Chasing Paradise (Chasing 3)

“What the bloody hell are you on about? Sienna is okay! She’s around this party somewhere!” I yelled into my phone, pulling my hair out as I looked around for Sienna.

“She f**king isn’t! Her conservator just emailed me expressing concern that she changed her will. She’s going to donate everything to orphaned children. She just faxed it an hour and half ago. Sienna hung up on me an hour after. Now her phone is shut off.” Kyle sounded like he was breathing heavily. “She told me she missed her father.”

Nothing was making sense. “And?” I grated out as I marched towards the entrance, my mind running through a million things as I tried to figure things out.

“The last time she told me that, she attempted to kill herself. That was when she was ten-years-old.”

The words felt like boulders sitting atop my chest, I needed to get to Sienna. “I’m going to her now. I’ll have her call you.” I cut the call immediately, almost running, looking for her.

When I found Edward, the head of the security team, he informed me that they hadn’t seen Sienna in a while, and I was ready to kill the bastard. “How can you be a security detail if you do not know where my fiancée is?” When he didn’t utter a damn word, I held him by the collar, pushing him against the bloody vehicle. “You better get your arse moving and get all the needed information before I have you all killed. You’re incompetence is a disgrace!”

My relief was evident when one of the waiters came to me and asked if I was looking for a crying, beautiful woman. He described her in great detail before he told me that he had overheard her tell her driver that she was going to head to the airport. Barely thanking the man, I barked at Edward and his team to get me to the airport. The information about Sienna having left with the jet made me feel dreadful.

Sienna was crying. Why? Did our tiny fight drive her to leave the party? Why didn’t she come to me? I had so many questions… but most of all, what Kyle had told me earlier played havoc in my mind. Sienna couldn’t possibly be capable of hurting herself. I knew that… but did I really? Bloody f**k. Fuck. Fuck!

The jet arrived ten minutes after we did. It was barely on the tarmac before I was striding toward it, ready to head out to Marbella. I was already running through the list of what would be needed for a search party; helicopters, people to search the grounds and the beach.

That hour flight was the worst ride of my life. Images of Sienna dead somewhere kept resurfacing in my mind. The guilt that was eating me alive was what I deserved. I shouldn’t have let us be driven so far apart.

She had tried to talk to me, but I had been closed off because what she had been telling me was truly hurting me inside and I hated feeling that way, so I brushed it off; brushed her off.

It was childish and petty now that I thought of it. I hadn’t understood then that Sienna was going through something much more profound than what I’d anticipated. It rooted to her past. A past that she feared—a part that she continued to deal with every time it caused her to gasp for air when it seized her dreams—turning them into nightmares.

I was a rotten bastard.

I deserved wrath for all of my misgivings.

The ride from the airstrip to the villa flashed before me. Fear truly became me as I silently prayed for her safety. For the first time, I called on my mother and father’s spirits, hoping they could provide some assistance. I wasn’t one who believed in any of those things, however at that point, I was ready to holler to God along with all the Roman and Greek gods for assistance; anything to let me find Sienna safe.

The villa was dark when we got there. The staff had left right before dinner and the kitchen crew had left immediately after, so it didn’t surprise me that the entire place was deserted, yet the gnawing in my stomach deepened, indicating that something wasn’t right.

I ran upstairs as the security team of five scanned the area. “Sienna! Are you in here?” I yelled out, hoping I could hear her somewhere within the villa, but the heavy down pour of rain was too loud and too distracting to hear much. After ten minutes and no Sienna, I marched downstairs and into my office.

I pushed the settings to reprint the fax messages received in the last couple of hours, hoping that what Kyle had said was wrong, but after the third message was printed out, I became drained of that hope.

Everything seemed so… premeditated. Sienna intended to die tonight, or soon anyway. No one changed their will that quickly unless something was up…

Dumbfounded, my hand shook as I placed the copy of her revised will on the desk and then I heard the team relaying updates in their headsets. “Sir, I think they’ve spotted her…” he nervously said. The guy’s name left me completely as I waited for him to continue. “She’s in the water.”

In the water… floating? The voice in my head added to my torment. “Where? Damn you, tell me where!”

The man barely finished giving me the details before I rushed out of the villa and onto the beach. Sienna had apparently walked a mile away, out where the water was dangerous, the tide volatile with a ‘no swimming’ zone attached to it. The rain was relentless, but I could barely feel it because I was so wired with fright, my only thought was getting my woman to safety.

Never in my life had I run like I was running now; as though to save the world from its doom. When I finally reached the large boulders, I understood why it was not a safe place to swim. The river connected with the sea, making the currents fierce and hard to swim through. It could easily drag even the strongest swimmer down.

My eyes scanned through the heavy pour of the rain, seeing nothing out in the sea. “Sienna!” I called out, slowly walking further before I pulled my shoes off just as I spotted something red in the water. I squinted at the object and saw that it was her, her head barely making it to the surface. It was then that I noticed that she was trying to keep herself afloat.

She was alive and seemed to want to stay that way. Thank the f**king gods!

“Sienna!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, marching into the water towards her. When she didn’t turn around, I grunted and desperately called out again.

This time, she did hear me. Sienna barely moved her head to the side as I swam towards her and when I finally reached her side, I held her like she was the most precious thing in the world. I didn’t pause to breathe until I got her to the shore, checking her face to see if she was conscious because she hadn’t said a word to me. Sienna was cold as death, her lips purple and her skin pale as a ghost.