Beautiful Nightmare (Dark Dream 2)

Thankfully, the bullet wound to my upper chest was artificial, because when I bent to pick Carter up in a fireman’s carry over my healthy shoulder, he was heavy as fuck.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Bryant ordered imperiously as if he reclined on a throne and not the ground over a growing pool of his own blood.

“I never could resist a good dare,” I told him with a smirk that was strained with pain.

Using everything in me, I straightened and carefully strode away from the only father I’d ever known as he growled after me. Once, it might have hurt to know he was more upset about me abducting Carter than about shooting me or losing me forever, but now, the only sadness it brought was the truth.

I’d responded with violence for so long, I’d forgotten the language of love. It took losing Bianca and, potentially Brandon, to realize that maybe I wasn’t too old to learn it again. Maybe I wasn’t too dead inside to want to try.

2

TIERNAN

It was a bitch opening the grand, heavy doors of Lion Court. Carter had woken up during the drive. He’d accepted a cursory explanation of the events that happened while he was passed out. He didn’t seem particularly shocked, which said a lot for the Morelli ethos. Then he went on to take a call from his mysterious employers in London. I had no idea why a scientific researcher needed high-end encryption on his phone… and I didn’t want to know. The Morelli family had enough shit to deal with without Carter’s brand of hyperintelligent trouble.

He was busy, which was fine by me. I wasn’t in the mood to answer questions or ask them in a way that would compel him to answer.

I needed a drink, but I wouldn’t have one. Ever since I lost Grace to a poisonous cocktail of booze and drugs, I’d abstained from both. But fuck me, I could have used them for the insistent, throbbing pain in my shoulder.

Instead, I led my brother up the wet steps through the rain and into my sanctuary, a place he hadn’t seen since it was owned by our maternal grandparents. Of all my siblings, they’d left their estate to me. It surprised some people, but then again, Zelda and Eamon McTiernan had always been collectors of broken relics and banned art. They saw things in the unused and unwanted that other people often missed.

They saw something in me. I didn’t know what the fuck it was, but a tiny part of me wondered if Bianca had seen it too.

The moment the door creaked open, Walcott appeared at the mouth of the hallway leading back to the kitchen. He took one look at me, turned on his heel and disappeared back down the hall calling to Henrik as he did.

Carter went to a fainting couch and dropped into it.

I ignored him as Ezra appeared at the top of the stairs. He noticed the blood saturating my white shirt and immediately pulled out a gun.

“Christ,” Carter muttered.

When Ezra’s dark gaze rose to mine, I wearily lifted my blood-stained hands and signed.

Things didn’t go as planned.

His brows cut lines into his forehead. He carefully holstered his gun long enough to sign, No shit.

“Where is Bianca?” Henrik asked as he entered the foyer behind Walcott carrying a First Aid kit.

It should have irritated me that he asked after her first. He was my employee. My friend. My…family. And maybe, four hours ago, it would have. Now, it only sent a dull echo through my empty chest like a shout in a haunted house.

Before I could answer, Walcott was dragging a chair over to me and pushing me none-to-gently onto it. “Tell me you didn’t go through with your stupid plan.”

“It was a good plan,” I argued mulishly while Henrik bent to peer at my wound. Carter threw himself on an antique fainting couch, looking bored. “Until Bryant shot it all to hell.”

“He has a way of doing that to you,” Walcott agreed, but his mottled face was creased deeply with concern. “What happened, T?”

I sighed so heavily, it hurt my injury like a bitch. “I fucked up.”

“Well, acceptance is half the battle,” Walcott quipped as Henrik started to cut my soaked blazer and button up from my body.

“Not this time,” I rested my head against the antique headrest of the fucking uncomfortable Queen Anne chair and closed my eyes. “Bianca’s gone.”

“Where?” Henrik asked.

“I…” No matter how hard I squeezed my lids shut, the sight of Bianca’s shocked, broken expression was embedded in my mind. “I don’t know.” I signed his name. “Ezra?”

Without opening my eyes, I could tell by the tread of his heavy gait that Ezra was leaving the room to find out where exactly Bianca had run away to. Henrik was the tec wizard, but Ezra would find her.