75. GRAYSON
75
GRAYSON
Entombed in a two-ton tunnel of steel, travelers chatted happily—their soft voices mingling with the clack-clack, clack-clack rhythm of the train’s wheels along the track as it carried us further away from downtown Chicago. Trapping them with Vosch and his armed men, who’d taken positions in the seats around us.
“Do not look so upset,” Vosch said, making it clear I had dropped my poker face.
My gaze snapped to his.
“You might worry the passengers, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?”
I ground my molars with the dangerous anger that threatened to cloud my judgment. Scanning the group, I assessed each man individually, searching for telltale signs of where they concealed their weapons. Predictably, some of them carried them on their calves, others in the back of their waistbands, covered by a jacket.
I shifted my gaze back to Vosch, glaring at the piece of shit in front of me, angling my body more. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his left wrist only two feet from mine, and with his closest minion three feet away, I might never get another chance like this.
“You attempted to abduct my girlfriend when she was thirteen,” I said, my voice almost trembling with anger.
Vosch began picking at his fingernails. “You don’t say.”
What a vile, disgusting monster. Even the most violent criminals in this country typically held a code that kids were off-limits. But not this asshole. Not only did he prey on them, but their shattered innocence or murders were as insignificant to him as spilling a glass of water.
My hand twitched.
All I wanted to do—no, scratch that. All I needed to do was pummel him in the face until my every knuckle was broken and bloodied. Only then might this searing fury begin to cool. A tiny little scratch would never come close to satisfying the level of rage ripping my soul in half, and it was too kind of a way for Vosch to die.
This man deserved so much worse.
I wanted to rip every single fingernail off of him. I wanted to break every single bone in his body, one at a time.
“Why did you do it yourself?” I demanded. “Why not one of your minions?”
“Back then, I used to participate in things like that.” Vosch couldn’t have sounded more bored if he tried. “Sends quite the message when people find out I’m the one who did it, does it not?”
“She was just a child,” I managed. “And you and one of your goons jumped out of a car and grabbed her.”
The closest minion tensed, sensing the shift in my voice.
“She can blame her father for that,” Vosch said, looking at his watch again. “He was warned to keep his mouth shut.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, focusing on the pain. The asshole two seats to my left glared at me, his hand in the back of his waistband.
“What were you going to do with her?” I demanded.
Vosch’s lips lifted on one side. “This really bothers you.”
“What were you going to do with her?” I repeated.
“What difference does it make?”
“Call it curiosity.”
Vosch seemed to evaluate me. I could see it in his eyes that he viewed himself as this larger-than-life alpha who could do whatever he wanted and get away with it. Just as importantly, the people he hurt or threatened would be in too much pain or fear to ever fight back. Clearly, that was his playbook—one that had worked well for him. And while there may have been other people through the years that didn’t submit, maybe even fought back, if Vosch was still sitting here, it meant Vosch had won every time.
And that’s where his playbook had an expiration date; his arrogance would become his weakness, to presume he would continue to win.
“Human trafficking is a thriving business,” Vosch answered.
My gut roiled. He was going to sell Ivy. She’d be assaulted on the daily, passed around from owner to owner, all starting at the tender age of thirteen.
That was it. The final straw.
With blood pumping in my ears, time seemed to slow down to a standstill. The second hand on my watch appeared frozen as my muscles coiled, and I locked eyes with Vosch, allowing a flicker of defiance to show. His brow furrowed slightly—the first crack in his arrogant facade.
In one fluid motion, I surged forward, shoving the corner of my watch toward his arm.
Vosch’s eyes widened slightly—the asshole had the gall to look shocked that anyone would make a move against him.
With my watch only two feet from his skin, the coward jerked backward, and hands grabbed at my biceps from behind. I slammed my elbow into the sternum of the guard, loosening his grip.
But as Vosch scrambled backward like a spider, a second guard to my left raised his weapon. With a sharp twist, I knocked the gun from his hand, hooked my foot behind his knee, and toppled him to the ground with a grunt.
A third guard advanced toward me, inciting a woman’s screams and a wave of people bolting from their seats.
My foot slammed into my new assailant’s stomach, his body flying backward in a chaotic display of limbs and incompetence.
His gun clanked to the ground.
Like dominoes, the rest of the civilians began screaming as well.
I turned back to Vosch and dived for him and?—
Pain exploded in the back of my head.
For a moment, I thought I’d been shot.
As I crashed to the ground on all fours, my arm bumped into something. Something firm and hard. When the stars stopped exploding in my vision, I discovered what it was.
My watch’s sharpened edge had just jabbed the goon’s calf to my left.
His focus snapped to what had to be a painful scratch, then to me, questions lingering in his vision. I wondered what the poison felt like.
Hopefully painful.
A second later, the man collapsed to the ground. Guess I hadn’t needed to worry that much about fabric covering skin afterall.
Vosch and his men stared at him in confusion for a second before realization dawned across their faces.
I hadn’t been here in good faith; I’d come here to kill Vosch.
And now, I was on the ground on all fours.
Weaponless. And surrounded by guns.