by Amy Love
“I’ll be brief with you,” Phillip Crest went on, very much sounding as if he was bored with the whole conversation. “My image was never supposed to fall into your hands, and the person responsible for the leak will be dealt with severely. You know who I am now and what I can do…”
“You murdered my—”
“Your what?” His laugh was even more obnoxious than his tone, and Gryff pushed himself to his feet to pace again, ready to wear another track into his apartment’s flooring if he had to. “Your brothers? Your drug runners? Your underlings? Please don’t pretend those men meant something to you. I can’t stomach hypocrisy.”
Gryff gave a cold, humorless laugh. “Cut the bullshit, man. What do you want?”
“Fine, let me be frank, Mr. Reeves,” Phillip said with a heavy sigh, his breath blowing out and making a crinkling noise in Gryff’s ear through the phone. “My involvement in these circumstances was never supposed to come to light, but now that it has, you can’t very well forget about it. My options are limited, but effective. I could have you killed.”
“Try it,” Gryff sneered. Just then he jogged over to his front door to double-check that it was bolted shut, then began to steadily move through his place to check all the dark nooks and crannies for any unwelcome visitors courtesy of Phillip, who was laughing.
“You see, I thought about it, but I feel you’re more use to me alive than dead. It’s shockingly difficult to make any of you Phoenixes turn on your club. No amount of money seems to persuade you.”
“Because we’re loyal to our family,” Gryff hissed, pushing open the door to the linen closet, which was empty, then slamming it shut. “You can’t buy a Phoenix.”
There was a brief pause, followed by chuckle. “No, but you can blackmail him.”
“Ah…” He snorted. After a very quick but thorough check, Gryff knew he was alone in his apartment. “Unless you’ve got a sniper with his sights on me, or are steadily filling my building with gas, I think I’m fine.”
“Oh, I don’t need to hurt you in order to blackmail you.”
Gryff rolled his eyes, unwilling to be swayed by such hollow threats. He had no family here. All his friends were in the Steel Phoenixes, and Phillip had declared war on them already. Gryff planned to make him pay.
“I believe you know a Miss Elizabeth Truman, do you not?”
And that was when the world stood still. Gryff’s heart practically dropped into his stomach at the mere mention of Beth’s name. He stumbled, needing to lean on the wall for support, though his suddenly weak knees were on the verge of buckling.
“I take your stunned silence as a… yes?” Phillip mused, his tone tinged with amusement. Hearing him speak again suddenly brought reality back to Gryff with startling focus, and instead of cold fear, a searing hatred pumped through his body with more ferocity than before. How dare that piece of shit even say her name? How dare Phillip Crest even think about Beth?
“Listen to me, you son of a bitch, if you even think about hurting her—”
“Save me the boorish speech, Mr. Reeves,” Phillip said with a sigh. “Your threats fall on deaf ears. I already have her in my custody.”
It was a strange sensation, to be totally speechless. While Gryff wasn’t a man of many words, he always had something to say when the time called for it. His dialogue was purposeful, meaningful, and in that moment, knowing that Phillip fucking Crest had Beth in his grasp, he knew he should have said something—anything. But he didn’t. For a few fleeting moments, everything had gone blank, save for the pounding of his heart.
“Mr. Reeves?” Phillip’s voice sounded very distant, like he was shouting to Gryff from across an arena. He didn’t even clue in that the man was talking to him, or that he was barely holding his phone up to his ear anymore. “Gryff?”
“Don’t you fucking touch her,” he snarled once he finally found his words again. White-hot rage clouded his vision, and he suddenly had the overwhelming urge to put his fist through a wall.
“Well, you see, that will depend on how you respond to my demands,” Phillip insisted, still sounding bored. Gryff couldn’t wait to put a bullet in this guy’s skull.
“What do you want, you fucker?” Each word was an effort to get out through Gryff’s nearly gritted teeth, but he managed.
“I’m glad to see you catch on quick,” Phillip said cheerily. “Now, my sources tell me there’s a shipment of coke ready to leave tomorrow from your club. Rather than butchering more of your delivery guys, I want you to just bring it to me now instead.”
“Fuck you—”
“And when you do, you’ll ensure Miss Truman’s safety. Am I clear?”
Gryff glared at his reflection in the living room window for a long moment, then shifted his gaze to take in the storm raging outside. Fat rain droplets continued to pelt the window pane, and seconds later lightning lit up downtown Blackwoods. A bolt of light. A bulb illuminating. He had no other choice. Beth was in this mess because of him, and he would die before letting anything happen to her, especially at the hands of Phillip Crest.
“Where are you?” he demanded tightly. Gryff already knew where the coke shipment was stored. He’d deliver half to Phillip and say the man would get the rest when he saw Beth.
Then he’d tear him limb from limb.
“Grab a pen and paper, dear boy,” Phillip chuckled. “I’m afraid this is going to get a bit complicated…”
Chapter 36
Walking around downtown Blackwoods with a shit-ton of coke wasn’t something of which Gryff made a habit. It was too early in the morning for him to get mugged, but the drugged-out homeless were still around, as were early-morning stock and delivery workers. Anybody could make a mint off the load Gryff was carrying, and he did his best to keep a low profile.
Well, as much as a guy like Gryff could keep a low profile. Given his size, his bike, and his leather jacket, most people had a tendency to remember him. But when he walked anywhere with Beth, he blended—because everyone was looking at her, and rightfully so. Every time he thought of her in Phillip’s clutches, he came closer and closer to spiraling into a murderous rage. Luckily, Beth gave him focus. Never in his life would he ever consider robbing the Phoenixes, no matter how much any one of them pissed him off, but that morning it was all he could think about. Get the coke. Go to the address. See Beth. Kill Phillip. Save Beth. He had a plan and a gun strung to his hip.
Gryff was out for blood.
Plus, if all went according to plan, he’d have the stolen coke back at Phoenix headquarters in an hour or so and nobody would notice it was missing. As he’d suspected, there were club members at the bar still when he arrived, but they were all heavy-eyed and quiet, closing down the bar for the day now that all the patrons had been booted out. No one asked why he was going down to the vaults. Even if he’d lost some credibility lately, most of the guys still trusted him to move about freely around the prized possessions under Phoenix Rises.
Maybe that would be their undoing. Didn’t they know someone was hunting Phoenixes? If anything, they ought to trust no one, especially with their biggest moneymaking drugs.
But here he was. Long gone with a hefty stash of cocaine on his person, headed to the address Phillip had carefully mapped out for him almost an hour ago on the phone. His time was limited, Phillip had said, because Beth’s time was limited. He had no idea what that psychopath meant by it, but Gryff hauled ass, worried that Phillip had Beth locked in some steadily filling water tank or buried in some coffin underground with her oxygen rapidly depleting.
They were twisted thoughts, yeah, but with all that Gryff now knew about him, Phillip seemed like a twisted kind of guy.
The rain had tapered off by the time he arrived at the specified location: a grungy rundown apartment in the east end. There was a guy sleeping on the front step, huddled under the awning, who didn’t rouse to the sound of Gryff’s heavy footfalls as he approached. None of the windows hinted at any sign of life inside, no lights or flutt
er of curtains to be seen, and Gryff wondered if the place was on the verge of being abandoned. The east side of Blackwoods was always a little sketchier than the rest, even sketchier than the south end where the bulk of the drug deals went down.
While he would have preferred to take his bike, the roar of his fine-tuned engine wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, and he wanted to hide the drugs from the elements for as long as possible. So Gryff drove his car down, the GPS guiding him. Phillip had given the door code over the phone, too, and after hesitating, Gryff punched it in at the front door keypad. Seconds later the whole door seemed to vibrate, and then he was in and out of the cold in a dark hallway that faintly stunk of mildew.
Beth didn’t belong in a place like this. Blackwoods as a town wasn’t good enough for someone like her. Gryff wasn’t good enough for her either, but he was damn sure he’d save her life if it came down to it—or maybe even give his life for hers.
Silence settled over him as soon as the door behind him swung shut. Usually the hallway of an apartment building was where one could hear the lives of the tenants inside. Even if the walls were thick, the doors leeched sound like nobody’s business. But in that moment, the place felt more abandoned than ever, and Gryff couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been set up in one way or another. Phillip wanted the coke bad enough, so the guy was bound to be here, but this couldn’t be his base of operations. It couldn’t.
Straightening up, Gryff readjusted the bag carrying the drugs over his shoulder, then proceeded down the hall with a hand on the weapon on his hip. Handgun. Legally purchased. Rarely used, if he could help it. Tonight he planned to use it as often as necessary.
Above the hallway lights flickered, the soft yellow glow of dying bulbs guiding him to the elevators—which were of course out of order. Teeth gritted, Gryff moved to the stairwell, which was even less lit than the hall, and started upward. Slowly. Cautiously. The address was for a room on the fifth floor, and he planned to get there right on time—not a second before.
Unfortunately, his timing wasn’t exactly going to go according to plan. Just as Gryff rounded the corner on the landing to get to the next flight of stairs, something heavy and hard and thick swung out of shadowy nowhere and clocked him right in the face. The last thing he remembered before real darkness took him was a flash of Beth’s golden waves wrapped around his hand—and then nothing.
Chapter 37
A throbbing head and a mouth full of blood greeted Gryff when he finally drifted back to a conscious reality. Blinking hard, he coughed a few times, the metallic taste in his mouth potent enough to make him nauseous. It quickly became apparent that he was tied to a chair, his hands bound with duct tape, which bit into his skin when he shifted on the spot. The metal chair, one of those cheap ones high schools use for assemblies, dug into him at just about every angle, and he wondered how long he’d been tied to it.
No longer was he in a dark room, but rather a very well-lit warehouse. Empty, save for a few tables and chairs—oh, and a bunch of muscled assholes loitering by them. Above, rain pounded what seemed like a tin roof, but otherwise the place was quiet. Soft murmurs could be heard from the men, but no one engaged him, not even when he sat up a little and cracked his neck.
The drugs were gone. His gun was gone. His leather jacket had been stripped off and discarded on the floor nearby, and his white t-shirt was caked in dark dried blood. Each move made it ever clearer that whoever had clocked him in the face had broken his nose, or at the very least fractured it. Breathing through his nostrils brought on wave after wave of pain, but Gryff just shifted to breathing through his mouth. He was adaptable like that. He could take the pain.
Across the massive room, a door creaked open, and Gryff’s eyes narrowed at the vaguely familiar, round body of Phillip Crest. The man strolled toward him as if he was dressed for a university tour, his pricey suit pressed and his polished shoes glinting in the light. Stocky and firm, Phillip Crest was utterly repulsive to Gryff, even if he wasn’t classically ugly by any means. As he stared at the approaching figure, all he wanted to do was stomp on his face. Break his teeth. Pound the pavement with whatever was left of his skull. It was a pretty picture in his head.
“Mr. Reeves,” Phillip said as he drew nearer, stopping a good five feet from Gryff. Good thinking. They hadn’t tied Gryff’s ankles to the chair—but he wasn’t idiotic enough to try and run. He was outnumbered, and they probably all had guns. What good was he to Beth if he was dead?
“Mr. Crest,” Gryff responded with forced civility. “This is all pretty unnecessary.”
“I’m afraid I can’t trust a desperate man not to do a desperate thing in the heat of the moment,” Phillip mused with a soft chuckle. He clasped his hands behind his back as if to mirror Gryff’s stance. “And I assume you are desperate. Miss Truman makes you desperate, it seems.”
His gut response to hearing Phillip say Beth’s name in any way was to Hulk-out and break the bonds holding him, then shred everyone in the room to pieces. But he also knew, deep down, that that was the reaction Phillip was hoping for. He wanted to see Gryff affected by the leverage he had over him. He wanted to see Gryff’s weaknesses, so he could better exploit them.
Sorry, asshole, not today.
“I take it you got the coke?” Gryff fired back, working so damn hard to keep his voice from quivering with rage. He then nodded to the men loitering a good distance away. “I mean…your boys didn’t sample it when they sucker-punched me, did they?”
Phillip studied him for a moment, lips pressed together in a tight line. Briefly, a victorious surge swept through Gryff’s body in knowing that he’d bested the man—as well as he could, given he was tied to a chair totally weaponless.
“Well, I had to question them about the quantity you delivered,” Phillip insisted with a slight shake of his head. “After all, it was hardly the full amount.”
“I planned to deliver the rest once I saw Beth was okay,” Gryff told him tightly. “Where is she?”
“I wanted the full amount, Mr. Reeves.”
“Well that’s all you got.”
“Then I’m afraid Miss Truman will end up like her father once my boys get their hands on her.” Phillip nodded, a devilish smirk crossing his lips. “And I promise you, Mr. Reeves, they will so enjoy putting their hands on her.”
“I can get it all for you,” Gryff snapped. “I’m good for it. You saw it now. Just don’t hurt her. I’ll… I’ll get whatever you want.” He licked his lips. All this talking was making his face pound, as if he’d been hit with a two-by-four. Hell, he probably had. An icepack would do him a world of good, as would a few shots of whiskey, but he had more important things to focus on. He could push through the pain. He’d done it before. Gryff’s brow furrowed as Phillip’s words went on repeat in his head. “Wait…? What do you mean end up like her father? What did you do to him?”
“Ah, Darryl… What a fool.”
Phillip turned away and started to pace, strolling back and forth in front of Gryff so casually, so calmly, that it threatened to make Gryff’s temper boil over. But he took a few deep breaths, remembering that keeping his cool was what would save Beth in the end. Keep that asshole talking. Get the intel. Find Beth. Plans had to change. Gryff was still adaptable, even in the heat of the moment.
“All the evidence pointed to him being my guy,” Gryff insisted. “Was that your doing?”
“It was, actually.” Phillip said it so matter-of-factly, not quite like the smug bastard Gryff was expecting. “It took a lot of careful planning, of course. One can hardly frame a man like Darryl Truman in his position willy-nilly. Almost a year of preparation went into this operation, but in the end, I’ve achieved what I wanted in the drug world, I think.”
“Well, shit, you’re a regular gangster, Crest,” Gryff mused with a roll of his eyes. “Congrats.”
Phillip smirked. “I find your crass charming, Mr. Reeves.”
Gryff’s eyes flickered to the men strolling around the wareho
use, trying with as much subtlety as he could muster to discern who had guns and who didn’t. “I live to please.”
“I don’t doubt it,” the man said, shaking his head. “You do your best to make everyone happy. So unfortunate that you sent your dogs after Darryl Truman. When he’s found, I think we both know who will get the blame for his condition.”
“What did you do to him?” Gryff growled, hoping that Beth wouldn’t be the one to find her dad, no matter the kind of condition he was in. No kid should have to see a parent like that.
“He was catching on to what I was doing, you see,” Philip explained. The man paused, as his stare went a little distant, as if recalling a specific event, then shrugged. “I’d planned to use him for as long as possible, keep shifting the blame to him. After all, he was the one to start divvying university funds to where he wanted. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to assume he was hiring hitmen to take out Blackwoods’s most influential drug ring in the process to get a piece of the pie for himself.”