I’m not giving up on us, Ivan. Please don’t give up on us, either.
She took another step. And another. And…another.
Cera was in the middle of a third labored step when she thought she heard Ivan calling her name.
“Cera!”His frantic voice traveled with the frigid breeze.“Baby, I’m here! Where are you?”
Here, Ivan. I’m right…here.
Her chapped, trembling lips parted to yell back. To let him know where she was, and that she was still alive.
But as Cera fought to make even the tiniest of sounds—as she listened helpless to Ivan’s frantic voice hollering for her to give him direction—she knew Timothy Randall had already won. Cera had already fallen into the snow.
Like a frozen angel waiting to die.
15
“Cera!”Ivan screamed her name again as if his life depended on it. Because it did.
His life. Hers. The life he’d already imagined them sharing together.
“Baby, I’m here!” He tried again. “I’m here, Cera! Where are you?”
His boots became lost beneath the snow’s shimmering crest. His leg muscles burned from his efforts to run through the thick blanket of wet, frozen precipitation.
Cera was all right. Shehadto be. Anything less was unacceptable.
Please, baby. I’m right here. All you have to do is call out for me. I’m right fucking here!
“Cera!” Ivan called out for her again.
Over and over, he continued like that, refusing to even consider giving up. Because she hadn’t. The wrecked van was proof of that.
After coming out of the shower to find Howard Roxbury bleeding and unconscious and Cera gone, Ivan had immediately gone into operator mode. He’d called Declan to inform him of what happened, and once EMS arrived and Roxbury was safe in their hands, Ivan had sprinted to the building’s basement—where the resort’s security mainframe was located.
Having previously been granted full access to the security system, Ivan had hurriedly logged in, finding what he needed in record time.
Thanks to the cameras both inside and out of the suite, it only took minutes to piece together what had taken place inside the suite.
After lying in wait in the floor’s nearby stairwell, Randall had made his way into the room. Knocking Howard Roxbury unconscious, he’d then forced Cera to leave the property with him.
Watching Timothy Randall order her to get behind the wheel of that fucking van—at fuckinggunpoint—had been the scariest moment of Ivan’s life.
Never—not during his time in the Navy, or in any of the life-threatening situations he and Jax had found themselves in since—had Ivaneverfelt as utterly petrified as he had seeing Cera drive away with a madman.
And now…
“Cera!” he called for her again.
And again.
And again.
Until his throat was raw and his hope for finding Cera unharmed, he did everything he could to let the woman he loved know she wasn’t alone.
And Ivandidlove her. More than he ever thought himself capable of loving anyone. But if he didn’t find her soon—
What the…