Nightbird: Book 3 of the Gilded Cage trilogy
Nightbird
Book 3 of the Gilded Cage trilogy
Fawn Bailey
Copyright © 2018 by Fawn Bailey
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Cover It Designs
Contents
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Disclaimer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
A glimpse of The Emperor…
Also by Fawn Bailey
To those who have heard the bird’s song,
Fawn
P.S. This book was inspired by the song “Sleepwalker” by AWAY and London Thor.
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Rose & Thorn Series (COMPLETED)
Blood Red Rose
Pure White Rose
Last Broken Rose
Gilded Cage Series (COMPLETED)
Feather
Wings
Flight
Nightbird
The Dazzling Court (COMING SOON)
Rich Man’s Toy
Dark Castle
Wicked Prince
Ever After
Standalone
Cards of Love: The Emperor
Disclaimer
Fawn Bailey is the dark romance pen name of USA Today bestselling author Isabella Starling.
Chapter 1
Kain
I was a ruined man.
I knew I’d never be able to get over what my father and his men had done to me, but I sure as hell was going to try.
There was no going back now, no changing the events that shaped my life forever. I would have to live with what they’d done. The casualties, the scars, the fucking wounds.
They killed my best friend, Jasper, who’d been by my fucking side for most of my life. He’d died by my hands because of the drugs they’d injected me with, and they’d died for their crimes like they should have a long time ago.
Life wouldn’t wait for me to recover. After the ordeal at Michael’s lair, we were back to living in our house with Ophelia, this time, with a new mission on our minds.
It seemed impossible to ignore what the Marinos had done to me, but as the days passed, I found myself settling down, the anger deep within me dying down to a quiet simmer. Yes, I was angry, but the men who had done this to me had found their end. Now, we had different priorities.
With the small possibility that my father’s papers held true, there was a chance that one last remaining member of Ophelia’s family was still alive.
Her little sister, Vladislava.
I could still remember her, the girl she was on the day of Ophelia’s eighteenth. She looked just like her older sister, with pale porcelain skin and long raven hair. Her lips were heart-shaped and her face sweet and innocent, a smile still tugging the corners of her mouth upwards as she lay unmoving on the pile of bodies.
It was my fault her entire family was gone.
How Ophelia had managed to forgive me for all the shit I’d done to her, to her fucking family, I’d never know. I hated myself for ruining her life. But my thoughts were too preoccupied to worry, needing to know whether there was any truth to the rumor that little Vlada had survived.
Small, pale hands wrapped around my neck, holding me gently as Ophelia looked over my shoulder.
“What are you doing, Master?” she asked softly.
I pushed the papers on my desk away so she wouldn’t see, but her eyes drank them in hungrily, lingering on the name of her sister.
“You’re going to look for her,” she whispered. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course,” I growled. “How could I not, dolly? She meant so much to you. I owe it to you… to us, to find out what happened to her if she survived.”
Ophelia fell to her knees in front of me, her eyes begging me to do as I’d said. My hand found her cheek, and I stroked her skin lightly, smiling at my beloved little toy.
“You really want to see her again, don’t you?” My voice betrayed my feelings for the girl before me.
“I do,” she admitted. “I want to see her so much. But…”
“But what?” I asked after a moment of silence, eager for more of her words.
“But what if she doesn’t recognize me?” She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “It’s been years. She was only a little girl when… when our family died. She probably won’t remember me. And where on earth could she be? She must be so scared, so alone, Kain. I can’t handle the thought of it.”
Big fat tears rolled down her cheeks, and my heart constricted with empathy I didn’t know I was capable of.
“We’ll help her remember.” I tried to keep my voice as gentle and placating as I possibly could. “It’s going to be all right, dolly. I’m going to track her down and bring her back to you.”
Ophelia had told me of a quirky trait of Vlada’s, that she had one brown eye and one blue. It would help me determine whether the girl Michael kept tabs on was the right one. I fucking hoped it was; otherwise, my father had managed to fuck me over again, this time from the goddamn grave.
“Dolly,” I said when she wouldn’t stop crying. “You can’t let yourself break because of this. If we do find her, you’ll need to be strong. She’s just a little girl, right?”
She nodded, her eyes finding mine and begging me to make things better. God, how I wished I could give her everything, fucking anything that would make her world a better, brighter place. But my hands were tied until I heard back from my people. The ones I’d sent on little Vlada’s track without telling Ophelia, not wanting to get her hopes up.
These first few days would be crucial to finding the little girl. And I didn’t want Ophelia being crushed, or even too hopeful, if there was nobody to find out there.
“You know, she might not be out there,” I told her, my voice soft. “She might have died that day, dolly. But I promise you this…” My fingertip slid over her lips, and she tasted me, sucking on my finger like the little slut she was and making me grin down at her kneeling form. “I promise you, if she’s out there, I’m not going to rest until I’ve fucking found her," I told her solemnly. “I’m not going to let anyone hide her, hurt her, or take her away from you, dolly. If Vlada is still alive, she belongs here with you.”
She nodded.
I’d tried to quash
her hopes of finding the girl, but she was so fucking hopeful it seemed impossible to bring her down. Maybe, just maybe, her prayers would come true, and I’d find Vlada wherever she was being hidden. Maybe I could bring her back home.
I imagined a world where one last member of Ophelia’s family was still alive.
A world when she wouldn’t feel so completely alone.
It was a scary fucking thought.
Right now, she just had me… but then, there would be someone else.
Jealousy struck me through my heart like a fucking poisoned arrow, and I hated myself for letting it happen.
She would love her sister more than she had ever loved me.
It was bound to happen.
Vladislava was family after all, and who was I?
Her captor.
Her kidnapper.
The man who’d slaughtered anyone she’d ever loved.
The man who’d forced her to love him.
And I’d already broken her before. What was convincing her that I wouldn’t do it again?
The sliver of a villain inside me persisted.
The angry boy whose parents had been killed wanted the little girl dead.
The rage-filled zombie from Michael’s lair would kill anyone standing in its way to Ophelia.
I wasn’t always a monster.
She made me feel like a man.
But times like these, I let my beast show. And God, how it roared for her.
“Thank you for trusting me, dolly,” I finally told her, my voice hoarse from unspoken feelings. “I’ll get your little sister back if she’s out there.”
“Thank you, Master,” she whispered, her eyes on mine. “Are you going to take care of me now?”
I leaned down, her defiant little chin between my fingertips as I gazed into her dark irises. “How do you need me to do that? How do you need Master to take care of you?”
“Hold me,” she said, surprising me with the answer’s simplicity.
Before I could say something in response, she’d climbed on top of my lap, cuddled close to me and held onto my shirt for dear life.
My fingers found her hair, and I absent-mindedly felt the silk of it between my fingers, for a moment forgetting about the papers on my desk.
But Ophelia hadn’t.
She kept glancing at them as I toyed with her mane until I tugged on a strand hard enough to make her wince, and she turned her fearful eyes to mine.
“What are you looking at, dolly?” I growled at her, the beast within me demanding an answer.
“I need to know where she is,” she muttered.
“No, you don’t,” I got out through gritted teeth. “You just need to do as I fucking tell you. Do you understand?”
She nodded and then in a flash, she’d jumped off my lap, grabbed the paper and ran out of the room.
With a roar, I threw myself after her, following in her footsteps to the bedroom where she’d hid in a closet. I found her whimpering on the floor, and my eyes widened when I took in her shaking form, her hand holding the paper trembling as she had the terrible realization.
“This s-says there w-were two survivors.” Her eyes darted between my face and the paper in her hands.
I sighed heavily, running my hands through my hair and looking away.
“It’s true,” she gasped, her breath ragged and fast. “It’s true, isn’t it? He’s alive as well?”
I turned my attention back to her, and she must’ve realized the truth from my cold, shaken expression.
She put a hand over her mouth when she gasped, the paper fluttering to the floor of the closet in the quietness of the room. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her voice shakier than I’d heard it before. “Why didn’t you tell me my father might be alive?”
“I couldn’t,” I got out. “I know your relationship with him… was rocky.”
“Rocky?” she spat out, laughing bitterly. “Because the two of us are so much fucking better?”
“Don’t compare me to your father,” I growled. “I’m nothing like him.”
“You don’t know anything about Papa. You never even knew him!”
I swallowed my words, reminding myself that now wasn’t the time to go down that rabbit hole. “I’m sorry, Ophelia,” I said, trying to keep a level head. “I’m sorry. Come out of there now, come on the bed. Sit with me so I can tell you everything I know.”
She gave me a hesitant look, but I could tell I’d convinced her.
Finally, she got out of that closet and climbed on the bed. She wore a little floral dress, sweet and innocent, the sight only made better by her naked ass. She wasn’t permitted underwear in the house, a rule I’d come to appreciate too many times to count over the years.
“The records Michael Marino kept,” I started, pointing to the papers in the closet, “they said your little sister was in the care of a V. S. I didn’t think it was your father right away. I just thought it was odd they had the same initials.”
“She was named after him,” Ophelia told me. “Vladislava and Vladimir. I had a brother, my oldest brother. His name was Vladimir like Papa’s. But Vlada was the girl they’d named after him.”
I watched her closely. How she swallowed thickly and with so much difficulty her eyes watered. With how nervous she was, how her fingers fidgeted nervously in her lap, I had no doubt my little dolly was afraid of something. I just didn’t know about what yet.
“How did you find out? That it was Papa.”
“There was a photo,” I muttered. “It’s in that file.”
She fled to the papers and retrieved a polaroid of a dark-haired man and a small girl.
Ophelia gasped when she saw it. The quality was shit, but it had convinced me, and if Ophelia saw the same thing, I’d been right to question the identity of the stranger.
“Do you think it’s him?” I asked her.
She touched the blurry faces with her shaky fingers. “I can’t be sure,” she whispered. “But you need to find him.” She grabbed both my hands, letting the polaroid drop on the bed. Her eyes turned to mine, burning with urgency and need that I didn’t yet understand.
“What?” I asked her.
“We need to find her,” she said. “Vlada. We need to find her now.”
“We will,” I assured her. “I have my best men on it, and I’m helping with the search. What’s wrong, dolly? She’s with your father. You said he loved her.”
“He did,” she whispered, her eyes darting away. “He loved me too.”
A silence fell between us before her lips parted again to whisper two tell-all little words. “And yet….”
Chapter 2
Ophelia
“And yet what?”
My eyes found his. I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t tell him all the terrors of being Papa’s daughter, of being mafia royalty. It was a story for another day.
“Nothing,” I replied in what I hoped was a cheerful voice. “I just hope we find her, is all.”
He gave me a doubtful look but didn’t question me further.
* * *
I’d seen the darkness.
I’d fallen for it.
For the dark place in the recess of my mind where all my troubles were locked, and I hid the key so I could never get out.
It was strange because as scary as it felt, it also filled me with a sense of security. Nobody could hurt me in the darkness. Nobody could touch me. I was safe from it all.
But I came back.
I scoured my head for the key, unlocked the heavy lock, and came out of the dark, dark woods. I stayed for him. I came out for him. I wanted him more than I wanted the darkness. But sometimes, it was goddamn hard not to go back to the safe solace of the place in my head where nothing else mattered. Where I was safe and numb. Where nothing mattered but the calming, serene quiet that wrapped me up like thick cotton wool, making sure no harm would come to me.
I wasn’t the only one who’d seen the darkness. I knew Kain had been there too. And beca
use I couldn’t hurt him, couldn’t imagine putting him through losing another person, I’d stayed by his side.
And save for one thing, we were happier than ever.
Kain’s arms found me between the sheets, pulling me away from my reverie and into his embrace where I belonged.
“You’re in your head again,” he muttered into my hair, and I shifted to make myself more comfortable, wrapping his limbs around me like a safety blanket. “What are you thinking about, beautiful dolly?”
“Nothing,” I whispered.
He pulled me closer, forcing me to turn around. His dark eyes bore into mine, and I managed a shaky smile. “I know when you’re lying to me, dolly,” he told me plainly. “And that sure as fuck sounded like a lie.”
“It’s just…,” I muttered, but I didn’t need to finish.
We both knew what the problem was, what was constantly on my mind, plaguing my dreams and every waking moment, demanding I find out the truth.
It had been four months since Michael Marino had died at the barrel of my gun. One month since I’d received the shocking news that my sister might have survived the massacre that killed my entire family.
My thoughts had been filled with her for the past month.
Little Vlada, my baby sister whom I’d almost managed to forget, the memory of her too painful to let it stick around in my mind.