. I moved my head slightly.

I tried to speak. “Let…”

Edward’s gaze snapped back to mine, eyes narrowing. “The Hybernabis is fading.”

I forced words through my mouth. “Let me go.” They came out hoarse, barely audible.

“Should we give her another dose?” Pancho put the vehicle in park.

Fuck you, asshole.

“Let’s wait until we get on the plane,” Edward said.

“Shall I carry her?”

“No. I got her.”

Edward exited the SUV and gathered me into his arms. “It’ll be over soon, sweetheart,” he whispered as he carried me bridal-style toward the awaiting plane.

How did he expect to keep me? Keep me drugged or chained? I would never submit to him.

He went up the stairs and turned right. A couple of steps in, his body stiffened. It was more like a jolt. His dismay and astonishment blasted from his body into mine.

“Dad?”

A gravelly voice said, “Put her down, son. Let’s talk.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” Edward’s tone pitched higher. The atmosphere in the cabin changed. Whereas Edward seemed in control earlier, it was like a bigger and meaner predator had taken over. “What are they doing here?”

They? Hope surged.

“Put Ivy down.”

Nico. Hope exploded, and my skin pebbled with goose bumps. I wasn’t feeling as numb anymore.

“What? Or are you going to shoot me with that gun?”

“Or I will,” an unfamiliar voice said behind us.

“Let me talk to him,” the older Sinclair said.

I tried to move my head, but I couldn’t. Nico. Where was Nico?

“What is there to talk about?”

“Let her go,” Nico snarled.

“No,” Edward snapped. “Ivy’s mine. She’s always been mine.”

“Why, you delusional fuck—”

“This has gone on long enough.” There was movement in the aisle, and Gordon Sinclair’s voice came closer. “I’m tired of covering up for you. This can’t go on. These obsessions. These deadly games you play.”

The cabin swarmed with activity. Rattling of firearms, rustling of fabric, rampaging of footsteps. Hushed murmurings and harsh whispers.

“You don’t have to worry,” Edward’s statement rose above the voices. “I’m out of your life. I won’t be an embarrassment anymore to the Sinclair name.”

“Put her down!” Gordon Sinclair roared. And all noise ceased on the plane. In a calmer voice, his father said, “Give her to De Lucci.”

I glanced up. Tears brimmed Edward’s eyes, but whatever sympathy I had left for him had disappeared the second I found out what he had done to bring me down. He was a monster. And God only knew what other things his father had covered up for him.

It was when I felt Nico.

I felt his hands come under my body. I felt Edward giving me up to him. The ragged inhale and exhale of Edward’s chest and his broken whisper of “kitten.”

I felt it. The moment I was back in the arms of the man I loved.

Those tightening of fingers, the security that shrouded my whole person, yanking me from the nightmare back into the dream.

I wiggled my toes. The paralyzing drug was wearing off.

“Thank you, sir,” Nico said curtly. He was thanking Edward’s dad. The questions started. What happened? How did it happen?

When Edward moved aside to let us pass, I spotted Sandro Rossi. I figured he was the other man who spoke.

And when we reached the tarmac, Pancho and a few other men were on the ground. I didn’t know who turned on who. I just wanted to get out of here.

Nico’s body was stiff. I felt secure, but I was prepared for another explosion. I didn’t think I could escape the scathing shrapnel of Nico’s wrath. I was wary of asking to be untied first.

“Nico…” I whispered.

“Quiet.”

When he did give me his eyes, I could see the anger simmering there.

I hope it wasn’t for me.

I gulped.

Nico

Seeing Ivy tied up like this sent a savageness through me that reminded me of the time I’d seen her beaten up. Overwhelmed with a rage so powerful, I had to call on every ounce of restraint not to shoot Edward Sinclair.

He was in my sights. But I kept my finger off the trigger. I didn’t want Edward to drop her. I didn’t want his blood and brain matter to splatter over her. I didn’t want to add to the nightmare this motherfucker had already put her through.

But my hands were tied as much as hers were.

Edward’s life wasn’t mine to take. And I wouldn’t want to put that on her conscience, either. Not after what she had done to clear my name.

I didn’t deserve the risks she took.

So my anger wasn’t at her, it was turned inward at myself. After exiting the plane, I strode straight for the Escalade where Dad was leaning against the vehicle. He opened the second row passenger door, and I put Ivy inside. I rounded the vehicle and got in beside her. Dad slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Our eyes met in the rearview mirror.

“How…how did you find me?” Ivy asked.

“Gordon Sinclair called Dad. Someone from SMG tipped him off about what Edward was doing.”

Ivy’s chin dipped. “Are you going to untie me?”

“I was getting to that,” I clipped. My fingers worked out the knots. Trevor’s voice came to me through comms. “Pancho said they gave Ivy a drug called Hybernabis. It should leave her system naturally.”

“I’m not taking any chances. I’m still having the mob doc look at her. Sinclair?”

“Sandro just left the plane. It’s done.”

Ivy was staring at me. “Edward?”

I hated that fucker’s name on her lips. “He won’t bother you anymore.”

She inhaled sharply, and her lips trembled.

“Don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry for him.”

“I don’t know what I feel, Nico,” she whispered. “Relief or sadness that I wasn’t able to help him and don’t tell me you don’t understand because you felt the same for Layla in the end.”

Fuck. How did she turn this back on me?

The silence in the vehicle weighed heavy with our co-mingled pasts and unspoken regrets until Dad spoke up, “Gordon told me Edward was his to handle. He admitted his failings as a father—”

“Spare me those insipid platitudes,” I growled. “If Ivy disappeared, it would cause a scandal of epic proportions and no amount of media manipulation could alter the narrative. He is Abraham sacrificing his son to the god that is his media empire. But that’s not only it, is it?”

I stared at Ivy. “As much as I want to kill Edward Sinclair, the right belongs to the Rossi crime family after the evidence you provided proved Sinclair was behind the assassination of Joe Rossi. Gordon reached out to Sandro after he talked to Dad.” I couldn’t help the sneer that twisted my mouth. “You see, it’s a preemptive strike. If Gordon doesn’t sacrifice Edward, his other sons, including his favorite, would go on the hit list. And once you’re on The Turk’s hit list, you never come off it.”

“I thought…I thought he was retired.”

“Retirement is a myth.”

I finished unraveling the ropes around her and finally calmed down enough to drag her onto my lap. An image of this same pose that Edward had sent me flashed through my mind and my grip tightened. With my mouth against her temple, I tried to expel the ragged anxiety I kept battened down beneath the anger. “I was losing my mind, princess.”

“I’m sorry. It was the only way.”

“If Trevor hadn’t saved your life in the loft, I wouldn’t know what I would have done to him.” Now was not the time to admit that I had the former Army Ranger up against the wall, my hand around his neck, ready to strangle the life out of him if Dom and Matteo hadn’t pulled me off.

But I must have communicated my true feelings because she gingerly pushed away from me. I was still processing that the motherfucker dosed her with a paralytic drug. I wasn’t letting Ivy out of my sight for a month. Probably ever. It was time to plant a permanent tracker under her skin.

“What did you do to Trevor?”

“You should have thought about that in the first place.”

“Did you hit him?”

“No,” I grumbled. “I wanted to. He’s fine. He’s on the tarmac doing cleanup.”

“Pancho. He was one of the men who attacked me in the loft.”

“I know.”

“How?”

My eyes met Dad’s in the mirror again. There were things I hadn’t told everyone yet and probably never would.

“I just know. Let’s leave it at that for now, okay? I just need to hold you.” But this wasn’t about me, so I asked her, “Is that all right?”

“Of course it is.” She inhaled me deeply. “I missed you, Nico.”

There was that unfamiliar floral scent on Ivy that was driving me crazy. I just knew it was part of Sinclair’s hygiene rules he’d imposed on her during their time together. While I paced a hole at The Underground, waiting for actionable intel, Trevor sent me a file of their NDA and other addendums. It sickened me what that asshole did to her. I wasn’t sure of the extent of the damage yet, but whatever it was, I was patient. I was going to take care of her like I did before. On the surface, Ivy appeared unscathed and the paralytic drug’s effect was fading, but like the attack on the loft, the effects might come later.

As Dad drove us back to Manhattan, my arms tightened around Ivy.

I love this woman with everything I am.