Both of the officers whirled around with the intent to restrain Shea, but I was quicker, the need to protect her spurring me into action.
I caught her by the waist, my voice straining with the demand, because God knew I wanted to charge every bit as badly as she did. “Shea, no. You’re going to make it worse.”
She kicked wild legs into the air as I held her back against my chest. She clawed at my arms locked around her, struggling to break free, screaming at Jennings, “You bastard! You bastard! How could you do this? How could you?”
My mind reeled.
Martin Jennings.
Shea knew him.
She knew him.
It made no fucking sense.
My hold increased when he smirked across at us from over the top of the car. But it was like he didn’t see her at all, like he didn’t care he was stealing Shea’s daughter, that pretentious pride and arrogance cast fully on me.
“You were warned you’d regret fucking with me.”
Dread throbbed through my veins as awareness threatened to take hold.
Claribel Sanchez opened the opposite rear door of the Mercedes, trying to wrangle a thrashing Kallie into the car seat already secured in the back.
Kallie was terrified, crying again and again, “I want my mommy…I want my mommy!”
Shea screamed through the tears bottling up her throat. “You bastard, I will kill you…I will kill you.”
Jennings chuckled. “Oh, it’s so very nice to see you again, Delaney Rhoads. I can see how much you missed me.”
Delaney Rhoads.
Erratic, the world crashed down around me as that name penetrated.
It was only a vague memory from about five years ago.
That rising country star surrounded by scandal and the way the young girl had just dropped out of sight. The uproar and rumors surrounding it, because she’d disappeared in almost the same breath as her first album hit the top of the charts.
I’d had enough scandal in my own life that I’d paid little attention, giving little regard to nonsense that was happening in Tennessee.
Of course, Tennessee was where the bastard had discovered Sunder in that shitty bar about six months later.
Oh God.
Kallie’s father. He wasn’t dead. She was his…he was… Fuck. The man I despised more than anyone else on this earth.
I’d always been terrified I would break Shea.
I was wrong.
It was Shea who was going to break me.
She kicked her legs, still waging her own futile war, the one that demanded she do whatever it took to protect her daughter.
But there was no question the battle fought tonight was lost.
Torment flooded us.
Rising at our feet.
Climbing our bodies.
Waves riding up over our heads.
Drowning.
Drowning.
Drowning.
Claribel Sanchez closed the door, cutting off the sight of Kallie.
Shea wailed, “Kallie…Kallie!”
Martin Jennings tossed a cocky grin my direction before he slipped into the back seat beside the little girl I wanted to call my own.
The little girl who’d breezed through me like the calmest whirlwind, slowly staking claim until she’d taken every inch of me.
The car pulled from the curb and drove into the night.
Shea leaned her head back and released a blood-curdling cry into the air.
A clap of thunder deafened our ears.
Agony.
Agony.
Agony.
And I held her, vowing in her ear, “We will get her back. I promise you, we will get her back.”
This girl who’d lied to me. The one I didn’t even know.
Sebastian and Shea’s story continues in Drowning to Breathe, June 22, 2015
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