Surrender (Careless Whispers #3)(70)

My blood freezes with those game-changing words. Kayden will protect himself. Nathan is far more than just a doctor and can do the same. I trust Sasha to have protected Giada and Marabella. But Sara is an entirely different story.

“I can almost hear you thinking,” he says. “Let me vocalize your thoughts. Is Sara safe? Are all those people protecting her as good as you are? The answer is no to both. She is not. They are not. Now, Kayden’s men are good, but there’s that layer of Americans between them and her, who all mean well, and are exceptional in their own country, but not in France. Paris. I own those places. Put the gun down or I’ll have a bullet put in her body now, and let her suffer while she waits for you to get there.”

“She is nothing to me,” I say. “A girl I met while undercover.”

He removes his phone from his pocket. “Then I’ll tell Gaston to fuck her, shoot her, and get rid of her.” His eyes meet mine, a brow arching, and evil radiates from him.

He isn’t bluffing. He never bluffs. I lower my weapon and Bastile, a brawny man with a goatee, who’s also Neuville’s personal bodyguard, snaps his fingers at me, silently demanding my gun. I look at him, remembering the many times he smiled at Neuville’s nastiness toward me, and his tall, muscular body looks like a mighty fine target for a bullet.

“The gun,” he growls.

Grimacing, I hand him the damn thing, which earns me a stomach-churning “Good choice, little one” from Neuville, who I force myself to look at. He then steps aside, placing me in profile, and grandly waves me forward, inviting me back to his world, and my personal hell.

I walk forward, cold air biting at my bare arms, but I feel nothing. No physical reaction. No emotion. This is about survival for me and death for him, and I’ll ride out whatever storm I have to in order to get there. One of his men opens the back door of a limousine for me and I slide inside. A moment later Neuville is across from me, the smell of him whiskey and cigars and bad memories. Almost instantly the vehicle is moving, and I know his urgency is all about escaping Kayden’s city.

“Where’s the necklace?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“You do know.”

“I don’t remember.”

His lips thin. “So I hear.” He studies me, his eyes heavy lidded, expression guarded. “Did you fuck my brother?”

“I never made it to your brother. Someone attacked me and I ended up in the hospital.”

“And then in Kayden Wilkens’s bed.” Without warning he is next to me, and a huge chunk of my hair is in his hands. “I hate the brown hair. Did he like it? Did Kayden like it?”

“No,” I say, my eyes meeting his. “I did this.”

“I see the rebellion in your eyes,” he says. “Good. That only makes me want to fuck you and punish you all the more. And I will punish you on the plane.” A needle jams into my neck—and everything goes dark.



I gasp for air and jolt to a sitting position to find myself on an airplane, engines humming, and Garner Neuville looming over me in his egotistical power-mongering way, a syringe in his hand. “They were right,” he approves. “Woke you right up.” He moves away, thank God, and sits in the leather seat across from me, the cold air chilling my bare arms, my fingers digging into the arms of the chair.

“Where’s the necklace, Ella?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s what I hear. I’m not sure I believe you.”

“Why would I lie?”

“Three hundred million dollars,” he reminds me.

“That I don’t need or care about.”

“I wonder if Kayden would trade the necklace for you?”

“He doesn’t have it either.”

“But would he?”

I know he would, but I won’t give Neuville the power over Kayden or me that he’s looking for. “You’re all greedy bastards. And if someone hadn’t tried to take the damn thing from me, I wouldn’t have lost my memory in the first place.”

“Convenient that you remember me, but not that necklace.”

“I’ll tell you what I told your brother. Nothing about having everyone hunt me down for that necklace is convenient.”

“When you were talking with my brother, or when you were betraying me with him?”

“He said he’d kill you,” I lie. “I saved you.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And you believed him?”

“Yes.

He stares at me, eternally it seems, as is his way. He tries to tear you down, unnerve you. He wants me to reply again because the silence rattles me, but I do not. I won’t. I stare back at him, and while I can still see how I once saw his sculpted face, gray eyes, and thick, dark hair accented with a widow’s peak as handsome, now all I see is a mask for the devil.

“Take your clothes off,” he orders.

I don’t gasp. I don’t give him a reaction. That’s what he wants, and it’s not like I didn’t know this was where I’d be headed the moment I found myself getting into that car.

But this isn’t about me. This is about saving Sara, and living to kill this man. And the bottom line here is that I’m in a plane, in the air, going who knows where, and no one can rescue me. I have to get through this flight to ensure Neuville doesn’t survive this night—if it’s even the same night. I don’t know how long I’ve been out. I don’t know how long we’ve been in the air. And if I refuse his order, he’ll enjoy making me do it. I’m not giving him that satisfaction. I take off my boots, cautious to keep the money and credit cards from his view. Those credit cards might be the only way I have to tell Kayden where I am.