Kingston, Sara - Grace's Final Submission [Locks and Chains] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) (22 page)

“So let me get this straight. Grace found out she was pregnant with our child, and that she was most likely going to lose it. Then, she was told she most likely would never have children. She was completely messed up and having a meltdown and you helped her out because she couldn’t face us. Then you, Michael, automatically jump to the conclusion that she’d cheated on us. Then we kick her out of our house and our lives, all within twenty-four hours,” Jason said very quietly.

Michael looked at the fury burning in Jason’s eyes. “What was I supposed to think? I found Scott and Grace in bed together. I didn’t know anything about any baby until now,” he pleaded.

“Tell me, Michael, when you found Grace and Scott together, were they dressed?” Jason growled, struggling to keep his voice under control.

Chapter Nineteen

Michael thought back to that horrible morning, an image that was burned into his brain. Looking at it from different angles, he realized that Grace might have been fully dressed. “I think they may have been. I’m not sure.”

Jason rubbed his face with both hands “Fuck! Michael, I trusted you! I never once thought to doubt you. You just jumped to conclusions and didn’t give her a chance to explain. You just declared her guilty and sentenced her. You stupid fuck! You lost us the love of our lives. Over what! Your stupid fucking pride. If we don’t get her back, I am never, ever going to forgive you. And let me be crystal clear here, Michael, if she’ll take me back, but not you, I’m gone.”

“Jason, you and Michael have a bigger problem right at this moment. Sandra and I have spent half the day running every lead and every contact we have. We can’t find her. She’s disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Jason collapsed into his chair. “My god…What are we going to do? We have to find her!”

“Scott, you told us she went to the doctor. Did she tell you the doctor’s name?” Michael pleaded.

“Michael, most of what she told me was incoherent blubber. I don’t remember the doctor’s name, and I don’t think she told me.”

“Did she tell you what decision she’d made about the baby?”

“She hadn’t made one by the time she left my place.”

“What the hell does it matter about the decision, Michael? I want Grace, however I can get her.”

“Jason, it matters because if she decided to terminate, we could contact hospitals. She may be there right now.”

“Did she tell you how long she was into the pregnancy?”

“I’m not sure exactly, but she did say she had been pregnant for months without knowing.”

All Michael could think of was Grace alone out there and forced to make such a huge decision by herself. She could still be carrying their son or daughter. She should never have had to go through this alone. If he’d just listened to her…How would they ever get her back? She’d never forgive them. She could never trust them, not after what they’d done to her. He had destroyed her!

One month later, Grace lay, silently crying, in her hospital bed. Not only had she suffered the loss of her men, she’d lost the only precious part of them she’d had left. She had lost her daughter. Her pregnancy lasted twenty weeks, but her little baby girl just couldn’t survive within her any longer.

Grace named her Anna, a beautiful little baby girl she’d never get to take home and hold. She didn’t know how to go on! The only thing that had been holding her together this past month had been Anna. Now she’d lost her, what did she have left? She felt nothing but despair. She wanted to die and be with her precious baby.

“Grace, I’m so sorry, honey.” Grace didn’t answer her sister. She continued to stare out the window, wondering what the point to life was. There was no point. The pain and torment she suffered growing up with a sadistic father. Then the years spent taking caring of everyone else, and then the suffering in the years of being married to Duncan.

When she finally thought her life had turned around, and she’d be able to experience true happiness and love, it had been torn away from her and exposed as the lie it was, but at least she’d had Anna, she thought. But now, Anna was gone. “Please, god, just let me die. I just need this to end. I can’t fight anymore.”

“Grace, honey, please, please, don’t say those things. Don’t think that way. I need you! I need my big sister. I promise you it’s going to get better. What was it you always said to me, when we were growing up? ‘Tomorrow is going to be brighter. Let’s weather the storm and dream of tomorrow.’”

“Sophie, I was full of shit. There’s no brighter tomorrow. I just told you that to give you hope that we would survive. Just leave me alone please. I need to rest.”

Sophie
looked at her sister and left the room. Her body felt ice cold with fear. She’d never seen her sister like this. Grace always held everything together. She was the strong one. Grace had given up on life. The doctors were giving her tranquilizers to keep her calm. They told Sophie this was normal for late-term miscarriages. She didn’t know what to do. Grace normally dealt with all the hard stuff.

Six weeks later

“Grace, you need to get out and be part of the world again. It’s been six weeks since…. You need to resume your life.” Grace just continued to stare at the TV. She had barely moved in the past three weeks since she had left the hospital. She was in such a deep pit of depression that even her doctors were becoming worried.

Sophie had become desperate. She was scheduled to go to Africa on assignment in three days for six weeks, but she couldn’t leave Grace, not like this. She needed to do something, anything to get Grace to come alive again or even to just feel again.

Sophie walked out of the house and down the street. She need to be far enough away so Grace couldn’t hear the conversation she was about to have. She was going to call Michael Cooper and Jason Smith. Grace had told her how they believed she’d cheated on them, and how they had cruelly booted her out of their life. But Grace needed something to wake her up. She needed to feel again, and anger at those two bastards was feeling, wasn’t it? After all, Anna was their baby, too, so they should share some of the responsibility for Grace’s recovery, and Grace in the state she was in was freaking her out. She couldn’t do this alone. She needed help, and who better to help than the people who caused all this in the first place.

It’d been nearly three months now since Grace left, and Michael could still feel her presence in the house. They had searched relentlessly for her. They had employed two separate private investigators to help them find her, but both had come up with nothing. They so very much regretted not knowing more about Grace’s past. They couldn’t even find her family.

They had lost her. At least they knew she wasn’t dead. Taking another gulp of scotch, he slumped further in the chair. He was outside on the deck, his new favorite place. He couldn’t bear to be in the house much anymore. It held too many memories.
He could hear the phone ringing persistently inside the house, and he continued to ignore it. He didn’t want to speak to anyone.

He listened as Jason answered. Every day he expected Jason to say he was moving out. His friendship with Jason was so damaged. Jason blamed him for the loss of Grace, and he couldn’t fight him. It was his fault.

“What? You’re who? Grace’s sister, Sophie! My god…My god…where is she?” Michael jumped up and ran into the house. When Jason saw him, he put the phone on speaker.

“Yes, I’m Sophie, Grace’s little sister. You two are the last people I wanted to call on this planet, but I need your help.”

“Anything! We’ll do anything! We’ve been looking for Grace for over two months. We’ve had private investigators searching the country trying to find her, and we’ve driven and flown thousands of miles following up leads, but have come up blank every time,” Jason said.

“So let me guess, you two wised up and realized my sister is the most loyal person on this earth. Who could never, ever have cheated on you. You also realized you both are a couple of idiots that lost the best thing that ever came into your lives.”

Michael and Jason both looked at each other. “That just about sums it up,”
Michael stated.

“Look, I’m not trying to patch up your relationship with my sister. To tell you the truth, I was never truly supportive when you were all together anyway. I don’t see how her being with two guys is healthy, but I shut up because she was so happy, and she sure deserves to be happy. I’m calling because I need your help! I’m losing Grace, and I don’t know what to do. You are my only hope before I try to institutionalize her for her own safety.”

Gasping with shock and fear for Grace, Michael said,
“Sophie, we’ll do anything. We understand your dislike of us. We’re not asking for you to understand our relationship. We both love Grace with all our hearts. We desperately want her back home with us.”

“Okay, here’s my plan.” Sophie gave them a rundown of what she wanted to do. She told them she was counting on Grace’s anger toward them to wake her up. She refused to tell them what had happened to her. But both Michael and Jason guessed that she most likely had lost the baby.

Grace heard someone knocking on the door, but she ignored it. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone, but whoever it was wouldn’t give up. They just kept on knocking. Finally, she got up off the couch just in case it was Sophie, who’d locked herself out again.

She opened the door to find Michael and Jason standing there. Shock coursed through her, and she tried to slam the door shut. Michael blocked the door, and Jason pushed through as they both barreled into the apartment. Grace turned, calculating an escape route, caught like a deer in the headlamps of a car. Jason wrapped her in his arms in a tight embrace. At the feel of the arms she had loved with all her heart, Grace felt something in her break, a dam burst. She began to sob with all the pain and misery she felt, all the fear and loneliness, all the agony and despair. She was keening like a wounded animal, all her pent-up emotions finally released.

She felt Michael envelop her from behind, and the three of them just held each other while Grace wept.

“Tell us, sweetheart, when did you lose our baby,” Jason said, a sob in his throat.

Grace didn’t even think to question how they knew. “I lost Anna just over six weeks ago.”

“A girl, we had a baby girl. I bet she was beautiful just like her mother.” Jason choked as his tears mixed with hers in a river of loss.

When Grace’s tears were finally spent, they all sat down on the couch. “Grace, I would like to apologize to you for not listening to your explanation. When I saw you in bed with Scott, I was just so jealous. I couldn’t think straight. I just reacted, and I know, I can never make up for it. It tears me apart, knowing we weren’t there for you, and you went through everything you have suffered alone.” The look in Michael’s eyes confirmed he was telling her the truth. She saw true agony and heartfelt apology there.

“Baby, your sister called us. We have been searching for you for months. Two weeks after you left, we realized the mistakes we made and have been searching ever since. Please, sweetheart, come home with us.”

Grace shook her head. They couldn’t be serious. “You both have got to be kidding. Why would you think I could ever forgive you for what you did to me! You both broke my heart.”

“We know. Baby, we know you could never go back to the way things were. We want you to come and spend the next six weeks recuperating with us. We’re willing to be your
submissives
, giving you total control during your recuperation. We talked about it and felt you would feel the most secure in that role. We want you to come and be our
Domme
.”

“Think about it, Grace. Your sister is going to Africa on an assignment for six weeks in a couple of days, so instead of being alone here, you could be punishing us.” Grace looked from one to the other, trying to determine if they were serious. She saw pain, fear, and just a little touch of hope in their eyes. They were deadly serious about this.

“Jason, as a switch I can understand your acceptance of this. But, Michael, this would be totally against your very nature.”

“For you, Grace, I’ll do anything, even submit to you!”