Our sanity.
Our souls.
I have no choice other than my final one.
It’s time to eat crow.
Every day, I feel worse and worse about what’s happened, and now, I need to find her. I need to get them back together and fix this, or my family will forever be fractured.
Crofts.
Gideons.
We’ve been woven together so tightly that if we lose one person, we have a hole in the fabric of our lives. Right now, the material is fraying and fraying thin.
We are on the cusp. If I don’t pull this out of the shitter, my family is done.
This is the Crofts’ last stand, and it’s going to be bloody.
Yeah, we don’t have anyone gunning for us, personally, yet, but I’ve already lost my best friend. That’s a pain I never saw coming.
None of us did.
We are all at the mercy of fate, and that doesn’t, as a control freak, sit well with me—at all.
Who will watch my son and wife if I go down in this fight?
Who will make sure my legacy goes on if I cease to exist?
Up to this moment, it was Dimitri.
Up to this moment, I had no doubts he would do that for me—in my memory.
Now…
Yeah, we are fractured.
The family has been broken, battered, and kicked around to the point we’re exhausted.
We’re damaged, and I only have so much time to stick us back together again before it’s a permanent rift in our lives.
If I don’t find a way to get Poppy Wayne back, make her see that she’s safe with us, and fix this between myself and Dimitri, my family will never heal.
Time is running out.
We will be forced to break apart, go our separate ways, and never look back.
I’m afraid my best friend has lost faith in me.
I’m terrified that he’s right.
Commissioner Raye, that asshole, couldn’t damage us by way of Emma.
No.
Unfortunately, he still damaged us.
Now, he’s playing dirty in Vegas, building up his arsenal of foot soldiers in an ugly war that will tear this city apart at the seams. He’s preparing for what’s coming, and he’s likely enjoying it too.
I can see the end happening.
Vegas, as always, is on the cusp.
Only, I’ve stopped caring.
If I don’t have my family and if I don’t have my best friend, I don’t have anything.
Until this is settled, I can’t help others. I’m about to ask my wife for something so huge that I know she’s going to hate me for the rest of our lives.
I’m about to ask her to look the other way as I do anything in my power, good or bad, to find Poppy for Dimitri.
I may miss my son’s birth.
I may die in the process.
Yet, I’m still going to, once again, put Vegas, the shitmess, and everything else, ahead of her.
I hope she doesn’t give me my walking papers. I pray she sees I’m struggling, and in true Emma fashion, reaches out, takes my hand, and leads me through this.
I’m at the end of my rope.
I’ve lost my way.
In the process, I’ve realized something about this godforsaken town. Here, good is evil, evil is wicked, and wicked will eat you alive.
I can’t save Vegas.
It’s too far gone.
I have no hope.
I have no chance.
Worst of all, I’ve been hit with the cold, hard reality that I should have seen from the beginning.
I can’t balance the scale.
Why?
Justice doesn’t live here. It can’t survive in this vacuum of misery.
I’ve been fighting a losing battle.
There is NO JUSTICE. There is only corruption and lawlessness. I know now what needs to be done. I have to play the game differently or in the end, we won’t survive.
Crime is king, and I’ve misplaced my crown.
Sincerely,
Greyson Croft
Prologue
Las Vegas
Three Months Later
H e couldn’t believe he was going to do this, but his back was to the wall. With no choices left on the table, Greyson Croft had but one option in all of this. Exhausting everything, it all came down to this one moment.
Even going there was risky.
Even heading to that part of the world was risking it all. Only, he was well aware that there was no choice for him from this point forward.
It was do or die.
For his family, it was time to regroup, ask for help, and pray that he could fix the mess that was threatening to spread lawlessness across Vegas.
The dam was barely holding it back.
As a family, and team, they’d worked hard to cleanup Vegas and shutdown a sex ring. They’d fought the good fight, and now, he needed a little help to make his own world a little less gloomy.
Okay, a lot of help.
The gloom was taking over.
Greyson knew that if he didn’t resolve the big, pink elephant in the room, he was going to lose his best friend in all of this. There was a chasm between them.
A HUGE ONE.
Dimitri was at the point where he barely spoke to him unless there was no other way to convey something. In fact, anything they discussed was curt, short, and to the point that he was beginning to see the writing on the wall.
It was over.
The end was coming.
Dimitri and his anger were preparing for a hasty retreat from the family.
For the last three months, he’d been even quieter, and that was saying a lot since the man was notoriously silent to begin with. He didn’t say much when in a group, but it was what he did say that spread the most fear.
The ambivalence toward Greyson was there.
Dimitri didn’t care about anything anymore—his job, his life, or the people around him.
This strike at Poppy did him in. It was as if it had been the straw that broke the camel’s back, and he’d given up. Beneath the throwing in of the towel, there was so much festering hate.
It was crystal clear.
Dimitri had given up his duties.
He didn’t ask Emma where she was going or tell Heath to follow her. He let her come and go, uncaring if she was hurt or if the family went down.
It said it all.
Someone had given up the fight, and Greyson understood why. In his shoes, he would have too.
He got it.
Dimitri had watched his woman being raped, and that made a man feel impotent. Poppy wasn’t even his woman, and Greyson had battled that very feeling.
Greyson was hurting for him, but how did one even go about trying to fix that?
How did he put a bandage on it?
How did you tell a man it would be okay when you weren’t even sure yourself?
You didn’t.
Words wouldn’t soothe this.
Action would.
Since the ball was dropped, Greyson knew he was to blame. When you ran the family, you got the perks, and the shit, that went along with it.
Here was the shit.
A whole sack of it.
It was getting so bad that Greyson knew he had to step in and take one for the team.
How bad?
When they went to the gym to work out, there was silence.
Each time Emma asked him to have dinner with her, he declined, and instead, escaped home.
On top of that, Petra and Sam stayed downstairs with their father, and Emma’s heart was breaking.
Greyson saw it.
While his wife wouldn’t say it to his face, to keep from hurting him even more, she was upset about what was happening in their lives. They had all sacrificed a lot, and now, he couldn’t pull it together.
Greyson couldn’t save his family, and that made him feel empty inside. There was one option left on the table.
That was why he was there.
>
Everyone, who knew what he was planning, had told him it was a bad idea, but it didn’t matter. Being seen there was one thing he could live with for his family. It was akin to putting a bull’s-eye on him, and destroying their well-built façade, but that was life. It was time to visit them.
It was time to beg.
Grovel.
Plead.
Greyson could see the writing on the wall, and it all meant one thing. It was time to swallow his pride and go to the people he knew he shouldn’t involve in this. Once, Dimitri had gone to the seedy underbelly to ask for help to find Viktor, and this was equally as dangerous for him.
Friendship only went so far.
This, too, would be make-or-break.
As he sat in the back of the limo, Heath with him by his side, he knew they could tell him no—and he likely deserved it. After all, he was on their turf, and coming there was a bad thing.
Only…
It was all he had left.
He was there to plead with them, and hopefully, they’d give him a way to make this right.
Right now, he only needed an upper hand until he could get back on his feet.
God!
He was like a junkie going to a dealer and begging for a hit. My, my the mighty had fallen.
Truth be told, it had to work. He fought for justice, and so did they. Now, he was going to hope they could give him something, so in exchange, he could get Dimitri to forgive him. Greyson was desperate to reconnect with the man he called best friend. The distance between them was only growing with each passing day.
He was afraid the wound would never heal.
Dimitri tended to hold a grudge...
He felt hopeless.
That was the only word to describe it. Greyson was days from breaking, and he knew that this was his last chance to rectify the situation. The lines were blurred, and he knew even asking for something like this was crossing a line.
It was asking a great deal of a friendship—and Greyson only hoped it wouldn’t insult another friend.
It was ironic.
To save a friend, he had to impose on one.
As they headed toward the gate, Heath rolled down the window beside him. Greyson had brought him for this very reason. Heath, again, would pave the way. He would get them in, and then, Greyson would grovel if need be.
He had to find Poppy.
Time was running out.
His wife was due in a couple of weeks, Dimitri was ready to leave, and he was feeling that dread building in his gut over what would happen if the family were to breakup.
Christ!
That would get sticky.
His son was married to Dimitri’s sister. They couldn’t part amicably as if nothing had happened. The whole family was tied up in one big knot—bound together with blood and financial ties.
It wasn’t just Curtis.
Christopher Ford was part owner in Gideon Security and controlled thirty-three percent of the business. Dimitri couldn’t get rid of him. Natasha had taken care of that.
How did it affect him?
Chris was Emma’s best friend, and that bound them together for the long haul.
Plus, Sam and Petra were like her own children. She mothered and loved them as her own. Speaking of children, it got even trickier. Sadie was the first Croft-Dimitri member, and neither side was going to let that sweet baby go.
That was their grandchild.
On both sides.
The whole thing was like taking two balls of yarn and throwing them around in the same confined space.
Yeah, you could see the different threads, but you couldn’t unknot them as hard as you tried.
They were now one.
It was one, big mess.
Because of this familial issue, Greyson was going to make it right if it was the last thing he did.
Well, after saving Poppy.
“Wow, Heath! I didn’t expect to see you,” Johnny said, leaning into the limo to check out who else was riding with the man. When a limo pulled up, they had procedures that had to be followed—despite the occupants.
“Yeah, my boss needs to see them. Let us through.”
The man at the gate hesitated.
This wasn’t scheduled.
“You know me, man. You know I’m on the up-and-up. Mr. C needs to see them.”
Johnny knew Heath would never hurt the Blackhawks.
Hell!
He loved them like his own. It was the man beside him that worried Johnny. He was decked out in a Rolex, shiny shoes, and that look.
Johnny had seen it before.
It was the look of a man who would do anything to get what he wanted.
“We’ll have to scan it,” he stated.
Heath relented.
He didn’t have a choice.
“Go for it, but for the record, I vouch for Mr. C,” he said, knowing it would only go so far.
The job was the job, and they had theirs to do.
When the limo had been scanned, the driver patted down, and the team satisfied, they were good to let them pass.
“Head up to the house, buddy,” Johnny said, giving his old friend a handshake. “I hope I see you around.”
Yeah, he did too.
“Thanks,” Heath stated.
When the window was closed, Greyson spoke, “Thank you,” he offered. “I know that you’re risking a lot being seen with me too.”
The big man shrugged.
“I don’t give a shit what people think of me,” he admitted. “I can kill them if they make me sad.”
Greyson laughed.
“You have a point.”
Oh, he only wished it were so easy for him in his world. That would make things simple, indeed.
The limo headed up the drive and toward the house. The large home was awash in the moonlight, and the windows were lit up with cheer and love.
Fall on the East Coast was always a good time of the year. In Vegas, it was hot—hellishly hot—and then hot again. He actually missed this time of the year.
He longed for it.
Greyson’s own home had once been like this. It gave him solace. Then he’d sold it to move West. They’d gotten bigger, better homes, and since then, that precious solitude had burned to the ground.
Everyone said that the home was the heart.
Maybe they were right.
When Terrace Glen had been blown-up, maybe they had lost that too. It was one more thing to dwell on as he spent many a sleepless night pacing Sky Villa.
Oh, and he would.
As the vehicle came to a stop, Heath went to get out.
“You don’t have to go in,” Greyson stated. “I appreciate that you even came, Heath.”
The big man smiled his toothy grin.
“Mr. C! You never have to thank me for things like this. I love you and Mrs. C. I don’t mind helping. Besides, I miss Elizabeth. She makes me happy.”
Well, at least Heath didn’t hate his guts.
Yet.
Greyson was sure his luck would turn and that would happen at some point. It always did.
Case in point?
His life.
“Besides, I wanted to see them and maybe the kids,” Heath offered. “They were my family before you and Mrs. C. You don’t forget family.”
There was that word again.
Family.
God!
He once loved that word.
Now?
Not so much.
Yeah, he hated to break it to the man, but as of late, anything to do with him, or family, was destined to blowup in his face.
“Shall we?” Greyson asked.
Heath took that as his cue.
In his lumbering way, Heath opened the door and was out before his boss. There was security roaming around, and he felt at home there—but he knew that the team would still see Greyson Croft as a bad guy.
They had no clue.
The media was a bunch of liars.
Their side of the cou
ntry was basically a screwed-up mess. This man was the law, and he was proud to work for him.
Heath escorted him to the big, red, double front doors, and pushed the doorbell.
They listened to the friendly, pleasant chime of Fort Whitefox-Blackhawk.
It didn’t take long.
When it opened, there was a surprise from both sides of the door. First, that Ethan was opening it for himself, and not someone who worked for him, and secondly, that his ex-security was on his porch.
“Heath?” Ethan Blackhawk asked. “Are you okay? Has something happened? Why are you here?”
It was clear he didn’t see Greyson behind him.
The big, wall of a man stepped aside.
Behind him, Ethan saw that they had even more company. His eyebrow winged up. He had a mob boss standing on his front porch.
Well, this was a very interesting turn of events—one he hadn’t seen coming. While he didn’t mind helping Greyson, him turning up here was…
Dangerous.
“Greyson?”
“I need your help.”
Ethan couldn’t miss the desperation that he heard in his voice. He couldn’t miss that sound of pleading in those four little words. To him, it said it all, and Ethan knew he couldn’t be upset for the man showing up there.
“Come in.”
Greyson released the breath he was holding, convinced that the man was going to send him back. It looked like he could let go of that fear.
He was one step closer to getting some help.
Croft hoped.
As he followed the man into his home, he was taken aback by—not the grandeur or luxury—like at his place—but how homey it felt.
He missed this.
It was Sunday mornings and pancakes in Philly.
It was waking with Emma when she was still sheriff.
He was waxing poetic for a simpler time.
Don’t get him wrong…Sky Villa was an amazing place, but that’s not how he saw himself raising his son, Mac. He pictured a yard, swing set, and maybe a kiddie pool.
He pictured flowers, and a dog, and…
And Vegas, like always, had destroyed that dream.
“I’m sure this has to be important,” Ethan stated. “I know you didn’t fly all of the way here from Las Vegas just to stop in for a drink.”
Yeah, no.
Plus, Greyson got the meaning of what Ethan was saying. What he wanted to say was, ‘Are you insane to come and be seen here’?
No Justice_A Croft Mob Family Book Page 2
