by Amy Love
And that was why when he was jumped by two guys, not the ones driving the Hummer, as soon as he turned off Micky’s bike, Gryff just let it happen. He let them take the drugs, putting up a believable amount of fight until he let them subdue him. It wasn’t as if they were chumps or anything; they’d taken advantage of his distraction with the bike to get the upperhand, and if Gryff wanted to fend them off, he would have had to fight like hell to do so against both of them.
What he didn’t appreciate was the hood. A cloth bag was thrown over his head the second one of those jokers got his hands behind his back, and he was led roughly out of the garage to somewhere he didn’t know. The air was different. The sounds were different. They were inside suddenly, but not the warehouse. No, the warehouse made him feel empty. Even with the hood covering his face, Gryff felt confined suddenly, like there wasn’t enough air for everyone in the room.
“Mr. Reeves,” Phillip Crest’s voice sounded suddenly, breaking the tension like a pin popping a balloon. “I was beginning to think I’d have to hire a hit on a person I very much like.”
Someone yanked the hood off and shoved him into a hard wooden chair. Gryff found himself facing a desk, behind which sat the man of the hour. As he’d suspected, they were in a small office cluttered with papers and books and rifle parts and bags of white powder. Not exactly the most organized crime boss Gryff had ever seen.
“And by someone you very much like, you mean Beth?” he asked gruffly, feeling his blood starting to boil just at the thought. When Phillip nodded, he did his best to give no reaction, knowing that she was completely and utterly safe for now. “Well, maybe you just shouldn’t kill her.”
“But you were misbehaving,” Phillip crooned, leaning his elbows on his desk, totally ignoring the grunt who deposited Gryff’s grocery bag of drugs beside him. “You slipped your leash and went for a walk. Bad dog, Mr. Reeves. Bad dog.”
“I just needed to make sure Beth’s dad was okay,” he insisted, shifting in his chair. They hadn’t tied his hands this time. That was a mistake. “She’d never forgive me if I didn’t.”
“That’s presumptuous of you.”
“It was presumptuous of you to tell me you had her when you didn’t,” Gryff countered with a raised eyebrow. Phillip studied him for a long moment, then chuckled.
“I suppose we should have added a tighter chain,” the man said, sighing. He then leaned forward and met Gryff’s eye, holding the stare unflinchingly. “Just know that wherever you put her I can get her. She isn’t untouchable, even if you stored her at that pathetic Steel Phoenix bar you all own. If you fuck with me again, I’ll splatter her brains on the wall of her bedroom and blame it on you.” When he didn’t respond right away, Phillip leaned back in his high-backed leather chair and remarked, “Do you understand the gravity of that promise, Mr. Reeves?”
“I’m not an idiot,” Gryff bit out, and Phillip laughed.
“That’s still to be determined.”
Gryff’s teeth dug into the meaty inner part of his cheeks, but he said nothing, not wanting to be dragged into a ridiculous game of cat and mouse here. Phillip liked to hear the sound of his own voice—and Gryff wasn’t up for playing today.
“Any trouble finding the place?” Phillip asked after a lengthy pause had settled. Gryff shrugged. “Anyone follow you?”
Flashing red and blue lights danced across his mind, but he shook them off. “Nope.”
“Well, I can’t exactly say that I trust you, but for the sake of our conversation’s progress, let’s just say your answer satisfies me.”
“Great.”
They stared at one another again, two combatants ready to pull the trigger at any moment. Behind him, Phillip’s goons shifted uneasily.
“Let’s get things moving then,” Phillip mused, sitting up a little straighter and clapping his hands together. “Let’s see what you brought me, shall we?”
He set the grocery bag in front of him, then nodded to it when Gryff shifted in his seat.
“What? You want me to whip it out?” Gryff asked. His question was met with amused silence, and he stood with a heavy sigh to dig into the bag. Moments later each bag of laced cocaine was set out before Phillip, and he took the cloth grocery bag away and tossed it behind him. “Satisfied?”
“This doesn’t seem like the amount I asked for,” Phillip told him after a moment, “but I guess it’ll do for now.”
“Great, guess I’m done here—”
“Sit,” Phillip ordered, and his goons physically blocked Gryff’s path to the office door. Rolling his eyes, Gryff did as he was told, discreetly shuffling his chair a little closer in the process.
“Look, I don’t know what else you want from me, but—”
“Relax, Mr. Reeves…” Phillip grabbed the nearest bag to him and opened it. “I just want to make sure this is as good as the last stuff you brought me. After all, you were gone a very long time today.”
“It’s from the same supply,” Gryff insisted, his hands curling into fists. Phillip gave some kind of grunting noise in acknowledgement, then cleared off a space on his desk to set out a line of white powder. The room descended into an uneasy quiet, the only sounds coming from Phillip as he snorted up one line, then another, then a third. When he was done, he all but fell back in his chair and gave a cry of ecstasy.
“That,” he growled, as he wiped under his nose, his pupils probably the size of quarters, “is some excellent cocaine, Mr. Reeves. You Phoenixes really do have an in on all the top-brand shit in this town.”
“We’ve been doin’ it a long time,” Gryff mused. “We know how this business runs. You know, where to find the best shit in town. Hell, probably in the state.”
“I think that’s a little…” Phillip trailed off and let out a relaxed sigh. “That’s a bit of bragging, Mr. Reeves. No one likes a man who brags.”
“I guess no one gives a shit about you then, right?” Gryff asked, mouth curving into a smirk when Phillip’s eyes snapped open and glared at him. “Besides, it’s not bragging if it’s the truth. The Steel Phoenixes are on the top of their game here. They know what they’re doing every step of the way.”
Phillip gave a great braying bout of laughter before saying, “Not when I started killing them.”
“Yeah, that tripped us up a little,” Gryff agreed. “I mean, it took me months to even catch wind of you. Hell, you had me stuck on the dean for a long time. I gotta give credit where credit is due.”
The compliment seemed to pacify him. “That you do.”
“But see, the thing about being the most established gang in the area, the one that knows where to get all the best shit, is that we also know what to do when assholes like you try to muscle us out.”
“I didn’t muscle you out,” Phillip hissed, sitting up and leaning forward across his desk, high as a kite. He should have been wired, but the sedatives were probably starting to kick in. “I fucking annihilated you. I bested you. I slaughtered all your little worms, squashed them into the wet pavement after the storm, and I won’t stop. This city will be mine before the month is out.”
Gryff watched the man blink hard, as if finally realizing this wasn’t the high he was used to. All he needed to do was keep him talking a little longer—until the sedatives knocked him straight out.
“Is that so? Care to tell me how you plan to eliminate a Blackwoods institution like the Steel Phoenixes?”
“No,” Phillip snapped, this time sounding a little more sluggish. “Why the fuck would I… Why would I… You don’t get to…”
“You okay, boss?” one of the goons asked, as Phillip placed a hand to his forehead. “You need some water or something?”
“Maybe a pillow,” Gryff suggested, “because when the tranqs kick in, his head is going to hit that desk hard.”
Gryff acted in the stunned silence that followed. Lunging forward, he nailed Phillip Crest as hard as he could in the face with his fist, knocking him back into that fucking pretentious high-backed
chair, his eyes rolling back in his head. The hit felt good, but there wasn’t much time to bask in the glory, not when he was about to be jumped by two muscled goons.
“I’m wearing a wire,” he shouted as they descended upon him, Phillip only barely conscious. “I’m wearing a wire that the police just attached to me on my way here. They pulled me over and instead of giving them the drugs, I’m giving them you, Crest…”
Chapter 45
“W-What did you just say?” Phillip stared at him with unseeing eyes, his pupils dilated and mouth hanging open. Gryff couldn’t help but grin, enjoying the look of pure and utter confusion that read across his face. It was pretty stellar seeing someone so powerful suddenly so weak. Even though his knuckles ached from his punch, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“The police,” Gryff repeated, Phillip’s goons kept temporarily at bay from the threat of the wire, as if some little slip of metal and plastic and electricity acted like a force field.
“But you… you…” Phillip pressed his lips together and seemed to struggle to swallow hard. His mouth was probably getting dry, a side effect of the particular sedative Gryff had chosen. Soon he’d be drifting into unconsciousness, and when he awoke, a whole new kind of shitstorm would be awaiting.
“What? You think because I’m a Steel Phoenix I’m above using the police to get what I want?” His lips curled back into a sadistic smile, one he hoped Phillip would see every time he closed his eyes in the near future, and then placed his hands on his hips. “If it meant taking you down, I would have worked with anyone. Now I get immunity and your ass is going to jail.”
“D-Do something,” Phillip gasped. He tried to lift his arms to point to one of the goons, but they barely made it a foot up before collapsing back onto his lap. Those glossy eyes twitched to Gryff, and with his last deep breath, he hissed, “J-Just kill him…”
The room was quiet, peaceful even, as Phillip slumped over in his chair, and Gryff remained unmoved as one of the goons darted over to check his pulse. When the burly black haired lackey was satisfied that his boss was alive, he rounded on the spot to glare at Gryff. Oh, if looks could kill—Gryff would have been more than six feet under.
“How do we even know you’re wearing a wire?” he barked, and Gryff sensed the other goon shifting behind him. There was the slight creak of the hardwood floor, the rustle of cloth fabric as he moved his arms. Holding the man’s gaze, Gryff reached into the top of his shirt and pulled out the microphone portion of the wire, displaying it to both men with the best shit-eating grin he could muster.
“Keep talking, boys,” Gryff goaded. “I bet the pigs want to record as much of your involvement as they can get.”
The two goons looked at each other dumbly, lacking the nuance that the other pair had to have full conversations without saying a word in front of Gryff. He tensed, waiting for them to spring to action, and at the slightest movement behind him, he lurched forward and grabbed the nearest open bag of coke. Without hesitation, he flung the bag at the guy on the other side of the desk, effectively blinding him with a dangerous combo of a potent drug and a powerful sedative, and then turned back to deal with goon number two.
Gryff managed to dodge the first swing, the second, and even the third. He nailed the guy right in the gut with one punch, then brought his knee up for the final blow to his nose. There was a sickening crack when his knee collided with cartilage, and his attacker went down with a groan. A very solid body hit the floor seconds later as his partner hacked and swiped at his face, and Gryff searched the fallen grunt for a weapon. Nothing. Not even a knife around his ankle.
“What the fuck are you doing, Crest?” Gryff muttered, pushing the dazed goon back down and straightening up. “At least give these guys a fair chance here…”
The fair chance came when the guy Gryff thought he’d already incapacitated flung himself across the room and tackled Gryff to the floor. For such a big guy, he definitely came out of nowhere. But he was still struggling to see with all that coke powder smeared across his face, probably in his eyes, and Gryff used just about every dirty trick in the book to get the guy on his back, then slammed his skull against the ground hard enough to send him to the dream world. He waited for a few long moments to make sure the guy was actually out, his chest heaving, and his breath coming fast from the exertion.
When he was sure his opponent was down for the count, Gryff wiped his face to get any remaining residue off. He’d never been a powder drug kind of man, and he wasn’t about to start now when he needed his faculties as sharp as ever.
There was no telling how long Phillip’s boys would be out for, but Gryff took a few minutes to do a sweep of the office, wishing he had more time to gather the evidence he needed. As of right now, the wire basically had a confession recorded on it, but he wanted a paper trail to link Phillip Crest to the hitmen who executed all those Steel Phoenixes last year. Unfortunately, he had to abandon the file cabinet at the first sound of groaning. It was conscious groaning, the rekindling of awareness, and he wasn’t in the mood to go for round two with these guys.
Abandoning the tainted drugs, Gryff made a run for the door, only to come to a biting halt as soon as he yanked it open. Outside the room were about a dozen guys, all of them armed with assault rifles. Dressed in black as if they were some fucking elite Black Ops squad, they straightened up at the sight of Gryff’s disheveled appearance—obviously something was wrong.
“Fuck,” he hissed, and just as the bullets started to fly, he slammed the door shut and pushed the nearest cabinet over to block it. Bullets blew holes in the wood, in the walls, and he dove for cover behind Phillip’s desk. Covering his head with an arm, he grabbed the microphone wire and brought it to his mouth, then hissed, “You guys planning on intervening anytime soon, or you just gonna wait until they fill me with lead first?”
Chapter 46
Phillip’s goons practically blew the guy’s office the shreds. As Gryff hid behind his desk, he wondered if any of them even considered that their boss was inside, slumped over on his chair, completely vulnerable to all that gunfire. Hell, he wondered if they even cared. Hands over his head, the lone Phoenix waited, unable to fight fire with fire in this instance, and he suddenly realized that perhaps Phillip hadn’t given the men in the room guns on the off chance that Gryff might overpower them.
Well…
No. Phillip wasn’t that great at foresight. He was a shrewd man, and if he tried this takeover in a town with a less established motorcycle club, maybe he would have been even more successful. As it were, his biggest mistake was trying to steal Blackwoods from the Steel Phoenixes. He could hire as many guys as he wanted, but this was a Phoenix town, from the tip-top north end luxury homes to the southern-most rundown industrial warehouses, the Steel Phoenixes ran this town.
And they proved that. He was only left to cower for two minutes or so, the walls and furniture and windows shredded by gunfire, until his reinforcements arrived—and they definitely weren’t the cops.
No, the cops had put a wire on him. Somehow they’d known something big was about to go down that night, and they’d followed Gryff with the intention of getting in on the action. Not wanting to spend the night in jail, Gryff floated the idea of him wearing a wire, and they could listen and gather evidence, enough to strike Phillip Crest down where he stood, preferably while he was cutting some bullshit ribbon in the name of the university that employed him.
However, as soon as Gryff left police custody, all his drugs intact, he contacted his crew back at the bar via text, and minutes later one of their few tech geniuses hacked the feed so that they could hear every word he said, not the police. Gryff then fled the scene before the cops realized something was wrong, knowing he’d have to deal with them some other day but preferring that it wasn’t today. Not when so many important things hung in the balance—namely ensuring Beth’s safety and making the Phoenix killer pay.
So as he drove, he fed the Phoenixes directions to the warehouse, a
cting like the fucking Pied Piper to all the city’s rats. His boys followed him, lowliest delivery runner to the highest rider. All but Micky, he hoped, who’d be back at the bar making sure nothing happened to Beth.
And making sure Beth didn’t do anything stupid like try to follow the herd.
Gryff waited patiently as new gunfire joined the fight, a chorus of men’s voices screaming at one another rising over the din. Slowly but surely, the roar settled to just a din, then to nothing, as the firefight no doubt moved from the hall in front of Phillip’s office to the rest of the facilities. For all the fuck-ups Phillip had made, choosing this location wasn’t one of them. The abandoned warehouse sat on sprawling grounds. It was a fenced in area, easy for him to control, and there were plenty of places to have an epic fight, guns blazing, before sunrise tomorrow morning.
