“The thing about hiding amongst a bunch of destitute degenerates is that it only takes a little cash to find out the information one might need. A generous tip was all it took to get this number from one of those young girls who work at that disgusting excuse of a restaurant where my daughter works.” He was so damn smug. I wanted to shove my fist down his throat and rip his heart out of his chest with my bare hands.
“She’s not your daughter, Channing.” The sarcasm in my tone was thick enough to cut with a knife.
A fake laugh echoed out of the tiny speaker. “No, but Noble is my granddaughter. She belongs with me.”
Orley stifled a shriek and shoved a fist in her mouth to muffle the sound.
“I think I’ve made it pretty clear I’ll do anything it takes to bring her home.” The threat wasn’t even implied, it was right there in my face.
“You’re a murderer. No amount of money changes that. One day you’ll have to answer for the things you’ve done.” For Lester. For Orley’s mother. Channing Vincent had a huge wake-up call headed his way.
“That is highly unlikely. I’m not surprised you’re unfamiliar with how things work in my world. Have you ever had more than two cents to rub together, young man? Have you ever had anything handed to you?” He laughed that annoying, superior laugh again. “By the way, how is your mother? She likes that facility she’s in, correct? Wouldn’t it be such a shame if someone were to buy the place and shut it down?” I swore angrily under my breath and tightened my hold on the phone. I knew exactly what he was trying to do: bait Orley and cause me to do something rash and foolish so he could finally get me out of the way. “Don’t delude yourself into thinking you and I are on the same level. You can’t even see where I’m standing, you’re so much lower than I am.” He scoffed slightly and I could almost see him fixing his tie and looking down his nose in my direction. “Tell Orley I’m coming for Noble. I don’t care who or what stands in my way. I want my granddaughter back. I don’t care what happens to her mother, but the little girl is mine.”
The call went dead and when I looked over at Orley, she was crying. When our eyes met, she lowered her head and tried to cover the sound of her sobbing into her folded arms.
I threw the phone on the floor and launched myself across the bed so I could pull her into my arms. I kissed the top of her head and rocked her back and forth. “Don’t let him scare you. He wants you to do something stupid. He wants you to run so he can isolate you. He wants you alone and scared.”
She sniffed and slowly reached out to wrap her arms around my waist. “What about your mom? What if he does something bad to her?”
“Not gonna happen. That’s just what he wants you to think. He believes you’ll take Noble and rabbit the way you did before in order to keep the people around you safe. If you disappear, if I’m not around to keep an eye on you, he’s going to make his move and you won’t have anyone to watch your back. You have to trust me, Orley. I’ve got people who make your old man look like a kindergarten teacher working on a way to neutralize the threat. I don’t care if I have to sell my soul to the Devil, or if I’m chained to this city and the men who run it forever, I promise that asshole will never get his hands on you or Noble. You have to believe me.”
She sighed and tightened her hold. “I want to, but it’s hard. I watched him get away with murder, literally.”
“The rules are different in the city. Money isn’t the end all be all of things. Here, you have to be smart and ruthless to be at the top of the food chain. Channing asked if I’d ever had anything handed to me, and the answer is no. I’ve worked for every single thing I’ve got. He doesn’t understand that I’m not the only one here who has the same story. The guys he’s about to go up against aren’t for sale, and neither am I.”
She lifted her head and gave me a salty, wet kiss that tasted like tears. “There’s one thing you didn’t have to work for. One thing that was handed to you without any hesitation.” Her voice had a rasp to it that was sexy even though she still looked devastated.
“What would that be?” I smoothed a hand down her hair and sighed when I heard Noble rustling around in the living room.
Orley leaned into the touch and whispered, “My heart. I handed it over without question what feels like forever ago. I’m pretty sure it was yours even before you became my own personal hero.” She shook her head slightly. “And I’m starting to get used to the fact I have to share Noble’s heart with you on a regular basis these days.”
If that were the case, then she’d given me the most precious, treasured thing I was ever going to own. It would take an actual act of God for me to put that fragile, cherished gift at risk.
Living in this city prepared me for war, and not just the kind that was fought with violence and weapons. Sometimes battles had to be fought using strategy, not strength. Knowing what Channing was capable of, it was going to take more brains than I’d ever been forced to utilize and every single acquaintance I had.
Orley
“I told you, you can’t leave. That’s exactly what he wants you to do!” It was the first time Solo raised his voice at me, and it was scary. He was intimidating when he wasn’t red-faced and angry. When his temper was unleashed, it was downright terrifying.
I held Noble, who was crying as if the world was ending, tightly to my chest and cast a worried glance over Solo’s shoulder where a crowd was gathered on the steps in front of the Skylark. Erica was watching the dramatic scene between the two of us play out with worried eyes, and Riley was crying almost as hard as Noble because her friend was leaving and she had no idea when she would be back.
Carmen, the very pretty waitress who lived across the hall from Solo, was glaring at me and practically snarling. They all loved Solo and couldn’t believe I packed up everything I could fit in my piece-of-crap car and was ready to hit the road. To them, I was breaking the neighborhood hero’s heart, not doing what had to be done in order to protect my daughter. Everyone was already raw and on edge from Lester’s death, watching me walk away from Solo in such a hurried, careless way wasn’t going to make me any friends in this heated showdown.
I brushed my fingers through Noble’s curls more for my comfort than hers. I met Solo’s dark glare under the brim of his hat and chewed on my lower lip so hard I knew it was going to tear. He couldn’t stop yelling and I couldn’t get my voice above a shaky whisper. “I have to go. I told you, you aren’t in charge of deciding what’s best for me, and you won’t ever be in charge of deciding what I should or shouldn’t do for my daughter.” The words burned on their way out and pushed Solo back a step.
“Stop yelling!” Noble’s wail could probably be heard ten blocks away. “I don’t want to go, Mommy. I don’t want to leave Solo and Riley.”
God, it was such an ugly scene. There was no way it could be missed. We were making a commotion that could be witnessed from miles away. I hated every single second of it, but it had to be done. Taking a steadying breath, I reached around Solo so I could pull open the back door of the beat-up sedan and deposit my daughter into her car seat. She cried and screamed Solo’s name the entire time.
When we ran from Channing in the middle of the night, things had been so rushed and scary, there was no time to process what we were leaving behind. I was pretty sure Noble’s three-year-old perception still didn’t grasp the fact her grandma was gone for good and her grandpa was the reason why. However, now she fully grasped that we were about to leave her favorite person behind, and she was having none of it. The sound of her body-shaking sobs broke my heart, and it took everything I had inside of me to keep from breaking down into a worthless pile of goo right there on the sidewalk in front of the man watching me like he didn’t even know who I was.
“I’ve got to go. One day you’ll understand.” The words felt like they were wrenched out of my chest. They felt clumsy and wrong on my tongue and I hated saying them. Hated everything about this situation.
Solo swore now that Noble was out of earsho
t. Walking away from him right now ranked right up there as one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, right next to becoming a single mom as a teenager and leaving behind a very affluent lifestyle to start over from scratch.
He must have seen me waver and the indecision in my eyes, because the next thing I knew my face was buried in the center of his chest and my silent tears were soaking into his t-shirt. I felt his hand on the back of my head, and a second later his beloved ballcap, the one which rarely left his head, was slapped down on top of my barely brushed hair. I was a mess, inside and out, and there was little the hat was going to do to cover it up.
Solo squeezed me so tight I couldn’t breathe and I worried my ribs would crack. I hugged him back far more carefully since his side was still a galaxy of ugly bruises.
“Promise me you’ll find a way to get in touch with me when you get where you’re going.” It was a command that was so Solo. Always looking out for me, even when he looked like he could happily murder me with his bare hands.
I nodded, wiped my eyes dry, and gently pushed him away so I could walk to the driver’s door.
“Orley.” I looked up when Erica called my name. Her eyes were kind but very worried behind the lenses of her glasses. “Maybe you should listen to Solo. If he thinks it’s dangerous for you to go, maybe you need to stay here in the city for a little bit.”
I let out a breath and slowly shook my head. “I can’t. Not right now. I don’t have time to explain all the reasons why, but it’s better if I go. Better for all of you. Trust me when I say you don’t need the added trouble of having me and Noble around.” I almost whimpered out loud when I saw the other woman tear up a tiny bit. I choked on my next breath and jerked open the car door. “I’m going to try my best to come back… promise.”
She must’ve understood there was deeper meaning to me leaving the perfect guy behind, because she lifted her own crying child into her arms and gave me a sharp nod.
Before I slipped into the car, Solo’s hand shot out and he used his thumb to wipe away the last stray tears rolling down my cheeks. In a tone so soft and low only I could hear him, he growled, “Be careful. Don’t do anything stupid.” He tugged the brim of his hat down so our gazes could no longer meet and cleared his throat roughly. “Drive safe. Keep your eyes open. Take care of yourself and your kid.”
I nodded mutely and got into the car, knowing if I waited any longer, I wouldn’t be able to go.
Noble was still crying and kicking her feet. When I pulled away from the curb, it felt like I was leaving my heart on the sidewalk at Solo’s feet. The shriek of “Mommy!” and the pleas to turn around and go back didn’t stop no matter what I said or how much I reassured Noble everything would be okay. I suddenly realized what it was like when Solo begged me to trust him to take care of everything when I was a hysterical mess. It was hard to hear anything or process any emotion when your heart was breaking into a bunch of painful pieces.
Even though she was throwing the mother of all fits and making my head hurt, I still managed to keep an eye on the road behind me as I started to drive out of town. I was headed out of the city and far away from those gilded gates where the monsters lived. I was probably ten miles into the hasty trip when I caught sight of a black SUV following behind me. It took another five miles for a white SUV to join the black one. A loud rush whooshed between my ears and my palms started to sweat so badly it was hard to keep hold of the steering wheel. Noble must’ve realized I was about to break because she suddenly went quiet in the backseat.
“Mommy,” her small voice was hoarse from screaming. “Look at the train.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw she was pointing in the direction of the train that was chugging down the tracks we were quickly approaching. The gates were already down, which meant both SUVs behind us were going to be on my bumper in no time.
“I see it, sweetheart. Can you count how many cars there are? And what colors do you see?” I wanted to keep her attention off the fact the gates suddenly lifted so I could zoom across them, dangerously close to the engine leading the long line of graffiti-colored cars. I would never normally take such a risk, but right now I had no choice. Luckily, Solo had spent some significant time working on my junker of a car while we were sequestered away in the garage. The old piece of crap was running like a sports car now and had no issue leaving the SUVs in the dust.
As soon as we were literally on the right side of the tracks, I picked up speed and raced up the street and around the corner to the very busy mini-mall where it would be easy for my car to get lost in the crowd.
It was easy enough to spot the expensive Range Rover standing out like a diamond in a collection of rocks. It’d been a good long while since I’d been around a luxury car, and the reminder of how messed up my life was at the moment because of the kind of people who could afford a car that cost as much as a condo made me hesitate momentarily, but there wasn’t time to second guess. Those SUVs had to have made it across the tracks and were no doubt looking everywhere for me.
I shoved open the door, ignoring Noble’s nine-hundred questions about where we were, why we were stopping, and about who the stunningly beautiful woman climbing out of the Range Rover was.
She was several years older than me, but approximately the same height. I wondered how it was possible for anyone to mistake the two of us for the same person. She appeared completely unbothered. The long red wig she was wearing was pretty close to my own auburn locks, but even though we were both dressed in black leggings and oversized hoodies, her pants looked like they were made of skin-tight leather, and there was no mistaking her body was about one-hundred times better than mine under the baggy shirt. Trying to keep my cool, I rushed to pull Noble out of the back seat and hefted the stuffed go-bag Solo had made me pack for the both of us onto my shoulder.
When I was situated, the other woman reached out and snatched Solo’s hat off my head and snapped it on top of her own. She smiled a breathtaking grin at Noble and reached out to tap my daughter’s chin in such a way that made me think she probably had kids of her own. It was a subtle, motherly gesture toward a curious child, and it also calmed some of my rampaging nerves.
The stunner lifted a dark eyebrow in my direction and held out a flawlessly manicured hand with the keys to the Range Rover. “The GPS is already loaded to take you up to the house. Don’t be shocked when you get to the guard house at the base of the mountain. My husband is sort of a freak when it comes to security. The guards know you’re coming, so when you get there, show them your ID and they’ll let you up to the house.” Her grin widened. “The house looks like something you would find in the Swiss Alps, so if you see a massive log cabin that makes you feel like you walked into a ski lodge on accident, you’re in the right place.”
I took the keys from her and gulped. “Thank you. I’m not sure why you’re helping me, but thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
She bopped Noble on the end of her nose and slid a pair of mirrored Tiffany sunglasses over her startlingly clear, gray eyes. I kind of wanted to be her when I grew up… whoever she was. She oozed confidence and control. She seemed like a badass and I could use a solid dose of that right about now.
“I was an exotic dancer when I was your age. I spent every single day trying to convince very wealthy men they were not entitled to every little thing they wanted.” She reached out and tugged on one of Noble’s curls. “I also have a baby girl I would die for, so it was a no-brainer when my husband told me Solo needed some help because he went and found himself a complicated little family.”
I looked her over and gave my head a shake. “No one is going to believe you’re me.”
She laughed. “People see what they want to see. Just like that fight you and Solo staged in front of your building. People like drama, and a public break-up is kind of like an accident on the street. No one can look away, no one looks past the carnage. Get in the Rover and get your baby safe. If everything goes according to plan, everyone
can sleep easy tonight. Don’t worry too much about Solo tangling with Vincent. He couldn’t have better backup than my old man. The worst thing you can do in this town is piss off my husband. Revenge is sort of his stock and trade.” She pulled the brim of Solo’s hat down lower and moved around me so she could get inside my crappy car. She told me to make sure I put on the dark wig and sunglasses she left on the front seat, then flicked her fingers toward the Range Rover in a get-going gesture.
It was official. Everyone in my new life was way better at subterfuge and deceit than I was. I felt like I stepped into a spy movie and everyone had the script but me.
As I was buckling Noble, who got her own tiny hat and sunglasses, into the expensive, high-end car seat in the back of the Rover, she asked again, “Who was that pretty lady?”
I sighed and bent forward to kiss her on the end of her nose. “A friend… I think.”
In this upside-down world I called my own, friends were people I would’ve considered enemies, and my enemies were people who claimed to be my family. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to adjust to it, but I was going to try my best, because just as Solo informed me when we first met, sometimes the best people could be found in the worst places.
Solo
Staying seated in the front seat of my boss’s rare Plymouth GTX while the white SUV ran Orley’s little car off the road just outside of the city limits might have been the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. We parked in a clearing just off the side of the road, hidden by a roofing advertisement, but in clear view of the only part of the road wide enough for the collision to happen without both cars crashing. It was a strategic spot with a clear view of all the crazy events unfolding, yet allowing us our anonymity.
Logically, I knew the redhead behind the wheel wasn’t her, and I knew Noble wasn’t in the car. However, none of that stopped me from automatically reaching for the door handle when the car violently skidded off the road. A large hand with a bumblebee tattooed on it clamped down on my shoulder and held me in place. My boss was one of the few men who had the physical strength to keep me still when every instinct I had was screaming at me to bolt.
Downfall Page 20
