His Passion (2 page)

I let it devour me.

I pulled Leila back against my chest, our bodies sticky with exhaustion and sex. The plane hit slight turbulence, shaking everything in the room that wasn't bolted down, including us. It reminded me that there was a world outside of Me and Leila. And Cole existed in that world.

And his sister.

I let out a rumbling sigh as I inhaled the warm scent of her hair, trying to hold onto the last few seconds before we had to go back to the drama. “I need you to tell me that I'm not making a mistake.”

She looked up at me quizzically and I knew that she was still in the haze of us. Her eyes darkened to coal when the weight of my question hit her. She tried to shake off the darkness with a smile, but I still saw the shards of it before she nuzzled against me.

“You're doing the right thing. Doing the right thing is never a mistake.”

I almost asked her to repeat it. To say it over and over again until I believed it.

Until she believed it.

W
e were standing in front of the Eiffel Tower—and my wife was staring at me.

Staring was being generous. Let's just say she was looking at me in a manner that made me understand why Cole fidgeted under my glare.

I changed tactics quickly, gesturing around us. “It's beautiful here. We should grab some passerby to snap the obligatory tourist photo. Or you could do some sightseeing? Shopping?” I tried exasperation. “C'mon, Leila. After Dublin, and with everything going on, you deserve a day of something good. Something happy.”

She crossed her arms and rooted herself in place. “Nice try. If you expect me to traipse about and snap pictures and think up cool hashtags for Instagram while you're going to talk to some crime lord dude, you don't know me very well.”

But I
did
know her. I knew it was hopeless, but there was a tiny part of me that stupidly thought she'd listen to me. “Leila, what if it's unsafe?”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “If this is you trying to convince me to let you go alone-”

“I won't be alone. I'll have Cole.” I shook out my shoulders after saying that, the statement making my skin crawl.

“The little shimmy you just did is not helping your case.” Leila pointed at me, eyebrows raised as she gave me a quick once over. “You can't even say his name without looking like you're about to step into the ring. How can I trust that he has your back? The only way I'll know that you're safe is if I'm at your side.”

The look she was giving me was dangerous enough to kill but I still took her in my arms. The angry lines of her body took two whole minutes to relent.

“Hugs aren't going to change my mind, Jacob. The Eiffel Tower isn't going anywhere. I'm going.”

I hoped she'd at least steal a picture before we embarked on our ill conceived mission, but she marched right past me, zeroing in on a pacing Cole. His face instantly changed from impatient to relieved.

His mission (which by default became my mission since my wife was tagging along) was to go to Brittany's hotel. Her boyfriend would be waiting there with more information on the men who snatched the blonde psychopath. I'd taken to calling Brittany that since we landed and I wasn't too proud to admit that Cole's jaw twitching every time I said it brought me pleasure. It distracted me from an unsettling truth: I was in Paris, willingly mixing my wife and I in some seedy underground world for a girl that would have slit Leila's throat if she didn't get her payday.

Clearly, Brittany wasn't the only one that was crazy.

I opened the door of the Navigator and Leila climbed inside. I caught my brother still shaking his head, probably muttering the next few lines of his ongoing protest against using a driver. He thought it would be more discreet if we handled our business discreetly instead of slogging through the streets of Paris like a celebrity. Besides the fact that we hadn't seen a paparazzo yet and our ball cap disguises were working wonders, I believed that driving in and portraying wealth and power to a smarmy crime lord would speak volumes. What was the alternative? Scoping out the property and sneaking in the back door like some popcorn action film?

I tossed him a glare that made him swallow his tongue. I handed the driver the address.

The city zipped past but Leila was just picking at her nail. When she winced, I dropped my gaze to her lap and gaped in horror. Why hadn't I noticed before now? The nail was a ragged thing, red and brutal from her biting and picking. What was left looked frail and painful.

“Leila...” My own fingers ached just looking at the wound. My heart followed suit. I wanted her to lie to me. To tell me it didn't hurt as badly as it had to. I needed her to tell me she was alright, and after this quick sit down we'd put this mess behind us for good.

But there was only truth reflected in her eyes. There was determination there, the same iron strength she'd shown when Cole and I told her she should stay back at the hotel. She'd looked disgusted when I'd listed off the five star spa and the fact that our suite was the entire floor of the building with an incredible view. When that just earned me an eye roll, I'd tried a visit to the Eiffel Tower and she still didn't budge.

Yet that strength didn't mean that she wasn't afraid. I saw it shining beneath the determination. The fact that there was no way I could run the shadows from her eyes, no matter how much I puffed out my chest or how many armed men I put around her humbled me. Not all aches could be healed by words. Or money. Or even love. In her eyes I saw that she was just as afraid of Brittany as she was of some faceless criminal.

I interlaced our fingers and brought her knuckles to my lips.

A smile ghosted across her face before she turned back to Cole. “I need to know that your plan doesn't involve anything crazy like busting in, guns blazing.”

I'd never seen anyone look more incredulous in my life.

“I'm not sure what impression I've given you, but I'm going to use any and all means to find my sister,” Cole spat. “If that offends your delicate sensibilities, I suggest a day in the spa or you can stay in the car.”

I jerked backward, ready to get in his face but Leila placed a hand on my chest, looking Cole dead on. My wife, my warrior woman—she didn't need me to fight her battles.

“Make no mistake—I'm not here to hold anybody's hand. I understand the gravity of this situation.
You
need to understand that I'm just trying to ensure your sister gets out of this mess safe and sound.” She narrowed her gaze, her voice darkening. “And I hope you understand the gravity of
that
. After what she did, I owe her nothing. But I'm not here for a suicide or revenge mission. And if you think raining bullets is going to get your sister back, you're not just playing fast and loose with her life, but my life too. And Jacob's life. And your own. And that's just dumb and selfish.”

Cole sat back and grunted an apology, peevishly looking down at his phone.

“I'm sorry-” I growled at him. “She didn't catch that.”

“Oh, I'm good,” Leila turned back to the front, her chin up and her expression cool and nonplussed. “I know he's sorry.”

I smiled to myself as I settled in my seat, stroking her knee. I almost stroked her thigh...and a little farther up. There was nothing sexier than my wife kicking ass and taking names.

She gave me a tight smile that told me the last thing she was in the mood for was anything more than my support. She was preparing herself for the worst and the closer we pulled to Luxe Hotel, the harder it became to pretend this was going to be as simple as getting a location, picking up the girl, and hopping back on the plane. There was nothing simple about this situation. From the start, there were a million ways things could go to hell and at every turn, that's exactly where we ended up.

There was one key difference now. We were together, Leila and I. There were no secrets.

Unfortunately, that realization did nothing to make the ride any more tolerable. The tension in the car was heavy enough to cut with a knife and when we parked at the curb in front of Luxe, we slid out one by one. We stood in front of the marble staircase that ascended to the entrance. The bellhop pounced on our luggage and the manager quaintly welcomed us in French, following it with a translation and a bottle of champagne.

I wasn't surprised that this was where Brittany ended up. It was the kind of place people went to be seen and throw away a lot of money, just for the privilege of saying they could do just that. We were whisked through the lobby, eyes perking in our direction, double taking as I pulled down the rim of my cap and Leila tugged at her own.

We filed into the elevator, the manager droning on about the celebrity clientele that had called their 'humble little property' home. “Just last month we had the pleasure of the Carters.” She turned back to look at us, to make sure we were hip enough to know who she was talking about. Leila and I gave her a nod of acknowledgement. Cole just gave her a look that said he couldn't care less if the President stayed here.

She mistook his silence as a need for clarification. She ran a hand through her cropped blonde hair and leaned in like she was explaining something massively important to someone that had been living under a rock. “That's Beyoncé and-”

“Can this thing move any quicker?” he snapped, punching the button angrily. “And I don't care about your star clientele.”

The woman looked positively insulted, but she played it off with a little cough and turned back to the front, grumbling an apology.

The doors slid open and Cole flew out of the elevator, leaving the rest of us exchanging looks. The manager looked like she was ready to cry. Surely if she was used to celebrities she was used to worst, but I gave her a sympathetic smile nonetheless and apologized for my brother. “We can take it from here. Thank you.”

She stammered out a goodbye and Leila and I stepped into the hallway, our eyes shooting toward the sound of a scuffle a few feet away.

“Oh my God,” Leila muttered, releasing my hand.

Cole had some man dangling in the air like a rag doll.

I started after him with a sigh, coming to a hard stop when I remembered Leila. I squared my jaw but she held up a hand before I could even get it out.

“Don't waste your breath. I’m not staying here. And from the look of things, the guy who's supposed to be telling us where Brittany is doesn't have very many left.”

I put aside the alpha part of me that wanted to keep her out of harm's way. That just wanted her to do what I said—but there was a difference between her submission behind closed doors and obedience. I didn't marry a woman who just obeyed. I married a woman that submitted on her terms and gave me a piece of her mind when I forgot the difference.

When we got closer, I realized Cole wasn't holding him by his collar...he had the lanky guy up against the wall by his throat. I stopped Leila from approaching and when I gave her a look, that I wouldn't put her in danger when my brother clearly wasn't in a rational frame of mind, she stayed behind me.

“Let him go, Cole,” I commanded.

“Me and Frederic are just getting acquainted,” Cole said, his voice disturbingly calm as he squeezed tighter. The guy was clearly half Cole's size, a pale and gangly kid that couldn't be older than eighteen or nineteen. From the way he shook, eking out broken French and the word 'please', it was a clear a simple, 'Where is my sister?' would have made him spill his guts.

“How can he answer if he passes out or you snap his neck?” I tried to reason with him.

Cole glanced back at me, a look of confusion rippling across his face as he frowned, like he hadn't even considered that. He released Frederic and the kid crumpled to the floor in a gasping, coughing heap.

“Where is my sister, Frederic? What happened?”

When Cole knelt beside him, he scrambled backward. Every feature on his face seemed pinched and terrified.

This was Brittany's boyfriend? She seemed so cold and calculating that anyone that seemed weak or vulnerable would barely last five seconds in her presence.

Sweat plastered his inky black hair to his face, his blue eyes bulging out of the sockets. “Everything was fine. We were happy. I was going to...going to ask her to marry-” His face scrunched as he pulled himself to his knees, slouching against the wall. “I couldn't stop them. I couldn't save her.”

A hollow ache in my chest made me feel for him. I knew that helplessness.

Cole rose to his feet, showing no mercy. No emotion. He repeated his question, unblinking. “What happened to my sister?”

“Men burst into our flat,” Frederic sputtered. He balled a fist and slammed it into the wall. Finally showing something other than sadness. The time for tears had passed. It was tie for anger. “They had guns and they said that someone had paid for her. That she had some debt that she owed someone important.” The broken shell was glued back together instantly as he pulled himself from the wall and fixed his glare on Cole. “You don't have to beat the name out of me or pummel me for losing her. There's nothing that you can do to me that I haven't done to myself ten times over. There was nothing I could have done except eat a bullet, and then I wouldn't be here to tell you that she was taken.”

Cole let out a sound that told me the bullet could still be arranged. “Who has her, Frederic?”

“A man that knows how to make people disappear.” He swallowed, like he knew saying the name was the end. That there was no hope. “Lars Eichmann took her.”

A
five second Google search of 'Lars Eichmann' shut down any further involvement of my wife in the retrieval of Cole's sister. The webpage was filled with gruesome tales of female tourists and locals alike drugged, knocked unconscious, or pulled off the street in broad daylight and sold into sex slavery. Many had crossed the wrong person and a wire transfer was all that was required to make these women disappear, bound for a life that made my heart ache, my stomach turn, and my fists ache to dole out pain to everyone from Lars to the disgusting men who frequented his brothels. But for some, there was only one determining factor in their abduction: they were female.