20. Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Nineteen
Levi
Seven Years Later
"Please," he whimpers, spitting out a tooth. "I told you everything I know."
"Everything you know is shit." I grab his hair, yanking his head back. "You sold me garbage intel, and now you're going to pay for wasting my time."
Behind me, I hear Zane shift his weight. He's getting antsy. They both are. I can feel Colt's eyes boring into my back too.
They think I'm losing it.
Maybe I am.
My knuckles are split wide, but I barely feel it anymore. Physical pain is nothing compared to the hollow ache that's lived in my chest for the past seven years. Seven fucking years of dead ends and false leads. Seven years of becoming everything I swore I'd never be.
"I swear," the man sobs, blood bubbling from his lips. "The guy in Newport said—"
"The guy in Newport?" I laugh, but there's no humor in it. Only ice. "The guy in Newport was playing you, just like you tried to play me."
His ribs cave under my fist with a sickening crunch, the vibration traveling up my knuckles. His scream echoes through the warehouse, bouncing off metal walls and concrete floors.
"Levi." Zane's voice is low, warning. "That's enough."
But it's not enough. It's never enough. The monster inside me craves more, needs more. Needs to make someone else hurt as much as I do.
"You know what happens to people who waste my time?" I grab the man's face, forcing him to look at me. His eyes are wild with terror. Good. "They disappear."
"Boss." This time it's Colt who speaks up. "We still need him alive if we want to trace things back to his source."
Logic. Always with the fucking logic. I know he's right, but the rational part of my brain is drowning in a sea of red. All I can see is Sunny's broken body, my mother's blood on the wall. All I can think about is Garrett, still out there somewhere, breathing free air while they're both cold in the ground.
I step back, wiping blood from my hands onto my ruined shirt. My father's ring catches the fluorescent light—the same ring I took off his corpse after putting three bullets in his head. The ultimate proof that I've become exactly what I was always afraid I would.
"You're right," I say, not turning around. I can't look at them right now, can't bear to see the concern in their eyes. They're the only family I have, and sometimes I wonder how long it'll be before they realize I'm too far gone to save.
The man tied to the forklift sags in his restraints, relief evident in his posture. Poor bastard thinks he's getting off easy.
"Take him to the basement and call Doc to check him out and make sure he lives through the night," I order, finally turning to face my friends. "We'll continue this conversation tomorrow."
Zane nods, his face unreadable. But I catch the look he exchanges with Colt— the one that is a combination of doubt and concern.
"And Levi?" Colt calls as I head for the door. "Maybe get some sleep? You've been at this for days."
I don't respond. Sleep is just another form of torture for me. A place where I'm forced to remember the way things were. Where Sunny's brown eyes stare at me with disappointment, where my mother's blood-stained fingers point accusingly.
Look what you've become, they whisper. Look what you let happen to us.
The worst part is, they're right. I've exceeded my father's expectation. I'm ruthless, feared, powerful. The empire I built from his ashes is twice what his ever was. But the cost...
I flex my bloody fingers, feeling the sting of split skin. These hands used to hold Sunny so gently, used to wipe away her tears. Now they only know how to hurt, how to break, how to destroy.
Every day, the darkness inside me spreads, swallowing the memory of what light even felt like. I’m starting to forget everything except the only mission that matters—find Garrett, make him suffer, make him pay.
Even if it kills whatever's left of my soul in the process.
I shove through the heavy metal door, the night air cool on my face. The loading dock's familiar rust and oil smell mingles with copper—blood. My blood. His blood. Does it even matter anymore?
My hands shake, as I pull out a cigarette, muscle memory taking over while my mind races. Behind me, I hear Zane's deep voice giving orders, the scrape of boots on concrete as the crew starts cleanup. Another night. Another dead end.
"Get him downstairs," Colt calls out. "And somebody mop up that mess before it stains."
I light the cigarette, inhaling deep enough to burn. The ember glows bright against the darkness, like the reflection in her eyes when we'd lay in the grass and look up at the stars. Fuck . Seven years and I still can't stop the comparisons, can't stop seeing her everywhere.
My phone weighs heavy in my pocket—another addiction I can't kick. I pull it out, fingers leaving smears of red on the screen as I navigate to the one folder I transfer to every single phone I carry. The one I swore I'd delete a thousand times. The one that's killing me slowly, surely, but I can't help but keep coming back to.
One message. One voicemail. Thirty drawn out seconds of exquisite torture locked inside a digital time capsule.
My thumb hovers over the play button. I should stop this. I should let her rest. I should try to forget her voice and the way I used to love hearing it wrap around me.
I press play.
" Hey Handsome..."
My eyes close, chest tightening as her voice fills the night air. Happy. Excited. Alive .
"I'm almost finished getting ready and I, uh, I wanted you to know I'm thinking about you. I can't wait to see you tonight."
The cigarette burns forgotten between my fingers. All I can see is her, probably standing in the middle of her room, looking so beautiful, so sweet, so fucking… perfect. I can hear her nervousness in that small hesitation. I would bet anything she'd been twirling her hair around her finger like she always did when she was feeling unsure.
"I've got a surprise for you too."
God, the way she said it—shy but determined. I never got to find out what that surprise was. Never got to see her in that black dress again except...
"I'll see you in a few. And hey... hurry up and get here already. I miss you."
The message ends. It always ends too soon. Thirty seconds that I play on repeat, reminding myself what I lost. What I caused.
If I hadn't been so focused on Zack, so determined to make him pay. If I'd answered just one of her calls instead of letting revenge consume me—
The door creaks open behind me. I quickly pocket the phone, but not before catching Zane's reflection in the loading dock's grimy window.
"You good?" he asks, though we both know I'm not. Haven't been for a long, long time.
"Fine." I take another drag, letting smoke fill the silence between us.
He doesn't know. Neither of them do—not really. They know Garrett killed her, know he murdered my mother. But they don't know about what happened the day I met Sunny—what I did to set all of it in motion. They don't know about the calls I ignored. Don't know I was too busy setting up Zack to notice that payment for everything I'd done had come due.
They think it was a matter of both the women I loved being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That Garrett had finally gone off the rails and went on a rampage. That I couldn't have prevented it. Their loyalty and sympathy is built on a foundation of half-truths and omissions that would crumble if they knew the whole story.
"We'll find him," Zane says, his certainty unchanged after all these years.
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. The guilt rises in my throat, choking me—for lying to them, for failing her, for becoming—this.
I turn to face Zane, flicking my cigarette out into the darkness. "I don't get it. How does a piece of shit small-town dealer just vanish into thin air? Seven years, Z. Seven fucking years of throwing everything we have at finding him. And nothing."
The frustration rakes at me. We've built an empire that makes my father's look like child's play. I have eyes and ears in every major city, connections that reach into most of the darkest corners of all of them. Yet Garrett might as well be a ghost.
"He's not smart enough for this." I run my hands through my hair, the dried blood on my knuckles flaking off. "A drunk who got his kicks abusing women and dealing cut-rate meth to teenagers. That's who he was. So how is he outmaneuvering us?"
Zane leans against the wall, his face half-hidden in shadow. "Maybe that's what we're missing. We're looking for who he was right then. Maybe we need to go backwards. Or forwards."
"What do you mean?"
"People change. You did." His words hit deep. "We haven't been able to find out a whole lot about his past. Maybe we should go back and start there."
I laugh, but it comes out hollow. "Men—monsters like that don't change. If there was something significant to find we'd have found it by now."
"Men "like that" don't change? We all did."
The words hang between us, heavy with implications. He's not wrong. We've become something else entirely over the years—deadlier, darker. The scared kids we were are long gone, replaced by men who deal in fear.
"I'm tired, Z." The admission costs me something to voice out loud. "Not of looking, I'll never stop looking. But I'm tired of being one step behind. Tired of following leads that go nowhere. Tired of failing her."
"You've never failed her." Zane's voice is firm. "Garrett did this. Not you."
If he only knew. The weight of my secrets presses down, threatening to suffocate me. How do I tell him that every dead end feels like losing her all over again? That each false lead is another reminder of how I chose revenge over protecting her that night?
"Something's not adding up." I pace the loading dock, mind racing. "We've checked every possible connection we could find. Offered money, favors. All for nothing. Nobody can disappear that completely."
"You think someone's protecting him?"
"I think..." I stop, the pieces slowly shifting in my head. "I think he's definitely had help along the way from someone who knows what they're doing."
Zane straightens—interest sparked.
"Think about it. He kills Sunny, kills my mother, leaves that message—and then just vanishes?"
The more I say it out loud, the more certain I become. "Someone had to have helped him. Someone with resources, connections. Someone who knew how to make people disappear."
"Someone like your father?" Zane's question is careful, measured.
The thought has crossed my mind before, but I've always dismissed it. "No. I think Garrett was exactly the kind of man that my father always avoided. I remember him saying 'Some dogs never take to the leash, and those are the ones to stay away from. You'll never be able to trust them.' "
"Your father had a lot of friends. Powerful ones."
"And enemies." I lean against the railing, staring into the darkness. "What if... what if this was never about Garrett at all? What if he was just a weapon aimed at me?"
The possibility makes my blood run cold. All these years chasing a puppet while the puppeteer has watched from the shadows, laughing at my failure.
"If you're right," Zane says slowly, "we need to change our approach. Stop looking for Garrett and start looking for whoever's pulling his strings."
I nod, feeling the familiar darkness rising inside me. If someone orchestrated this, if someone used Garrett to take everything from me—
The rage builds, hot and familiar.
"We need to be smart about this though," Zane continues, reading my expression. "If someone powerful enough to hide Garrett for this long is behind this, we can't go in blind."
I watch Zane disappear back into the warehouse, his words echoing in my head. Seven years of dead ends, only to find out we may have been playing the wrong game entirely.
The night air carries the scent of coming rain. I roll my shoulders, feeling the familiar ache of tension. Every muscle screams for rest, but rest means dreams and dreams mean her.
The warehouse door creaks again. I know it's Colt without turning—his footsteps are lighter than Zane's, more precise. Everything about him is calculated, measured. It's what makes him so damn good at what he does.
"We're all set," he says, joining me at the railing. "Got him secured downstairs. Doc's checking him out now—making sure he'll be stable enough for round two tomorrow."
I grunt in acknowledgment, watching ash fall from my cigarette.
"You should see some of the intel we pulled from his phone already," Colt continues. "Looks like—"
"Tomorrow," I cut him off. I can't process anything else right now. My head is too full of possibilities.
Zane emerges again, wiping his hands on a cloth. "Everything's cleaned up. No trace left." He claps me on the shoulder, his grip firm. "Go home, brother. Get some rest. This'll all still be here in the morning."
They both head back inside, leaving me alone with my demons. The warehouse door closes with a metallic clang that echoes through the empty lot.
My fingers are already pulling out my phone before I consciously decide to do it. The screen glows blue in the darkness as I navigate to that folder, to that message. To her.
"Hey Handsome..."
I close my eyes, letting her voice wash over me again.
If someone helped Garrett disappear, if this was all some elaborate plot—that means that someone out there knows what happened that night when he left. Someone knows where he is. And when I find them—
"I'm almost finished getting ready..."
The rain falls harder now, but I barely notice.
"I miss you."
"I miss you too, Angel," I whisper out to the emptiness. "I miss you too."