Cash took the elevator up to Ella’s floor. His heart had started to pound when he walked into the lobby. This place was for rich people, not people like him. Ella was not only rich, she was also royal. What the hell would she want him in her life for?

Still, he was determined to see this through. If she told him to get out when he stood in front of her again, well, he’d know, wouldn’t he? He’d know he’d been right all along and that her love for him had been a scam.

He more than half expected her to kick him out. Ella was young, inexperienced, and there was no way she’d be satisfied with a man like him for the rest of her life. She only thought she was in love. Probably, in the past five days, she’d realized she’d only been infatuated. She had a new bodyguard now, a guy with all the same basic equipment Cash had—maybe he was warming Ella’s bed and making her body sing every night now.

The thought was an acid bath to Cash’s stomach. He didn’t want anyone else touching Ella. The idea of it made him want to smash something.

He reached her floor and headed down the hallway. Before he got to her door, however, some instinct he’d honed over years as a SEAL ghosted through him. He drew his weapon. A moment later, her hotel door loomed ahead, a slice of light coming through the cracked opening. Cash charged, sweeping the gun around him as he went.

He flattened himself against the wall and waited. What he really wanted was to kick the door open, but he told himself to be calm. To assess the space first. He spent a few seconds peering inside, shifting his angle until he made out a hand. A male hand.

Fuck.

He kicked the door open and burst into the room, sweeping it with the weapon as he moved quickly through the suite.

There was no Ella. Her bodyguard lay on the floor, a room service cart upended beside him. Blood spilled in a puddle around his body.

Cash returned and stooped to check the guy’s pulse. It was there, but thready. He dialed 911 as he ripped the tablecloth from the cart wreckage and went to work trying to stabilize the man on the floor. Once he’d stanched the blood flow, he dialed Hawk.

“Hunter,” the former HOT sniper said.

“Got a situation here,” Cash replied. Then he reported in rapid succession what he’d found and what the status of Hawk’s man was.

“Be right there. Don’t move.”

Cash let his gaze slide over the room, looking for anything he might have missed. Panic clamored on the other side of the walls he’d erected, trying to get through and rattle his calm.

Where was Ella?

Who had her?

Was she still alive?

The paramedics arrived, along with hotel security, and went to work. Security peppered Cash with annoying questions that weren’t going to help find Ella. By the time Hawk arrived, his man was being wheeled out. Hawk burst inside, looking like a thundercloud.

“Where’s Robert?” he asked.

Cash blinked. “Robert?” Hawk couldn’t mean the man on the gurney because he’d seen his face and would have known who it was. “That guy was the only one I found. Are you telling me there was another?”

Hawk nodded. “I had a two-man team on her. Fuck!”

Cash was trying to stay numb. Trying to stay cool. “Think he did this?”

Hawk looked furious. “Maybe. I hope to hell not.” Hawk swore again. “All my guys undergo rigorous background checks.”

About that time, a man rushed through the door, looking a bit wild-eyed as he surveyed the scene. He wore dark jeans and a button-down shirt. There was a holster on his belt with a Glock tucked inside.

“What happened?” he asked.

“You tell me, man,” Hawk said, his jaw clenched. “Where the fuck did you go? Two-man team at all times,” he finished, his voice hard and unforgiving.

“I—” The guy, whom Cash could only assume was Robert, swallowed. “My wife’s cheating on me,” he said. “I got a text that she was headed for a hotel with her lover. I went to get evidence.”

Hawk exploded. “You never fucking leave a mission until it’s over. Jesus Christ, Robert, you know that. You were a Ranger.”

“She threatened to take my kids,” Robert yelled back. “I can’t let that happen.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to follow her around now. You’re fired,” Hawk ground out.

Cash wanted to go medieval on the guy’s ass, but there were more important things to worry about.

“Fuck him,” Cash said to Hawk. “We have to find Ella.”

Hawk nodded, his eyes still flashing with anger. “We’ll start with the security footage. I’ll get my team on it.”

Cash started for the door.

“Where are you going?” Hawk asked.

Cash turned back to him. “HQ. I need to get my team—and prepare for a mission.”

---

Ella managed to stay cool—in spite of the man with the gun, in spite of the hood over her head, in spite of the fact she’d seen Ben sprawled on the floor and clutching a gunshot wound.

But the minute she realized she was inside a plane was the minute her cool evaporated. The plane sped down the runway and then lifted into the air. A few minutes later, the hood was yanked from her face. Her hair covered her eyes, but she blew it away until she could see.

Aunt Flavia stood there with a sour look on her haughty face, her arms crossed, anger evident in every tense muscle of her body.

“You little bitch,” she hissed. “How dare you think you can steal from us! After everything we did for you. After we raised you as our own and tried to give you a good life.”

Hot outrage bubbled inside her. “I did not steal anything from you—you stole from me!”

Ella didn’t see her aunt’s hand dart out until it was too late. The slap across her face knocked her head to the side. Her bones rattled and a throbbing began in her left temple. Her hair was in her face again, but this time she didn’t get a chance to blow it away.

Her aunt slapped her from the other side and then grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked hard until Ella saw stars.

“Ungrateful, evil little bitch,” her aunt spat out. “You don’t deserve the Rossi name. You never have. That horrendous mother of yours—” Aunt Flavia gave up trying to speak and made angry noises instead.

“Leave her alone, Flavia,” Uncle Gaetano said. “If you damage the goods, Fahd will be angry.”

Flavia let go and gave Ella’s shoulder a shove. Since she was strapped into her seat, she didn’t fall. If she’d been standing, she probably would have. But that was nothing compared to the horror that filled her at what her uncle had said. At whose name he’d said.

“Sheikh Fahd? He still wants to marry me?”

Aunt Flavia snarled. “No thanks to you, you little slut. Yes, he’ll still take you—though he won’t pay as much as he would have before that stunt you pulled.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s not up to you to understand. It’s up to you to do your duty!”

Anger and outrage still had Ella in their grip. And since her uncle had told her aunt not to hit her again, she didn’t guard her tongue.

“You know you can’t touch the vast majority of the Rossi money. It’s not yours at all. It’s mine.”

Uncle Gaetano threw her a bored look while Aunt Flavia turned redder by the minute.

“You will sign it over,” Uncle Gaetano said. “And you will do so happily.”

“I won’t.”

“Oh, I think you will. If you wish to remain alive, that is. Because upon your death, dear niece, the money passes to the next heir. That would be me.”

Ella blinked as fear tightened her throat. “Then why not kill me and be done with it?”

“We thought of it,” her uncle said. “But the money stays in trust for the next five years if you die. It will eventually come to me. If you sign the money over, it will come much sooner.”

“And if I’d rather die?” she threw at him.

He uncrossed his legs and recrossed them the other way. So casual. So unconcerned. “Don’t be melodramatic, Antonella. Alive is always better than dead. And you will be a queen, which you will never be in Capriolo. The monarchy is dead there, even with that silly band of monarchists who want to bring it back. The people have spoken, and they will not return to those days. So die if you wish and make this inconvenient for us—or marry Fahd and be his queen. You will be wealthy and pampered and live out your days as a royal. Much better than tawdry sex in a tiny apartment with a soldier, don’t you think?”

“And what if I agree to sign it over if you let me go? Just let me be free and you can have everything.” She meant it too. Because freedom was far more important than a fortune. Freedom to be herself, to choose her life. To choose whom she loved. “I’ll get a job, renounce my title and fortune. I don’t care. Whatever you like—only don’t do this to me. Don’t sell me to a man I don’t love.”

“I am afraid that won’t do, Antonella,” her uncle said. “You will always be Princess Antonella of Capriolo. You will always be the queen in exile if you stay in the US. And how would it look if your aunt and I are rich and you are poor and living with a soldier? Or, worse, getting a job?” He shook his head. “No, it’s better this way. You will thank us one day for looking out for your best interests.”

Ella very much doubted that. Her uncle accepted a drink from a flight attendant who carefully avoided looking at Ella. Her aunt joined him and took her own drink from the tray.

Ella glanced around. The jet was opulent, with gleaming gold surfaces and leather couches and chairs. There was a pattern in the carpet that she tilted her head to study.

Qu’rimi Oil Exploration was written around the medallion that featured a hawk and crossed palm trees. There was also a curved sword and words written in what she assumed was Arabic across the bottom.

Sheikh Fahd. Of course they were in his jet. Of course he was still involved.

She thought of the man who insisted his hooded raptor accompany him everywhere he went and knew that a man like that would not take any insults to his person lightly. And he had certainly taken her flight as an insult.

Which meant, even if he was planning to marry her, he intended to punish her as well.

Ella shivered. She had no idea what a desert sheikh might do in order to assuage his wounded pride, but she didn’t look forward to finding out.