The throbbing in my head painfully announced my returning consciousness. The ache was strong enough to make me feel sick. I tried opening my eyes, but I saw nothing but black. As I slowly regained my senses, I realized that I was tightly blindfolded with some dark piece of fabric. I was sitting on a hard, uncomfortable chair with my hands tied behind the back of the seat and another rope restraining me at my waist. My bare feet were stiff and painful from touching a smooth, cold floor. My whole body felt sore and numb. I wondered how many hours I had been sitting there. I shivered uncontrollably, but I couldn't say if it was because of the low temperature in the place I was in or of my body's exhaustion. My heart pounded, spreading the adrenalin in my veins as the overwhelming fear paralyzed me. Where was I? Was there anyone inside that room, watching me right now? What kind of a sick bastard could have kidnapped me and why? Was it because of Aren? The squeaking sound of the door ope

I woke up in a hospital bed. It must have been early morning since the sun was slowly rising in orange-red. I could see its beautiful colors getting inside through the window. When I turned my head away from the glow, I noticed that I had an IV drip attached to my arm, and then I saw one more thing... the shreds of my dirtied wedding gown, hanging by the closet behind the metal drip stand. The sight of it squeezed my chest painfully. I spent days dreaming about the moment Aren would see me wearing that amazing gown, and now, it just hung there devastated. "They will pay for what they did." Only then did I see Miranda sitting by the foot of my bed. Her eyes were swollen and red from tears, her jaw clenched. "Miranda..." I muttered, giving her a faint smile. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, swallowing tears. "We shouldn't have left you alone…" "You couldn't have known. It's not your or Monique's fault. You were helping me with the wedding…" I paused as my eyes unknowingly drifted to my wedd

We walked upstairs and stopped at my bedroom door. Aren held my hand in his, his thumbs rubbing my palm teasingly."Good night, Cora," he said, reluctantly.His hand was slipping away as he turned toward his door. Somehow, I felt a wave of anxiety."Wait," I muttered. "Don't go…" My fingers curled on his tips, unwilling to let him leave."Beautiful, we shouldn't." He smiled and kissed my forehead."I don't want to be alone. Just... stay with me." I stared at him with pleading eyes, watching his resistance melt away.He didn't say a word as I led him inside. We lay in my bed in an embrace, caressing each other and leaving trails of soft kisses until we fell asleep. I woke up nuzzling his chest while he lay on his side with one hand on my neck and the other wrapped around my waist. I tried not to wake him up, but I failed as I tried to straighten up a bit."Good morning, sunshine," he mumbled with his sexy, sleepy voice."Good morning, handsome." I climbed a bit to kiss the tip of his n

I was no longer in my seat. I was standing by the window-side of the two-way mirror, anxiously waiting for the outcome of the interrogation. Aren was right beside me, holding my hand. Two other agents, like us, stared through the window, counting the seconds until they heard Callan's confession. Agent Collins grabbed his phone and smirked while going through the information I sent him. He stood that way for a while, knowing that Callan and his lawyer observed his every move and change of expression. Well, if Jack wanted to rob Callan of his smug confidence, then I could see that it was working. "What?" My asshole-of-ex-boyfriend grunted as he couldn't handle the tension. Jack glared at him and stepped closer to his seat, looking down at him. "You didn't go to the Hamptons, Mr. Winton," he said, putting his phone down with his car route displayed on the screen for him and his lawyer to see. "You went to the abandoned warehouse, in the middle of nowhere." He chuckled coldly. "Even so

Callan's phone was locked with a fingerprint. To get any kind of data from the phone, we needed to bypass that lock first. There are many ways to hack into a phone that uses this kind of protection. One of them uses tape to clone the fingerprint, and that was our first method to try. Alan insisted that he would do it himself, claiming that he had done it a few times before... Well, I decided that it would be safer not to ask when he needed to break into someone else's phone that way. Unfortunately, the fingerprint on the scanner had already been smudged, and there was nothing to clone... Since we had no way of getting Callan's fingerprint, we needed to find another way around.One of the simplest methods to bypass the lock is a hard reset, which also wasn't an option. It wouldn't make any sense to get access to a phone with all the data erased. We were left with one other method—we needed to convince the phone that the fingerprint scanner malfunctioned so that the system gave us a way