LUCIEN

 

IT TAKES ME several days of grueling rehabilitation with a therapist, who has taken up temporary  residency on the island, until I'm able to walk with only a slight limp with the assistance of a cane.

Jax assures me I'll be able to return to normal — or my version of normal he had quipped — with a lot of therapy and hard work.

But right now I don't give a fuck about my physical condition or returning back to the way I was.  The only thing I want right now is Adeline.  And every second that passes by where she's not in my arms is another second wasted and spent in agony.

I have my best men out there searching for any possible clues, and I'm paying a lot of money to learn of Adeline's whereabouts.  But so far everyone and everything is coming up empty handed.

I don't even know if she's still alive at this point.  It's as if she disappeared off the face of the fucking planet.

But I refuse to give up.  I will do everything in my power to find her again, no matter what it takes.  I won't be able to rest until she's safe and by my side where she fucking belongs.

It's late one night when Jackson comes into my office to do our daily ritual of cleaning and bandaging my shoulder.  He's out of breath and his face is flushed, and I can't help but grin at his appearance.  Over the past few days, the romance blossoming between him and Katya has been hilarious and tragic all at the same time.

Jackson pursues, and Katya runs.  They really are playing quite the little cat and mouse game, but I'm beginning to think that Katya doesn't quite know all the rules.

She refuses Jax's advances at first…but she always gives in, as if she can't get enough of him.

I haven't been watching much, since voyeurism is more Jax's thing than mine, but I've seen them screwing on almost every surface in this goddamn place on the video feeds.

Maria has been working triple time to clean up after the young couple who can't seem to keep their hands off of each other.

"Trouble in paradise?" I ask Jax with a smirk.

"Fuck.  That woman is going to be the death of me, I swear!" Jax exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air exasperatedly.  "She's so fucking infuriating and so stubborn and so…so…damn hot!" he groans, sliding his hands down his face.

I can't help but chuckle.  It's good to see Jackson interested in a woman…who isn't involved with someone else.  His voyeur ways have kept him from getting close to women, but I don't know if he ever realized that or not.

Jackson didn't have the same tragic upbringing that I did, but he did suffer his own losses.  And part of me can't help but wonder if my joining of his small family somehow warped his view of the world.  I certainly hope that's not the case, however.

Jax's mother up and left him and his father when he was a little boy, so I'm sure that did a lot of emotional damage to him.  I wouldn't know anything about that.  Because if my mother would have left when I was a kid, it would have been the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

After washing his hands and gathering the medical supplies he needs from the adjoining bathroom, Jax sits in a chair beside me and gingerly starts to unwrap the bandage around my right shoulder.

Gritting my teeth, I close my eyes and breathe deeply through my nose.  It's tender to the touch and hurts like an absolute bitch at times, but I've survived much worse.  I can most definitely survive this.

Jax has been playing doctor for the past week, dressing my wounds and pumping me full of painkillers and antibiotics while I've been recuperating and ignoring his requests to take it easy.

"You're going to have one hell of a battle wound to show off to all the ladies," he jokes.

"Sure.  Just add it to my collection," I say pensively.

"You're damn lucky, you know.  Clean in-and-out wounds.  Fractured clavicle and some soft tissue damage in your shoulder…only minor nerve and tissue damage in your thigh.  A millimeter to the right or to the left and you wouldn't even be here talking to me right now."

"Remind me to thank Giovanni when I see him for his shooting skills and ability to minimally maim his victims," I say sarcastically.

"I'm serious, Luc," he says angrily.  "This could have ended very badly.  You were very fucking fortunate," he says.

Our eyes meet for a second, the tension between us pulled tight like a violin string.  He breaks the stare first, turning his attention back to my shoulder.

"I'll feel even luckier when I get Adeline back," I tell him, hissing loudly when he cleans out the hole in my upper chest with some type of solution.

"We need to keep this extremely clean.  I'm sure you'll have no problem understanding and doing just that."

"Of course," I say with an eye roll.  My brain has been so focused on getting Adeline back that I haven't even had time to focus on much else, let alone the pain in my body and what happened to me.  I can worry about getting better and healing once I'm sure she's safe and sound.

"How's your thigh doing?"

"Fine," I tell him with a huff.  The gunshot wound in my thigh is not nearly as bad except for the nerve damage, and so I've been attending to that myself.  There's only so much a man can take when he's in pain and pissed off at the world.  And having Jax so close to my junk every day was beginning to grate on my goddamn nerves.

After Jax is done cleaning and bandaging my shoulder, he discards his used supplies and heads to the bathroom to put everything away.  "So…any news?" he asks as he walks back into the room and sinks down into a leather chair.  He looks positively exhausted, but I'm not even going to venture to ask him why.  I can easily guess.  Besides, I've already seen the video proof of his restless nights with Katya, unfortunately.

"Nothing," I tell him, and I don't even try to hide the despondent tone of my voice.  I'm at my wit's end and on the verge of desperation.  A big part of me wants to go to America to try to find her, but Adeline is one tiny needle in a huge fucking haystack.  And I can accomplish more here with my makeshift command center with my computers tracking every piece of information I have and everything my hired men send in.

But as days go by, I grow more and more anxious and depressed and doubt that I'll ever hold her in my arms again.

Growling in frustration, I throw the folder with all of my gathered intel, which amounted to a big pile of nothing, against the wall.  The folder explodes, papers scattering and floating to the floor.

I rake in the mess with my eyes, and it puts me even more on edge.  My hands ball into fists, and my body trembles with anxiety.  "I don't know what else to do, Jax," I tell him, desperation lacing my voice.  "I don't know how much longer I can go on without knowing what happened to her, where she is and if she's all right."

"The watch is still a dead end?" he asks.

I nod solemnly.  I've tried everything to get every ounce of data out of that damn thing, and all it shows is Adeline returning to New York.  And then nothing.  She either took it off…or it was taken from her.

Either way, without body heat, the goddamn thing won't continue to run.  And I curse myself for designing it that way and for not installing some kind of emergency battery.  It was a simple oversight on my part.

And it might have cost me the love of my life.