PRIZE: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance

by Sophia Gray

  Chapter 2

  Grant

  It had started out a pretty decent week, but now I was getting pretty pissed off. No one knew where the hell Trenton Young was, and the kid wasn’t answering his cell. He hadn’t showed up last night like he was supposed to, and asking around made it clear Trenton hadn’t been around for days.

  As the leader of the Devil’s Horns, I didn’t have time for this. I had business plans to cement and an MC to worry about. I was a lot of things, but a babysitter sure as hell wasn’t one of them. Right now, I was annoyed, but if Trenton really had gone legit missing, I knew I would switch over to worrying instead.

  “You sure he hasn’t been around?” I growled to Daryl. He, Bob, and I were in my office above the bar the motorcycle club owned. I sure as hell needed a drink myself.

  Daryl shook his head and shrugged. “I’m sorry, Grant. I tried calling around, but no one’s seen him. Not since last week. He’s been keeping pretty tight to his bird lately.”

  His bird. His girl. Sage. I didn’t know her last name. I couldn’t recall ever seeing her, though.

  “What do we know about his girl?” I asked. Maybe he was with her.

  “Sage something-or-other. She’s cute. I’ve seen her a few times.”

  I grunted and rubbed my chin. “So he’s brought her around.”

  “Yeah. Lately, they’ve been doing well, I guess. They’ve had some bumps, I think. I don’t know.” Daryl shrugged again. “He used to be a lot more open.”

  “Yeah, he’s been closed off, all right.” I grimaced. A missing MC member was never a good thing. I took a lot of pride in my MC. It had become rich and powerful, and that was because of me and my hard work and the effort of my men. All of my men, and that included Trenton.

  At thirty-one, I had just about every damn thing I could want out of life. I had money, power, and responsibilities. The ladies fell all over themselves for me, but I hadn’t found one lately who didn’t grate on my nerves. They wanted me for my power or my wealth. They wanted me for my talents in the sack. But they didn’t want me, the man behind all of that, only what they could get out of me.

  Truth be told, I used them, too, but right now, a romp in the sheets wasn’t on my mind. I had a reputation of being arrogant, ruthless, and cocky. At least that was what Daisy told me two weeks ago. Despite my supposed personality flaws, she hated that I had no intention of settling down, but she hated me even more after I told her if I changed my mind, she would be the last to know.

  She’d stomped out, but only after trying to steal one of my rings. Yeah, she’d been one of the gold diggers. If I couldn’t find a real woman, so be it. I’d just sleep around to scratch my itch. I didn’t need to find a wife anyhow. I was happy with the way things were.

  Well, I would be if I knew where Trenton was.

  “Sage. Why is she with him?” I asked. Maybe she was a gold digger, too. I guessed you could say Trenton was good looking, but he had been through a lot before we crossed paths, and it screwed him up a little in the head. He wouldn’t know how to handle a serious relationship, I didn’t think, so it didn’t surprise me to hear that their relationship was a little rocky.

  “Not sure. He’s kinda an ass to her. Some women like that, though. You know how they can be.” Daryl’s grin only lasted a few seconds before he was frowning.

  I sighed and wearily rubbed my forehead. A bad headache was beginning to brew. A man gone missing for days, and I was only realizing it now. Shit. Was I slipping? Business had been more demanding lately, and the club had grown to a decent size. Still, my stomach churned at the thought of Trenton in trouble. His parents could’ve named him Trenton Trouble and it would have been damned fitting.

  “Want me to try calling him again?” Bob offered. He was an eager beaver, one of my men who desperately wanted to climb the ranks.

  Honestly, I never cared for brown-nosing, but if word got out that I couldn’t keep track of my men, the MC would be in trouble. Plus, I had switched over to worry. In a lot of ways, Trenton still acted like a punk kid, and I had been trying to straighten him out for a while now. Been failing to straighten him out. “Sure.” But I doubted it would do any good. I had been calling the kid for a few hours myself, and no one had been able to get him to answer. With another sigh, I stood and fished my keys out of my pocket. “I’ll be back. Think you can handle things here?”

  Bob grinned like a fool. “Sure thing, boss.” He knocked his shoulder into Daryl’s.

  Hoping I wasn’t making a mistake by leaving Bob in charge, I made my way outside and to my bike. My baby. The only one who had never let me down. Sometimes I dreamed about running away, about spreading my wings, about rediscovering myself. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being the leader of Devil’s Horns, but sometimes I needed time to just be me, away from the crowd. With so many people looking to me for answers about life and love and everything else, I often didn’t have time for myself and my wants and my needs.

  Maybe that was what had happened with Trenton. Maybe he figured he needed some time with his lady. Maybe they needed some alone time. There were always guys hanging around the office, and he lived by a bunch of them at his apartment. If Trenton and Sage were getting serious, maybe he thought he’d spring her with a surprise, and they had skipped town for a little.

  It would’ve been nice if he had mentioned a getaway with me first, though.

  My stomach churned, and my agitation level soared sky high. Something about the whole situation just didn’t sit right with me. And if anyone could tell when danger was heading his way, it was me. My father, the great Gary Reardon, had always said I knew when to fight and when to negotiate. He’d given me my first bike when I turned sixteen, though he made me wait two years until I proved myself worthy of it before he let me ride it. He’d been a hell of a man, and I tried to emulate him. Well, most of the time. He died ten years ago. Would he be proud of the man I’ve become? Probably only after I square, everything with Trenton. “Surround yourself with loyal men,” he used to say, “and you’ll never want for anything.”

  “Except a piece of ass,” I had joked.

  My dad had roared with laughter. “An ass is just an ass. There’s more to a woman than her looks.”

  “But looks don’t hurt any.”

  “Maybe not, but you want a woman as loyal as your men. Loyalty, devotion, love…without them, you can’t build a future. And without a future, what do you really have?”

  I wanted a future, all right, and not just for myself, but for my men. For Trenton.

  I climbed onto my bike, but before I drove off, I pulled my cell out of my back pocket and texted Danny Boy. Has Sage been around at all lately?

  Danny Boy was the bar’s bouncer. If anyone had seen her, it would’ve been him. He never missed a beat. He had a mind like an elephant. Never forgot a face or an order or anything else life could throw his way.

  My phone vibrated with his answer a few seconds later, and the response made my frown deepen. Haven’t seen that pretty little ass in eight days.

  I grimaced and shook my head. Nothing was adding up. How often did she come around?

  An immediate response this time. Every night that Trenton would stop by. When they’re dating. Which they are right now.

  So they were one of those stupid couples that broke up and got back together again all the damn time. Probably weren’t right for each other at all, but something brought them back. Maybe the make up sex.

  You told me Trenton hasn’t been around in, what, six days? I typed as fast as I could, anxiety eating away at me.

  Another immediate response. Yeah. Guess the last anyone’s seen him is five days.

  Maybe Sage had dumped Trenton. Maybe he was drinking it off somewhere. Or maybe they had gone off somewhere together. But why the fuck wasn’t he answering his cell? Why hadn’t he gotten ahold of any one of us?

  My legs still straddled over my idle bike, I quickly scrolled through the news on my cell and discovered the police were loo
king for a Sage Farron. So they had both disappeared, most likely together. The idea of having the police involved made my skin crawl. It made it seem like the two kids were in danger, and I hoped that wasn’t the case. What with Trenton’s past, though, it remained a viable possibility.

  It was time to scope out Trenton’s apartment. A bunch of my boys lived in a complex called The Shades, which was ideal only because it was a ten-minute drive from the bar. Traffic was bad, but it still only took me fifteen minutes to get there.

  I parked, jogged inside, took the stairs two at a time and knocked on the door marked 352. No answer.

  All of my boys gave me a key to their place—strictly for emergencies. If the boys in blue came calling, if things needed to be cleared away, if they needed anything at all, I would handle it. As the leader of the Devil’s Horns, that was my job. I looked out for my own. Mutual respect. I had their backs, and they had mine. We might not share blood, but we were family just the same.

  It took me a few minutes to locate the right key, and my hand didn’t shake as I inserted it into the slot. The doorknob turned easily in my hand. I inhaled deeply and then again more easily. Thank fuck the place didn’t reek. It didn’t smell like a dead body. Yeah, my mind had gone there. Paranoid. Worried. Anxious. I wasn’t used to feeling these emotions, but something was wrong here. I had a sixth sense about this kind of thing.

  The apartment was fairly messy, but it looked like an organized mess, not like the place had been ransacked. It didn’t look like someone had left in a hurry, or maybe it did. The mess made it impossible for me to be sure either way.

  I closed the door behind me, locked it, and entered the apartment farther. There weren’t any clues as to where the couple might have gone, no ticket stubs or mailers or envelopes, so I examined the kitchen. There wasn’t a ton of food in the fridge or freezer. The cabinets were fairly empty, too. Packed up and taken with? Or did Trenton just need to go grocery shopping?

  The bedroom held no clues either, but in the bathroom, hidden all the way in the back beneath the tiny sink, I finally discovered something, hit the jackpot, but not the kind I would’ve preferred to find. There, obviously kept in secret, was drug paraphernalia.

  Interesting. And infuriating. So fucking frustrating. Just looking at this pissed me off. I had a feeling Trenton may have been trying to trade drugs. Given that he was now missing, he most likely had gotten himself killed for it.

  My hands curled into fists. What happened to loyalty? What happened to being a family? A lot of my guys had been forsaken from their birth families for one reason or another, and I had welcomed them into the MC. If one fell, we helped to pick him back up again. When one of us failed, we all failed, but we would work together to change it around and turn it into triumph. We all had our issues and our problems, but we were much stronger together than apart.

  Trenton Young had been a part of the crew for years now. He’d come to me when he’d turned sixteen, and he was twenty-two now. His parents had kicked him out because they caught him doing drugs. I’d helped him get clean. I gave him a place to stay. He had done well. Thrived even. Trenton earned himself a place in the ranks of the Devil’s Horns.

  But he had always copped a little bit of an attitude. He had a chip on his shoulder. It took two years for me to learn that Trenton’s father had done drugs heavily himself, and when he came down from his high, he tended to turn into an abusive asshole. Trenton had tried for years to convince his mom to run away. She refused. Trenton had no other family members to turn to, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that he decided to experiment and see what exactly the appeal of drugs was, to try to understand why his father would take them.

  If Trenton had gotten his own stash, maybe his father wouldn’t have thrown him out, but he claimed Trenton stole from him. Trenton hit rock bottom, chasing after a high, trying to make sense out of life. That was when I found him. I gave him meaning. I gave him a reason to fight. I gave him his life back.

  Shortly after he turned nineteen, or maybe twenty, he went back home and beat the living shit out of his father. When I heard about it, some of the boys and I came around to collect Trenton. His father never said a word, never pressed charges. Maybe it was wrong, but I didn’t blame the kid for what he’d done. After all the abuse he’d suffered, he had turned tables on his abuser.

  Sometime later, I heard Trenton’s mom ran away, but he never went to see her. “She chose him over me,” he had said.

  The kid had trust issues. He had a big problem taking orders from authority figures. He was still trying to sort out where he belonged in the world. And I didn’t mind. He had been through a lot, so it was understandable. At first. But that the same old song and dance continued for years did grow tiresome, and some of the patience I geared toward him wore thin. Did he respect me? I wasn’t sure. Hell, he might even resent me because he didn’t want to rely on anyone. It had been a little while since we last had a talk, a real one, about his issues. I sure as hell wasn’t a psychiatrist, and maybe he needed one, but I was more than willing to be a sounding board and a listening ear. Some distance and a cool head and a different perspective were sometimes all the guys needed to figure out how to better their lives and fix their problems.

  Trenton never did talk to me about his love life. Some of the guys went through women as fast as I did, so I didn’t bother to pay attention to their newest squeeze. Now that I thought about it, I thought I did meet his Sage once or twice. I was sure of it. She was tall, thin, blonde hair, blue-eyed. I remembered being proud that he had caught someone like her after the hell he’d been through. Sage and I had never spoken, though. I didn’t know her story. And everyone had a story.

  Did she know about his history with drugs? Maybe he wanted to make more money to impress her. Or maybe she pushed him into it. Maybe she had a connection to drugs herself. Who the hell knew?

  Okay. So, girl, drugs…That was a start, but what else?

  I was about to check out the bedroom when a loud knock sounded at the front door.

  Who the fuck was that? Not Trenton. He wouldn’t knock. I doubted his girl would either. Someone else, then. The guy who gave Trenton the drugs?

  There was more knocking, almost banging. Some yelling, but the voice was muffled, so I couldn’t make out the words. Whoever it was, he or she wasn’t going away.

  The last thing I wanted was to draw unnecessary attention to the apartment, especially because of the disappearances, and the drugs too. Fuck me.

  Grumbling to myself, muttering a curse, I opened the door. A gorgeous brunette stared at me with disbelief in her dark eyes.

  I glowered at her. I didn’t have time to deal with this shit. I had a mystery on my hands. If Trenton hadn’t started to deal drugs, maybe he was back to taking them again. Either way—dealing or using—he would need my help to get him out of the mess he had caused.

  She put her hands on her curvy hips and glared right back at me. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it turned me on. Just the right amount of cocky attitude.

  “Where is Trenton?” she demanded, her eyes narrowing.

  Who was she? An old girlfriend? She looked older than Trenton, though. A few years younger than me. And hot as fuck.

  And pissed as fuck, too.

  And I was only going to make her more pissed off.

  “Just leave.” I stepped back and started to close the door. I didn’t have time for her, even though I kind of wanted to make some time.

  The woman shoved her foot forward to stop me. “I’m not leaving until you answer my questions,” she said hotly. “I take it Trenton isn’t here.”

  Really? She thought her tiny foot would stop me? I could pick her up and throw her over my shoulder easily. Which actually wouldn’t strike me as such a bad idea if I didn’t have to worry about Trenton. At times, he felt like a younger brother, one who sometimes ignored me but generally followed my advice and direction.

  But, yes, the idea of picking her up and carrying her to the bedr
oom wasn’t a terrible idea. I gave her a slow once-over, and oh yeah, I wouldn’t mind getting to know her once I sorted out everything with Trenton. Long legs, supple arms, and a throat I’d love to suck on. If I weren’t careful, I’d get a massive hard-on. I wondered if she was as flexible as she looked. Not that I could really afford the time to find out, but I would love to go all Kama sutra on her ass.

  She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Well? Trenton?” she asked, a slight edge creeping into her tone.

  “Not here.” I shouldn’t be wasting time with her, so I started to close the door again.

  She didn’t move aside. “Look,” she said, now a little desperate, “I’m not here for Trenton. I’m looking for Sage. Do you—”

  Wait. She knew both Trenton and Sage? Maybe she would have a lead. And her voice was rising. I couldn’t have everyone knowing Trenton was missing. People talked, and if word got out, well, I wanted this whole thing wrapped up as quickly as possible.