28. Stay With Me
28
Stay With Me
GREYSON
I blinked at a deeply concerned detective. His jaw set, Luke furrowed his brow.
“ Royce ?” I shook my head as the blood in my veins turned to ice. “ Just left with my wife, Royce? We’re friends with him and Miranda.”
“Has he ever spoken about his mother?”
“Haven’t exactly delved into family history.” When his expression gave nothing away, my brows pinched.
“I was a little worried about that. Royce results from an affair, Greyson. Mrs. Ashcroft adopted him legally, but it has always been a point of contention for their family, according to his father.”
“I don’t understand,” I admitted, although some rabid animal was burrowing into my gut.
“I was afraid of that,” Luke said, palming at his jaw. “Grey, we’re unearthing a lot of history in this interrogation, and Odessa said something the first day that tipped me off. She’s his mother, Greyson. Neal covered the whole thing up to save face on his climb for power, but his newlywed bride was out of the public eye for nearly a year right after the wedding. Ashcroft announced the birth of his son before she returned.”
“That proves nothing,” I countered. Although it would give her just enough time to deliver her baby and get back into normal clothes if she wasn’t preoccupied with a newborn.
“No. But my interview with Daniel Ashcroft today does. He and Royce are recently estranged. Did he tell you that? Said Royce was resentful of being pried away from his biological mother.”
“Why didn’t I know about any of this?” I growled more to myself than to him, making a beeline for the exit as he rushed to follow.
The fucker was a friend. Or the closest thing I had to one, aside from Jax and my brother. His mild-mannered wife had been hysterical when Alice was attacked. It made little sense.
“Where are you going?” Luke barked as I rushed out the door.
“He just left,” I growled over my shoulder. “I need to catch up to Alice and Mattie.”
“We don’t know if he even knows anything about Obsidian , Grey. I got to you before anyone got to him or Miranda to question them. Thought you said he’d be here.”
“He knows,” I growled.
“What? How do?—”
“I just… call it a gut instinct ,” I snapped, rapidly stabbing the elevator button as if that would make the cables work faster. Dialing Alice, I pulled my phone to my ear.
He’d been on the phone that night. That night at the auction.
Gotten us there in the first place—and… for what?
Then our server just so happened to spill on Alice and led her to that bathroom only to turn up dead in the river?
No. That wasn’t happenstance.
Alice heard a one-sided conversation with someone talking about a situation too eerily similar to ours to be tossed aside, using our last name as a goddamn keyword, and assumed the second party was Reggie, but…Royce had been on the phone when I left and still pacing outside the ballroom when I came back to cover our asses.
When the elevator opened, my assistant Preston stepped out, looking perplexed. “Mr. Hart, this just arrived for you,” he announced, hoisting up a gift basket with two bottles inside. “The note said, ‘To a game well played’.”
My heart…plummeted, stomach flipping as I eyed the contents. “What the fuck?” I extended a hand to the gift . Bile rose in my throat as my fingers traced the label on the bottle of white wine.
Marion Cline Riesling.
It was carefully placed beside a bottle of Macallan.
White hot rage consumed my vision, my chest constricting.
Then, I’m cracking open a bottle of Macallan and your favorite Riesling—what was that little Vineyard you loved so much in Massachusetts?
“They’re in my house,” I snarled as Luke stuck an arm out to hold the elevator. My gaze snapped to his. “Luke. They’ve been in my fucking house . They’re in my fucking bedroom .” Luke fumbled to catch the basket as I hurled it into his arms.
Oliver chose that moment to slip out of the family box with a very heavily lidded Beau in his arms.
“ Greyson ,” he said simply, all the questions buried in his eyes.
“I’ve got to go,” was all I managed to get out, my heart sinking as I dialed Alice’s number on muscle memory, jamming the first-floor button. The doors pinged open, and before they could close behind me, my brother and nephew were on the damn thing with us.
“Royce is a Gilbert,” I barked by way of explanation as Alice’s voicemail clicked on. “ Fuck !”
“I don’t understand,” Oliver said, blinking away his confusion. Seemed to be a theme for the Hart brothers today. His knowledge of our most recent sting was low-level, at best. Just a vague overview, so he didn’t go responding to the wrong invitations with the wrong kind of people. “ Ashcroft . Ashcroft is Odessa Gilbert’s bastard son.”
“You’re kidding,” Ollie scoffed like he was waiting for a punch line. One that would never come because the elevator doors were opening, and I slipped between the stainless-steel door and wall and bolted for the exit. The throng of people was nothing but immobile obstacles between me and my damn car. Weaving between them, I forced a path outside.
“Greyson?!” A concerned, familiar female voice caught my attention, and I whirled, praying it was Alice, although my gut knew it wasn’t. It wouldn’t be that easy.
Elora and Hadlee were staring at me from their spot on the curb, brows furrowed with concern above eyes so eerily similar to Alice’s that it nearly brought me to my knees. God dammit, I would kill to have her there between them.
“Where’s Alice?” I barked. “Leighton and Mattie. They all came down together…” but my words drifted when Elora shook her head, fear entering those familiar eyes as Hadlee rose on her toes as if she could gain a better vantage point to scan the crowd.
“I’m coming with you!” My brother’s pissed-off demand had me turning, but I was shaking my head before he caught up to us with Luke by his side.
“Not with Beau, you’re fucking not.”
“You don’t get to bark orders at me. Mattie is with them!” Ollie snapped back.
“What’s going on? ” Elora demanded, straightening. Broderick’s husband-radar was thoroughly tuned because he descended on our huddle within a heartbeat. A quick survey placed five of their six brothers within twenty yards. Good enough for me . In the next breath, I scooped Beau out of Oliver’s arms and handed him to Broderick, who was quick to wrap him up. The tall brother— Jameson? —was scowling at me before scanning the crowd expectantly. It was his eyes I held before rotating to the professor.
“Take Ollie’s car. Preston will drive you home. Guard him with your fucking life. Do you hear me?”
Wide brown eyes blinked twice, and then he nodded, seeming to clear his confusion. The others were closing in, sensing or hearing our tension, I wasn’t sure. Elora yelled something after us, but my eyes trained on our target. Mind rushing through our response.
I needed to notify my security.
Needed Luke to call for backup.
Needed to get ahead of this.
By the time Oliver’s and my dead sprint for the car ended, I’d already reached Alice’s voicemail for a second time and dialed her again.
Her GPS showed her getting on the highway home. It should be comforting, knowing where she was. But I couldn’t shake my trepidation. Home wasn’t any safer. Not with them inside it. Not with the Ashcrofts still categorized as a friend in her mind.
A concerned-looking Arthur was stepping out of the idling SUV as I pinned my phone to my shoulder.
“Ride with Preston,” I ordered, slipping past him into the driver’s seat. We were already rolling, Arthur jumping away from the car when Ollie’s door slammed closed. “ Pick up, baby. Please, pick up.”
Alice
Mattie and Leighton were belting out the lyrics to “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd when Jax merged our SUV onto the highway. His amused eyes found mine in the rearview mirror, and I laughed as he slowly pressed the accelerator, the engine thrumming to life.
Royce awkwardly cleared his throat from where he swayed in the passenger seat, his cell clutched in his hand. “Thanks for the ride, Rhodes.”
Scowling, I muttered, “God, that sounds weird now.”
“Like being a Hart?” he questioned softly. My smile set my chest heating, a hand coming to rub over my sternum.
“Yeah,” I breathed. I really did. Thoughts of Greyson wrapped around me—glimpses of his laugh on the patio, or his palpably intense focus as we worked. The memory of his finger in my ass as he hammered into my pussy, breaking me apart on his dick, suddenly was all-consuming. The man had taken me captive in both body and soul, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. “I do love being a Hart. Well,” I amended, thinking of Reggie the Dick, “I love being Greyson’s.”
He nodded, throat bobbing as he grabbed the oh-shit handle, and Jax rolled the passenger window down with a revolted-looking glower. “If you’re gonna hurl, you do it out of the fucking car. Understand?”
“Yeah,” Royce grunted, looking worse for wear. Poor bastard.
Smirking, I shook my head at my cranky ass bodyguard. The volume with which the girls were serenading us had decreased, though Leighton was still crisscrossed and twisted so she could see Mattie in the back.
We had just reached the Emerald Bay Bridge to the opening cords of Rolling Stones’ Beast of Burden when I heard the distant buzz of a phone. When Leighton glanced at hers and shook her head, I mumbled an oops and bent to fish mine from my bag.
Seven missed calls from Grey glared back at me. My first worry was Paxton, but when I brought the receiver to my ear, his frantic, “ Where are you? ” had me second guessing that. I straightened and looked around us, making sure all was well.
“We’re on the bridge,” I said, voice mirroring his anxiety.
“Watch your surroundings. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah,” I breathed, the panic in my tone catching Jax’s attention in the mirror. He turned the music down a notch but kept bobbing his head as though determined to keep it a good day. As though the oldies station could preserve our joviality.
“Royce is one of them.” The world stopped, my eyes flicking to the back of Royce’s coifed blond hair before thinking better of it and holding Jax’s eyes in the mirror instead.
“What?” I breathed, fighting to keep my voice even. Leighton’s concern landed on me like a physical weight, but I shook my head, waving her off. She kept singing, but now she was looking around us, a little too obvious in her alarm for anyone to miss it.
“Odessa Gilbert had an affair with Daniel Ashcroft that resulted in Royce.”
“But that doesn’t mean?—”
“Until I know otherwise, we treat him like an enemy. Understood?”
Eyes darting between Jax in the mirror, who was subtly tracking my conversation, and Royce, where he leaned against the door frame, fingers tapping out a message on his phone, I scrambled, brain going blank. “Yeah, we’re almost home. We’re almost to Miranda and Royce’s house.”
“ Cocksucker ,” he snarled, an engine revving in the background.
Heart ratcheting up, I did my best to keep my tone casual. “You right behind us, baby?”
“Five minutes at most.”
Nodding, I forced myself to breathe. “Good deal. So, we’ll get home around the same time. Caterers are setting up as we speak.”
“Do you remember what I told you?”
My mind emptied entirely. “Um, about the menu?”
“About our security protocols?”
“Yeah, I got it,” I said, trying to reach back into those first months of summer as he gave me the layout of the house and the vehicles. Mostly, I just prayed if it was true, this wasn’t the day he’d make his move.
“Stay on the phone with me,” Greyson ordered. “I fucking love you, Alessandra Hart. I fucking love you so goddamn much.” Why did he sound like he was saying goodbye? The blade of terror in his voice had my heart accelerating, the bridge of my nose burning.
“I love and miss you too, you big—” I was in the middle of my thought when Jax glared into the mirror, silently rolling up Royce’s window, startling him away from the door. He turned down the music as the song swapped to California Dreamin’ by The Mamas & The Papas, and without hitting his blinker, swerved into the far right lane, cutting between two rows of traffic.
Leighton was whirling for the back window as I pointed toward Royce, my attempt at a subtle head’s up lost on a very focused Jackson.
“I mean it, Alice,” Grey snarled as rubber squealed. “ Stay with me. ”
But Leighton was screaming .
Leighton was screaming words I couldn’t make sense of.
Greyson was barking orders in my other ear.
Royce was turning, looking more irritated than concerned.
I whirled right as a tinted black SUV slammed into our bumper, sending us jolting forward as Jax slammed on the gas, and Mattie screamed in terror. My neck gave a pang of protest, and I turned, wide-eyed, to Jax’s reflection as he methodically glanced between our mirrors.
“What’s happening?” Greyson demanded, but I was preoccupied with the second vehicle snaking up beside us—some sporty black thing—and the man with the black barrel of a gun pointed at our window.
“Get down!” I yelled. Before I could make sense of her motions, Leighton had ripped her buckle off and was throwing herself over Mattie as Jax swore.
Oh god, Mattie .
Without hesitating, Jax cranked the wheel to the left and slammed into the black Charger, sending it spinning out, where—at least judging from the horrible sounds behind us as he fought to control the vehicle—traffic T-boned it.
I released a paradoxical breath of relief as I thanked whatever benevolent being was watching out for us and prayed that nobody innocent had been hurt in the wreck.
“Get fucking buckled,” Jax barked as he hit the center lane and slammed on the gas. Leighton, breathing haggard, rushed to follow his order. And just in time, too, because without warning, Jax slammed on our brakes, the SUV behind us smashing into the back with enough momentum to send my phone flying as Mattie broke into sobs in the third row. The screeching of rubber on asphalt and metal on metal tore through the air a beat before Jax pulled some insane circle maneuver that sent our assailant flying as he cut back across the lanes of traffic to the chorus of horns blaring.
Jax hit the inside shoulder of the bridge and floored it, our rearview mirror snapping off to the scream of the vehicle scraping over the concrete barrier.
“Holy shit!” Royce barked, looking more than a little green around the gills.
He couldn’t be one of them.
I couldn’t reconcile the concept with the sweet couple I’d spent my summer with. The preening parents. Or the bloodless-looking face staring wide-eyed at Jax as he invented a lane for us. Spotting an opening, Jax swerved through a gap between vehicles and put us right in the center lane ahead of the line of traffic.
“Alice, I could use some backup.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, do I look like I know how to call for backup?” I screeched as I contorted in my seat to check our left side. But Leighton was tossing me her phone, and I dialed 911 before the words came out of my mouth.
Think, Alice, think. There had to be a way out of this that kept Leighton and Mattie safe.
“They were going to shoot at us! What the fuck is going on!? ” Leighton hissed, her hands clamped over Mattie’s ears like our language or volume was what the tiny, sassy super genius would be concerned with. Tears streaked down her little wan cheeks, and I vowed to deliver retribution on her behalf. I’d find a way.
“They’re trying to kill us or capture us,” Jax noted helpfully.
“I fucking see that, but why ?!” Leighton demanded as the engine roared and Jax barreled toward our side of the bridge. My shoulders pressed into the leather with our increased speed.
“Because your sister stuck her nose where it didn’t belong.”
Every muscle in my body went rigid, but it wasn’t Royce’s words that held me captive—it was the pistol, now trained on Jax in the front seat. In the same breath, Jax lunged for the dash, where I knew he held his firearm in a magnetic holster below the wheel. Royce didn’t get closer, instead turning the gun toward me as he demanded, “ Hands on the wheel, Reynolds. ”
Jax froze, those dark eyes flicking to me in the rearview mirror as my gaze rotated between the threat and the man hellbent on mitigating it. Jaw flexing, Jax raised his other hand before setting it on the wheel.
“Royce,” I panted, tone desperate, “don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”
“Didn’t want to,” he said, the words tight. While his gun stayed on me, his eyes were on Jax—he’d decided who the threat was.
Slowly, trying not to gain his attention, I glanced at Leighton. Nostrils flared, chest heaving, the anger in her eyes trumped the fear there as she sucked down air. Determination set her jaw when our eyes locked. We didn’t need words . We had twenty-three years of sisterhood and decades of surviving six brothers together. I glanced down at Mattie’s untied combat boots before returning my focus to the psychopath now yelling at Jax as he revved the engine.
“ Slow down! ” Royce barked, turning the pistol on Jax.
“You’re gonna kill us either way. I’ll take you with us,” Jax promised flatly as the engine roared, towering bridge posts flying by us at a terrifying speed. His words pulled another sob from Mattie, and my heart cracked. Throat tight, I fought to swallow the terror pushing bile up my throat.
Fear served no one.
Fear clouded your judgment.
Killed your focus.
My peripheral vision caught the subtle movement of Leighton unlacing Mattie’s black boots.
“Royce, don’t do this,” I pled, voice infinitely calmer than the shit storm roaring inside my head. “You have a baby on the way. A wife waiting for you at home. Put the gun down.”
“I don’t have a choice—they took them.”
My stomach bottomed out as fear wrapped around my windpipe. “Who?”
“All of them, Alice.”
“The kids?” I asked, voice cracking as his petrified eyes landed on my face.
“When we didn’t turn you over, they—they took Miranda today.”
“Who?” I demanded, equally horrified and hopeful as the end of the bridge crept closer. “I—it wasn’t supposed to go this way,” he said in a near-sob, light blue eyes watering as he wielded the weapon between me and Jax. “ I let them in, Alice. I let her in. It’s my fault. If something happens to them, it’s my ?—”
“Who took them?” I repeated. “Royce, if your family is in trouble, we can help you. Greyson can help you.”
“You’re all dead men walking,” he argued, shaking his head. His hand trembled, the pistol along with it. I wasn’t the only one to notice—Jax’s eyes flicking from the threat to the road. “We all are. You in exchange for them. That’s the price .”
“Get fucked,” Leighton spat, but I was shaking my head.
“I’ll go,” I barked, hands raised. “Just let everyone go, Royce. Let them get out of this, and I’ll come with you.” We were almost there. Almost across the metal monstrosity—certainly past the tallest point. If we could just get to solid land, Leighton and I could make our move.
But we wouldn’t get a chance. Because all at once, Jax shot a warning glare into the mirror and slammed on the brakes, sending everyone lurching forward. Royce’s face smashed into the dash as Mattie screamed, but it was the sound of the gunshot that reverberated inside my skull before the car veered violently sideways.
They say you see your life flash before your eyes when death has you in its claws, but that’s a lie. At least, it was for me.
Time stopped . Ceased to exist as we careened through the metal edging and hurtled toward the dark expanse of water. It suspended as the SUV hung over the bay, as blood splattered across the ceiling and dash.
It wasn’t my life replaying as the scream tore up my throat.
It was the sound of Greyson begging me to stay with him.