by Eve, Jaymin
Dylan and I took off, using whatever fucking skills we’d learned over the last two decades to run and jump and evade the police. This wouldn’t work out well for us later, but right now, Riley was my priority.
“We should start with your father,” Dylan said. “They’re going to want a clean sweep. They think we’re all dead and that only leaves Rome—and Richard, but I doubt he’s still alive.”
Getting to my father in general was not easy. He was rarely at home, his suspicious nature caused him to trust very few people, including his wife. He had multiple safe houses and secret properties, and he never spent more than a few days at any of them. But there was one secret I knew, the very reason he’d decided to step down early and let me take a proxy position on the board—he had a serious girlfriend. One he cared about. One that wasn’t just a fuck and leave. One that was taking up a lot of his time and he wanted to focus on her. I’d never seen him like that before and it had made him just a little bit lax in his security.
I just had to find the girlfriend.
My phone was up and to my ear in a flash as I dialed our contact in the police department. He answered in two rings. “Beck?”
“I need you to find someone.”
He didn’t fuck around. He got right to business. “Yep, ready.”
I told him her name and the basic details I knew about her. She was a tiny, blonde- haired, blue-eyed woman, only twenty-five, and I was pretty sure she was a gymnast. My father thought he loved her, but no doubt he mostly loved her ability to put her foot over her head all the while sucking his dick.
“Give me five minutes.”
I hung up the phone, and turned to the left, finding the closest car to steal. It took us about thirty seconds to get in and get her started, and then we were moving along the street, lights off.
When my phone rang, I answered it before the second buzz. “Yep.”
“She was not exactly easy to find,” he said quickly. “I had to search multiple databases, and she was only triggered in one. A national gymnastics league.”
Dad probably didn’t think that was worth hiding. Arrogant asshole.
I hit the speaker so Dylan and I could both hear. “Her place is in Jersey.” Fuck. He quickly rattled off the address, and I hung up.
“They won’t go to Jersey with everything happening. Chances are they’ve already sent someone to kill him anyway,” I said before slamming my hand into the steering wheel. “Motherfucker!”
“Then let’s check out Graeme’s place,” Dylan suggested.
I nodded, already swinging the wheel around and planting my foot. Times like these, I missed my Bugatti and her power.
Graeme’s place looked abandoned when we got there, and even after smashing the door down and storming inside, there was not a single sign of life. Dylan and I checked every room, the basement, and the rest of the property. My phone started to ring after we’d finished, and I glanced down to find it was Jarrod Wells, Riley’s lawyer.
I silenced it because, right now, I had to focus on finding my girl. I did not have time to worry about the video footage.
Only he rang again, and again, and again, and as I jumped back into the stolen car, grim-faced Dylan at my side, I finally snapped.
“What?” I growled. “I’m fucking busy.”
“The footage is on the news channels,” he said quickly. “The police are using it to flush them out, but I wanted you to know because this is going to make them desperate and scared. They’ll be more dangerous.”
My blood went cold, and I tried to count my breaths so that I didn’t drive to New York and kill the lawyer. “They have Riley,” I bit out each word. “You’ve just put a fucking death sentence on her head.”
Catherine had no incentive to keep her alive, not when she was clearly going to jail no matter what happened. “Find me something,” I said to Wells. “Find something that gives me an idea where to look for her. Graeme Huntley is a good place to start.”
Dylan was already on the phone with every fucking contact we had, and I followed suit, both of us calling in the troops, while at the same time, checking every Delta safe house and any other Huntley properties we knew of. There was no one at any of them.
When Wells phoned me back, forty minutes later, I was just leaving our last possible location. “Give me something,” I said as soon as I answered.
“Graeme Huntley purchased a property under one of his shell companies. Well, it’s actually a shell of a shell of another entity, all hidden under a trust. But I fucking found it.”
He sounded both proud and exhausted, like he’d been hunting down leads as hard as us. “If this pays off, you’re getting the hugest fucking bonus,” I told him.
Wells chuckled. “Just find her alive. Delta has already destroyed too many lives.”
He then gave us an address.
A familiar address. Graeme’s place was just up the road from our apartment building. One of the newest builds, I didn’t think it was finished construction yet. Graeme must have somehow gotten them to fit out one of the apartments, but leave the others unfinished, to hide his safehouse.
“It’s genius, really,” Dylan said as I flew across the town in that direction. “Shame we’ll have to kill the bastard.”
Not a shame at all. I was going to fucking enjoy every second of it.
“I just need Riley to be okay,” I said, my brother about the only person I’d ever admit my fear to. The only person I could show weakness around. “I can’t fucking live without her.”
“I know,” he said, his eyes forward, expression grim. “All of us love her, Beck, and I have faith that she won’t let them take her down easily. She’s a fighter, our girl.”
For once I didn’t want to fucking pummel his face into the front dash for calling her our girl. Because she was ours. A Delta Heir. Our family.
My phone rang, but I ignored it. We’d put out a ton of feelers into our network and no doubt they were checking in, but I had a good feeling about the safe house. This was where we’d find them.
Dylan’s phone started just after that, and he actually checked his screen. “It’s Captain Decker,” he said, and I took my eyes off the road for a split second to stare at him.
“Answer it,” I said.
“Decker,” Dylan said, his phone on speaker.
The Captain wasted no time on pleasantries. “Heard you were looking for your girl. We just got a call from a female, said her father was shot and Catherine Deboise was in the apartment somewhere. We’re heading there now.”
“Address?” I barked out.
He gave us the same street and number as the lawyer. “We’re almost there,” I said shortly.
Decker cleared his throat. “Don’t do anything stup—”
Dylan cut him off before he could finish, the phone back in his pocket as I pressed my foot even harder to the floor. Ignoring stop signs and red lights, I flew toward the apartments, the sound of sirens in my ears.
I had a single-minded determination to get to Riley.
Tires screeching, I was out the door before the car even stopped. My body screamed, still fucked up from the last fight, but the pain was easy to ignore. Physical pain I was a fucking expert at handling. It was the emotional vise around my heart that was new. The thought that Riley might have been hurt … possibly killed, in the time it had taken me to find her.
I was on the edge of losing my mind.
Dylan was at my back, always there when I needed him, as we stormed into the lower levels of the building. This bottom floor was not even fifty percent finished; the elevator was clearly not ready to take anyone up.
“How do we find their place in here?” Dylan bit out, gun in hand as he cased the area.
“We think like those fucking assholes,” I snarled. “We figure out how we would make this safehouse work, and we’ll know where they are.”
At the end of the day, rich, arrogant bastards were all the same. We thought the same. Planned the same. And took the sa
me risks.
Some of us were just better at it than others. Graeme was not one of those, so we should be able to figure him out.
“Service elevator,” I said quickly, noticing it off to the side. This was how the construction crew got their stuff up to the higher levels.
Dodging around piles of wood, tiles, sheet board, and a fuckton of other building materials, I led Dylan to the cage which was attached to the side of the building. We had to step out through a makeshift door, but then we were inside, and I hit the button to take us almost to the top. Top floor was too obvious. Graeme would be just under that.
Police stormed in the building just as we started to move, and I shouted for them.
“Floor twelve,” I bit out, as they raced toward us, but we were already shooting up the side. When we reached the floor, the metal cage door opened. My gun was in my hand, and I didn’t move cautiously. There was no time for that.
It was dark up here. Tarps on the side blocked the last of the sunlight. At first, I thought I fucked up. Everything looked like a construction site—same as downstairs—but then Dylan spotted a single scuff mark in the dust. It was like God himself was on our side because somehow, a sliver of light hit that very spot creeping in through a gap in the drywall.
Staying silent, we followed that scuff, right to the back of the building. In the distance, I heard the elevator ding, and in front of us, the faint noise of screaming.
I was sprinting, and it took every ounce of my fucking skill to not land in a pile of power tools. Finally finished walls, a hallway, and nondescript door came into view.
Catherine was the one screaming as I hit the door with my shoulder, smashing it down. The entry led right it to the formal living room, giving Dylan and me a front row seat to Catherine shooting Riley in the chest.
Panic and rage slammed into me, and I’d never moved so fast in my life, but it was still like slow motion as I watched Riley fall backward, smashing her head.
“Butterfly!” I roared, wanting her to know I was coming. Needing her to hold on.
I had no idea what her injuries were or if she had taken the vest off. I knew nothing except that I had to get to her.
My butterfly.
31
An incessant beeping woke me, pulling me out from under the cloying darkness I’d been in. A sense of déjà vu swept over me and for a moment my heart seized in panic. Had everything been a dream? A coma hallucination after the crash with my parents?
Then a sharp, agonizing stab of hope hit me. If it had all been a dream, then maybe they were still alive.
A broad-shouldered man sat in the corner, his head in his hands and his body shrouded in shadows and I knew...
“Dante?” I croaked, knowing what would happen next. He’d look up, tears in his eyes and tell me that my mom and dad were—
“Butterfly?” It wasn’t Dante who answered me, and it definitely wasn’t Dante that raised his head and stared back at me with gray eyes full of love and sheer relief.
I blinked a couple of times, trying to clear the haze of pain medication. Slowly, the pieces all clicked back together, and my breath rushed out in a whoosh. Sadness pricked at my eyes, making them burn with impending tears.
“Sebastian,” I replied, my voice breaking with a sob. As if my speaking his name had broken a spell, he rushed out of his chair and to my bedside. He reached out but hesitated just an inch away from touching my face.
“Butterfly, you gave us a nasty scare. What were you thinking, taking on Catherine alone?” His tone was scolding but only softly. He touched his hand lightly to my cheek.
“I don’t know,” I replied, narrowing my eyes at him. “I guess I was thinking that I was alone. That all of you guys were dead and I had nothing left to lose.” I gave him an accusing frown, and he looked away with a guilty twist to his mouth. “What the fuck happened?” My voice was soft, broken with the fresh pain of thinking he was dead. “I saw you get shot. All of you.” Another puzzle piece of memory clicked into place, and I gasped, bringing my hand to my chest. “Catherine shot me too! How—” I pulled down the neck of my hospital gown, expecting to find bandages over a bullet wound but there was just a mass of black and purple bruising instead. “Sebastian, how are we still alive? Are we still alive?”
It was a valid question. Maybe this was some fucked up afterlife where you carried your dying wounds and pain with you.
“Yes, Butterfly. And thank fuck we are. Our story is only just beginning; it’d be a tragedy for it to end now.” His gaze returned to mine, and I glared back at him. As poetic and romantic as that statement was, it didn’t answer the most important part.
“Start explaining,” I ordered him in a menacing growl.
A sheepish grin tugged at his lips. “I had a bad feeling about the meeting. I don’t even know why, it was just nagging at me. So I had those vests made...”
My eyes widened. “Those vests were bulletproof? You’re kidding. They just felt like a rough cotton.”
He shrugged. “New technology that Delta has been funding. Patent pending.” He shot me a cheeky wink, and I scowled back.
“You prick,” I said softly. “I thought you were dead. I thought you were all—” I broke off with a sob as tears blurred my vision and my throat tightened.
Beck’s arms circled around me then, gentle over all my bruises as he hugged me into his chest and stroked my hair. “I’m so sorry, Butterfly. I’m so, so sorry. I should have told you.”
We stayed like that for a long time, and at some stage he shifted to sit on the bed with me, so I could snuggle in tighter. I was crying not just for how I thought they were dead and they weren’t, but for that glimmer of hope when I woke up and thought maybe, just maybe, my parents were still alive.
Eventually, my tears dried up, and I swiped an IV-connected hand over my face. “Catherine,” I croaked. “Is she—”
“Dead,” Beck replied before I even finished my question. “Same with Graeme Huntley, and all the other board members.”
I strongly suspected it made me a terrible person, but a flutter of satisfaction traveled through me at this news. We didn’t need to find the vault, after all. The empire was toppled, and somehow the five of us, the heirs, had survived. No doubt this was going to be a legal nightmare to sort out, but we’d figure it out. Together.
There was one loss that hurt though. “What happened to Richard?” I asked, taking the tissue Beck offered and blowing my nose. Crying always made my nose both runny and blocked up all at the same time.
“He made it,” Beck told me, and I gasped, the tissue falling from my hand. “He flat-lined four times in the ambulance, but they managed to revive him, and four hours of surgery saw the bullets extracted. If you hadn’t called 911 when you did, he would have been dead for sure.”
I released the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Holy shit. Richard was still alive. My last remaining family ... by blood, that was.
Something I’d learned since arriving in Jefferson was that family could be so much more than just blood relations. And mine? Well...
“Riles, you’re awake!” Jasper blurted, coming into my hospital room with a large take-out tray of coffees in his hands. “What the fuck, dickhead?” This was aimed at Beck, who gave an unapologetic shrug.
“So much for calling us if she woke up, you prick,” Evan added as he followed Jasper into the room. “You look good, Riley. Like a Disney princess just woken from a coma.” His compliment fell flat when Jasper snickered and eyed my hair. No doubt I resembled a character from The Walking Dead more than Sleeping Beauty.
“Thanks, Evan,” I muttered. “Nice to see you all alive too. Where’s Dylan?”
The guys all seemed to exchange a look, and Beck just kissed my hair before peeling himself off my bed. “I’ll go tell him you’re awake,” he said, totally evading my question. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?” He cupped my face and peered into my eyes with total seriousness until I nodded.
“I’m not moving f
rom this bed,” I assured him. “I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to.” Because now that the drugs were fading out of my system, I could tell my whole body was just one massive bruise.
Beck pressed a gentle yet lingering kiss on my lips, then shot a warning look to both Evan and Jasper before slipping out of my room.
In his absence, I eyed up my two friends suspiciously.
“Which one of you is going to spill?” I prodded them. “What’s with the weird looks when I asked about Dylan? Where is he, really?”
Jasper shook his head and pointed at Evan. Typical.
“Uh.” Evan rubbed a hand over the back of his head, looking uncomfortable. “He didn’t take everything so well. You were unconscious and got shot at way closer range than us... Or maybe just that you’re more breakable...” He was rambling, but it answered the question of why I was in a hospital bed and they all weren’t. Then again, both Jasper and Evan were wearing hospital ID bands so they couldn’t have been discharged too long ago themselves. “So, yeah. He’s in the chapel.”
Evan paused, and I raised my brows at him.
“Praying,” he explained, motioning to me in my hospital bed all hooked up to an IV drip, “that you wouldn’t die.”
Oh.
I didn’t really know what to say to that.
“Not that we didn’t care enough to pray,” Jasper added, right as I was about to make a smart remark at him. “But you know how it is. Our belief in a higher power is a bit jaded, considering how we all grew up.”
“Also,” Evan added, “You’re tough as shit. We never doubted for a second that you’d be fine.”
I snorted a laugh at this and shook my head. Laughing was better than crying at this point.
“One of those had better be for me,” I told Jasper, changing the subject away from Dylan. I was staring at the tray of coffees in his hands and he gave me a broad grin.
“Uh, of course it is.” Balancing the tray on one hand, he grabbed the marker pen from my chart and scribbled something onto the side of one of the cups. “See? Yours.”
He proudly handed over the cup, turning it so I could read what he’d written. Where the barista had scribbled “Beck,” Jasper had edited it to say “Mrs. Beck - Boss Bitch.”
