Novels by Abraham Rechi

Sienna's POVThe first thing I noticed was the steady beep of a monitor. The second was Andrea's hand wrapped around mine so tightly it almost hurt."Sienna." His voice cracked on my name. "Sienna, look at me."I forced my eyes open to fluorescent light and the sterile white of a hospital room. My head throbbed. An IV line ran from the back of my hand, and somewhere beneath the haze of whatever they had given me, a memory surfaced of the floor rushing up too fast."What happened," I managed, my throat dry."You fainted." Andrea's jaw was tight, his eyes rimmed red in a way I had never seen on him. "You have been out for almost two hours."Before I could ask anything else, the door opened and a doctor stepped in, a clipboard tucked under one arm, her expression carefully neutral in the way doctors get when they are about to say something that changes a room."Miss Vance, how are you feeling?""Dizzy. Tired." I swallowed. "What is wrong with me?"She glanced at Andrea, a silent question

Sienna's POVA court officer ushered us into a small anteroom off the main hall, barely bigger than a closet, with two chairs and a water cooler that hummed too loudly in the silence. The door had not even fully closed before Andrea turned to face me."Sienna, listen to me.""Tell me about Camille." My voice shook on her name even though I had only just learned it. "Tell me what happened to her."He ran a hand through his hair, and for the first time he looked exhausted rather than dangerous. "Camille was not a random woman I decided to obsess over. She worked for one of Blackwood's shell companies. I was building a case against him long before you ever walked into that bar, and she was part of it. I watched her because she had information that could bring him down.""And then?""And then I got too close, and so did she. She agreed to testify against him. Three weeks later she vanished, and every trace of her digital life vanished with her." His jaw tightened. "I have spent eighteen

Sienna's POVI did not sleep the few hours I tried. The ceiling of the guest room blurred and sharpened depending on how long I stared at it, but my mind kept circling the same loop. Andrea had ordered a man's death. My father wanted me back. And in three hours, a judge would decide whether the last six weeks of my life were a contract or a cage.By six I gave up pretending and dressed in the navy suit his assistant had sent over the night before. When I stepped into the kitchen, Andrea was already there, two cups of black coffee on the counter, his jaw tight in a way I was starting to recognize as fear wearing a tie."You should eat something," he said without looking up."I can't." My stomach had been turning since I woke, and for the first time the nausea did not feel like nerves. I pushed the thought away before it could finish forming. There would be time to be afraid of that later.He studied me a beat too long. 'He notices everything,' I thought. 'Just maybe not the right thi

Sienna's POVI lay awake long after Andrea had fallen asleep, his arm still draped heavily over my waist. The message kept repeating in my head.'Ask Andrea who really killed Elena’s brother five years ago. The man you’re falling for isn’t just a liar. He’s a murderer.'His cum was still slowly leaking out of me, warm and sticky between my thighs, but the comfort I usually found in that feeling was gone. All I felt was a cold knot in my stomach.I carefully slipped out from under his arm and pulled on his shirt. The fabric still smelled like him. I walked into the living room of the safe house and stood by the window, staring at the dark city below.A few minutes later I heard his footsteps. He stopped a few feet behind me."You are not sleeping," he said quietly.I turned around. "No. I am not."He looked at me for a long moment, then sighed. "What is it?"I took a deep breath. "Who killed Elena's brother?"The question landed between us like a stone. Andrea's face changed. The softn

Sienna's POVThe room smelled of damp concrete and expensive cologne. My wrists were zip-tied to a metal chair in what looked like an abandoned warehouse office. The two men who had taken me stood guard by the door, silent and professional. Not rough, but their presence alone was enough to keep me still.Julian Blackwood sat across from me, legs crossed, looking every bit the polished shark in a charcoal suit. Elena leaned against the wall behind him, arms folded, watching me with cold satisfaction.“You’re making this too easy, Mrs. Voss,” Blackwood said smoothly. “Walking out on your husband the same night he finally tells you half the truth? Predictable.”I lifted my chin, refusing to show fear even as my heart hammered. “What do you want?”“Simple. I want what Voss took from me five years ago. Control. And you’re the key.” He leaned forward. “Your husband didn’t just save your father’s company out of sudden heroism. He did it because I was about to expose the real reason he wanted

Sienna's POVThe penthouse felt smaller with every new threat.I hadn’t told him about the newest anonymous text. The one claiming he had offered Elena marriage five years ago. The one that made my stomach twist with doubt.We sat there and then the elevator dinged unexpectedly.The elevator doors had barely closed behind my father and Simon when the truth finally cracked open.Andrea stood in the middle of the living room, shoulders rigid, the mask he wore so well slipping completely for the first time since that drunken night. He looked at me like a man who knew he was about to lose something precious.“Sienna,” Dad said, voice cracking. “We need to talk. Alone.”Andrea stood slowly. “This is my home, Mr. Vance. Anything you want to say to my wife, you say in front of me.”Simon sneered. “Your wife? This sham marriage doesn’t fool anyone. We have proof, Voss. You didn’t buy Vance Architecture because it was failing. You bought it because Blackwood was about to.”I froze. “What?”“Sa

(Sienna's POV)The dark lasted exactly four seconds.Then Kade's phone screen came on in his hand, throwing pale light across the studio, and in that light I watched him move to the door in three strides and check the corridor in both directions with the focused efficiency of someone whose instincts had never once let him be caught twice in the same kind of trap.The corridor was empty.He came back in and crossed to the lamp, checked the bulb, checked the connection at the base. Then he looked up at the overhead fixture, reached for the switch on the wall, and the room flooded with cold white ceiling light that killed every trace of the amber warmth we had been standing in.It made everything look different. Sharper. More like what it actually was."Power surge," he said. "The east wing breaker Dax reset is still calibrating. It has been tripping intermittent circuits all night.""Is that what you believe or what you want to believe?" I asked.He looked at me across the room. "Both,"

(Sienna's POV)Elara drove like someone who knew every back road by memory, every turn taken without hesitation, the headlights still off, the dark countryside bleeding past the windows in shapeless streaks. I watched her hands on the wheel and thought about the word 'long enough' and what it was hiding.People say 'long enough' when the true answer would change how you looked at them.I had learned that from Vanessa. The woman had built an entire life out of answers that were technically true and completely dishonest."Pull over," I said.Elara glanced at me."Please," I added, because the please was not for her comfort, it was to make clear that I was asking once.She eased the car onto the gravel shoulder and stopped. Cut the engine. The silence that came in was the particular quality of countryside silence, total and watchful, the kind that makes every small sound feel deliberate.I turned in my seat to face her."I have Harlan's letter against my chest and a hard drive in my han

(Sienna's POV)The howl cut off as suddenly as it started.That was worse than if it had continued.I stood on the other side of the gate with the iron key pressed into my palm and every instinct I owned pulling in two opposite directions at once. The bond tugged hard toward the estate, toward whatever had just happened in that great hall, toward Kade. The key in my hand pulled the other way, toward the road, toward the river house, toward thirty years of evidence that could end Marcus Hale before he regrouped.Elara was watching me. Not impatiently. Just watching, the way someone watches a person make a decision they cannot make for them."How long will it take?" I asked."To get there and retrieve the record, forty minutes if nothing goes wrong.""And if something goes wrong?""Then longer," she said simply.I pulled out my phone and called Dax. He answered on the second ring, his voice low and steady, Milo's soft breathing audible somewhere in the background."The howl," I said. "W

(Sienna's POV)I read the message three times.'My name is Elara Blackwood. Harlan was my brother. And you, Sienna, are not the only secret he kept.'The drive was cold and quiet around me. Dax had finally noticed I had stopped walking and turned back, reading my face the way people who work close to danger learn to read everything, fast and without being asked."Problem?" he said."Someone named Elara Blackwood just messaged me."Something crossed his expression. Not surprise exactly. The particular stillness of a man who recognizes a name he was not expecting to hear out loud."You know that name," I said.Dax looked at the main doors of the estate for a moment. Then back at me. "That is a conversation for Kade.""Kade is inside the great hall doing something that cannot be interrupted." I held the phone up. "And she says I have an hour before Marcus's people go back to the river house. So you are going to tell me what you know right now."He held my gaze for a long moment. Then he

(Sienna's POV)The dark was absolute.Not the soft dark of a bedroom or the gentle dark of a car at night. The specific crushing dark of a sealed wing with no windows and no emergency lighting and someone who knew exactly where the breaker was.Milo made a small sound beside me, not quite a cry, the sound he made when he was working very hard to be brave. I dropped to my knees and pulled him against my chest before the second heartbeat had passed, his small arms locking around my neck with the desperate strength children do not know they have."I have got you," I whispered into his hair. "I have got you, baby. Do not make a sound."He nodded against my shoulder. His heart hammered against mine.Kade's hand found my back in the dark. Not searching, not fumbling. Deliberate. He knew exactly where I was the same way I always knew exactly where he was, the bond threading between us like a wire that darkness could not cut."Dax," he said, barely above nothing."Already on it." A soft blue

(Sienna's POV)The photograph burned itself into my eyes.Flames eating the roof of the river house. Orange and white against black tree line. The kind of fire that does not start by accident.Kade took the phone from my hand before I could do something with it that I would regret, like throw it through the window or crush it into pieces just to feel something break that was not inside me. His thumb moved over the screen, studying the image with the focus of someone reading a map."Timestamp," he said quietly. "This was taken eleven minutes ago.""Which means whoever sent it was standing there watching it burn." My voice came out flat. Controlled. I did not recognize it as my own. "And they wanted us to know that."Dax glanced in the rearview mirror. "River house is twenty minutes from the estate on a normal night. Fourteen if I push it.""Push it," Kade said.The car accelerated into the dark. Tree line closed around us on both sides, the headlights still off, just the pale spillove