by Carter Blake
My ears perk up when I hear a muffled noise, getting louder and more distinct every inch we move. It’s almost like someone is trying to speak, but I can’t quite make it out.
A second later, my attention is directed toward a spark and a loud bang.
“Yippee ki-yay, motherfuckers!” Leviathan’s voice rings through the warehouse, echoing off the walls.
And in that moment, I react.
We all react, and the warehouse erupts violently, with a vengeance.
I spin around and grab the hand of the guard behind me. I twist it opposite of its natural bend, breaking it immediately. He recoils, cradling it with his other hand, and I bring his head to my knee, crushing his jaw.
He falls weightlessly to the ground.
I raise my weapon and turn away to pace the maze of boxes, with only Kalista on my mind.
I call her name, even though I know she probably can’t hear me through the grunts of the men and the bullets piercing the air and skin.
“Kalista!”
Nothing.
“Ah, fucker!” Leviathan screams.
I run toward him, looking down the sights of my UMP45 as I do, ready for anything that jumps out of me.
A box falls in front of me, and I jump back.
And then a man with indistinct features—other than smelling like an ashtray—kicks me, and I stumble.
As a reflex, I pull the trigger, and the bullets make a hole in his leg, and then I fire again, this time at his shoulder.
He fires back, and I duck, lunging for his waist and knock him down.
We tumble, punching each other, but I get the upper hand.
Hovering over his chest, I pull up his collar, and I see that it’s the boss.
“Where’s Kalista?” I shout in his face.
“Qui?”
“Kalista, motherfucker. Votre chèque!”
His mouth forms a disgustingly wicked grin and he laughs, low and harsh. Her name he doesn’t know, but your paycheck he does.
He’s fucking atrocious.
It pisses me off, and I pull out a pistol, pointing it to his head.
He sighs, almost in pleasure.
“Elle est délicieuse.” She is delicious.
I head-butt him, knocking him unconscious. Hopefully, his bullet wounds will drain him of his worthless existence.
“Leviathan!” I scream, hoping he’s still conscious as I get up and regain my composure.
“We’re good, man!” Manticore grunts out. “Go, get your girl!”
The sounds of men grunting, fists pounding, and guns blazing engulf the warehouse, and the heat is rising.
I take off my ruined jacket and run forward, screaming out for Kalista.
I faintly hear a “Griff! Here!” but it’s quickly covered.
Fuck. There’s someone with her.
I meet up with Jackal in the maze, and we both freeze as we turn and see her in the corner, surrounded by gallons of gasoline.
Tied to a chair, blindfolded, with a large man standing over her, muzzling her mouth.
She bites him, and he winces, releasing his hold. Then he punches her.
Rage consumes me, igniting every nerve and sense in my body.
If I could, I would burst, making sure to shatter every fucking fiber of that man’s being.
“You get him, I’ll untie her,” Manticore directs.
I launch forward like a fucking missile, its only mission being destruction and devastation.
I refrain from shooting him because that would be too easy, too quick. I need him to feel his pain, squirm in his torture.
He will never lay another fucking finger on Kalista ever again.
I punch him from the side, and he wobbles back. But he quickly responds, kicking me in the gut.
I squint, feeling a striking pain, though it only infuriates me more. I punch his face, his abdomen, and I knock him down with a swift kick to the knee.
He gets a few solid punches in, but nothing that stops me.
“Griff, stop!”
I turn to see Kalista running to me.
Getting up, the man takes advantage of my distraction and elbows me in the chin, knocking me down.
He readies himself to kick me in the stomach, but Kalista jumps on him.
“Kalista, no!” Manticore yells out, but she doesn’t listen.
She never does.
She jumps on his back, strangling his neck.
He jerks his body right and left, forcing her to either side, but she steadies himself by wrapping her legs around him.
She jabs her foot into his groin, making him keel from the pain. Then she lets go.
He gasps for breath while wincing in pain, and she stands in front of him, staring at him head on, and straightens her stance.
She’s emanating power and strength, and I’ve never been more attracted to her.
“Don’t you ever fucking touch me again,” she says and punches him in the cheek and jabs him in the nose.
“And this is for bruising his face.” She undercuts his chin and knees his abdomen.
She shrugs, brushes off her clothes, and turns to me while the man drops to the ground.
Bloody fucking hell.
Manticore and I are in awe, and we struggle to close our mouths from gaping.
“Would my damsel like a hand?” She winks at me and extends her hand out to help me up.
I laugh, wholeheartedly, and slightly groan as I get up.
I look at her and feel the tension melt away.
“We need to get the fuck out of here!” Leviathan yells out to us from wherever he is.
“Let’s blow this fucker up!” Jackal screams back.
I give her an inviting look, and she laughs, soothing my anxiety and anger more. I kiss the bruise that has already formed on her cheek.
“Care to join me, love?”
“I would love to join you.”
“Then your chariot awaits.”
Manticore runs ahead of us, and I grab Kalista's hand and pull her with me.
We reach the door in record time, dodging only a few Tartarus minions, thanks to Manticore’s favorite pistol.
All five of us run out, leaving Jackal a little behind.
“And, now, for the finale!” He screams, and we smile, approving of his decision.
Though Kalista seems a bit hesitant, she doesn’t object. I’m sure she won’t mind blowing this up when she finds everything out about her precious Daddy.
We keep our pace toward the car, while Jackal bites the grenade and pitches it through the second-floor windows of the warehouse.
He sprints toward us, and we huddle down behind the car, waiting for it to detonate.
I turn toward Kalista, and she meets my gaze, concern etched on her expression, but desire coloring her eyes.
I kiss her hungrily, and the warehouse explodes, shaking and destroying the world we once knew.
Chapter 37
Kalista
It feels as though my rescue is over as soon as it begins. I can see the beginning of bruises forming on my arms—proof that I fought my way out just as hard as Griff and his friends did.
“Kalista, you’re hurt,” Griff exclaims, when he notices me looking at my arms.
I can see worry in his blue eyes—and anger on my behalf as well. I’ve never seen him look at me that way before. I have to say I very much enjoy having him openly care about my well-being.
I smile at him as I raise an arm for him to see.
“Let’s call them battle scars, Griff. But, honestly, the bastards didn’t really harm me at all. You saw my moves. I’m a regular Wonder Woman,” I giggle.
Giggle.
You’d think that immediately after having been kidnapped, I wouldn’t be able to do such a thing.
Griff bursts out laughing at my comment, which causes his friends to laugh, too. I guess we’re all riding a bit of an adrenaline high.
“I think we all deserve some alcohol,” Leviathan says.
; I can’t speak for the rest of the group, but I wholeheartedly agree.
It’s only after we’ve sat down and consumed several shots in a tiny, obscure yet beautiful bar in the middle of the city that I’m ready to ask all of my burning questions about my rescue.
“So, how did you find me? How did you even know I had been kidnapped?”
I throw a sweeping glance over the men sitting around me—lingering on Griff. He stares right back.
Griffin gestures to Leviathan with a thumb, who dutifully grins in return. “He found you, of course. He kept tabs on certain buzzwords, and you came up. And just as well he was.”
Griff tries to play it off as if the whole thing is no big deal, but for once his facial expression betrays him—I can tell the prospect of me being taken had shaken him down to his core.
Again, I feel satisfied that he feels this way towards me. But more than that, I feel the overwhelming urge to take him in my arms and soothingly tell him that I’m okay.
That will have to wait, of course. I have more questions.
“I was so sure the hotel phone couldn’t have possibly been tapped. So how did the kidnappers know to catch me at the airport? Only my dad should have—”
Oh.
Oh.
If I hadn’t just worked it out for myself, the faces of the men around me would have given the game away.
“No,” I mouth in horror, the word barely audible. “My father? He wouldn’t. He couldn’t have.”
I don’t have any more words. I feel like my heart is breaking.
Griff puts his arms around me and pulls me in tightly to his muscled frame.
“Kalista…I’m sorry, love. It’s true.”
I glance up at him through my eyelashes, wet with tears that I don’t know what to do with.
“Why? Please, please tell me why.”
Griff looks uncomfortable, as if he doesn’t know how—or doesn’t want—to explain it. The Jackal makes a slight coughing noise, so I glance at him in my peripheral vision. Seems as if he’s sacrificed himself to explain it all to me.
“It was for money.”
Wow. Shocker. I had at least worked that much out for myself, even through the shock.
Griff shakes his head slightly. “Could have phrased that better, Jackal.”
He glances down at me, sad and angry in equal measures. There’s a sense of comfort knowing that he is here for me through this.
“But it’s true, Kali. Your dad was under severe financial pressure. His salary was capped at the company, and he had no means to combat his growing debt. You didn’t know anything about this?”
I shake my head furiously, teary-eyed and frustrated.
Did mom know? She can’t have, surely. She’d have let me know.
Griff waits for me to look back up at him before continuing his explanation. “Kali, were you aware that your grandparents set up a trust in your name, worth hundreds of millions of dollars? You gain access to it when you turn twenty-two. And your father is the co-trustee.”
I nod my head. That much isn’t news to me.
Griff raises an eyebrow at me, suggesting that he might have expected me to have mentioned it to him before.
I don’t want to say that I had been so wealthy in the first place that the trust hadn’t even crossed my mind over the past few months—I know that it would make me sound all the more like the spoiled, pampered heiress that I had been trying so desperately to break free from.
“Are you aware that it could be accessed by your father before your twenty-second birthday if it were for your own safety—such as for a ransom?”
I shake my head. Why would I be aware of such a thing, after all?
“Well, our dear Phoenix, that’s exactly what your father was going for. By having you kidnapped, he could access the trust to pull millions of dollars from it. And at the same time claiming back insurance money for both the Canary ring and yourself in the process,” Jackal adds.
My eyes widen at that.
“Kidnapping insurance is a thing?” I ask, incredulous.
Leviathan laughs. “Of course that’s what you ask. Apparently, it is a very real thing, Phoenix,” he chimes in.
I’m speechless. I’m sure that, in any other situation, Griff would revel in that. Instead, he’s mercifully silent, allowing me to process the news.
“So, my dad orchestrated it all from the very beginning? Including the attempted kidnapping on my birthday?”
Griff and his friends all nod in response.
“I know this must be hard for you to hear about your dad, love—” Griff begins, but I hold up a hand to stop him.
I can feel the fires of rage inside my stomach wanting to take over. I can’t let it all out—that would cause too much of a scene—but I can let out a little.
“Screw that bastard! Is my mom okay?”
Griff smiles softly at me. “She’s fine. She didn’t know anything. Still doesn’t. I’ll take you to see her once everything is sorted.”
Griff meeting my mom? Oh, wow. Seems as if all it took to make Griff serious about me was getting kidnapped. No biggie.
But knowing my mom had nothing to do with this helps quench that anger inside.
I don’t trust myself not to make some kind of comment that might shatter this new honesty of Griff’s, so I nod silently in response instead.
“If we’re all done with the explanation, I’d rather like to get a drink,” says a voice to my left.
The Manticore.
I’m shocked. I’ve barely heard him say a word since I was first introduced to him.
“Well, there’s a sentiment I can fully get behind,” I laugh.
Griff looks at me knowingly. I give him a small smile.
I won’t get over my father’s betrayal so easily. I probably never will.
But then I look at the people around me—men who all banded together to save me even though there was absolutely no benefit to them in doing so.
It seems as if—during the process of my blood family being destroyed—I’ve found a new family. One to which I can truly belong.
Then I look at Griffin.
Oh, I could get lost in that look. His blue eyes are looking at me so intensely that I feel my breath catch in my throat.
He’s looking at me like he loves me. God, I hope I’m not wrong.
Please don’t let me be wrong.
But now is not the time to explore such a matter. Now is the time to get drunk with my new family. Time to drown my pain with shots and to laugh and dance the night away.
“We can stay here for a few hours, but once morning hits, it’s back to full-throttle again, love. We need to get you out of here,” Griff says.
I nod at him, relieved that he seems to agree with me on this point: the serious stuff can wait for the morning.
Chapter 38
Kalista
My heart thuds in my chest, and my pulse races as we make our way through the city, our car weaving in and out of traffic as it takes us towards the docks.
“Where the fuck are we going?” I ask with my eyes wide, pleading for answers.
Griff keeps himself focused on the road but steals a few glances at me. He’s smiling excitedly, but his grip on the wheel is so tight, his knuckles are starting to turn white.
I don’t know if I should be looking forward to where we’re going, or if I should question the sincerity of his smile.
“Well, at this current moment in time, we’re heading down this lovely highway, and—”
“Griff!”
“We’re going to Spain.”
He says it so calmly, so nonchalantly, as if fleeing to a foreign country that we have no legitimate business being in is no big deal. The man’s handsome, but damn if he isn’t infuriating sometimes.
“Spain?”
Suddenly, I hear honking, and I gasp as we narrowly miss another car, swerving out of the lane and driving around it.
Alright, so maybe while he’s driving like a maniac thr
ough traffic isn’t the best time to argue his plan.
“Okay, so we’re going to Spain. Then what? How will we even get in? I’ve got no ID. Not even my fake Mrs. Langdon one.”
I’m stopped short when he waves a hand in front of me and points to the dash, giving me instructions.
“Glove box.”
“What?”
“The glove box, love. Open it.”
I pop the dash open, and I’m greeted by the sight of a leather-bound folder with silver clasps holding it together.
“That folder, hold onto it. We’re taking it with us. There’s an outside slip to it, and inside are two ferry tickets. Get them out, please.”
Sure enough, just as he said, there’s a pocket on the outside of it, and I reach inside to grab the slips of paper there.
Okay, so we’ve got ferry tickets, that’s great, but that still doesn’t help us when we get to Spain and need to show valid proof of ID, does it?
He better have something else up his sleeve.
We pull up to the docks in a screeching halt, and I rush to get out of the car. Grabbing the leather folder, I tuck it into my bag, and we make our way to the gate, where the attendant takes our tickets.
He looks at us, an uneasy and skeptical tone to his voice as he speaks.
“In a hurry?”
Griffin looks at him calmly and smiles and takes my hand into his, chuckling as he speaks to the man.
“Well, I promised my wife here that we’d make it to Spain before our honeymoon ended, and I didn’t want to miss the ferry. Happy wife, happy life, you know how it is.”
Seemingly convinced, the attendant nods and gives us our stubs, waving us through the gate and onto the marina.
If we weren’t in the situation that we were in, I would’ve loved to stay and explore. Or watch the sunset from here. Morocco really is a beautiful place, and I definitely want to come back at some point.
Though preferably on less strenuous circumstances.
As we walk up the gangway, I feel him take my hand into his and squeeze it gently. I look up at him, and he smiles, reassuring me that everything is going to be alright.
The ferry is large, and it actually has private cabins that you can pay extra for—which, of course, he did. We make our way to our cabin number on the ticket and go inside.
