Chapter 40
GRIFFIN
My thumb trembles above the touchscreen as I wait for the three blue dots that never materialize. The phone’s screen goes dark, then lights up again in my palm. I hold it, waiting for a notification, refreshing as if the next swipe will conjure her presence.
Tiana doesn’t respond.
First, I tell myself this is normal. I invent little stories to keep the panic from gnawing through the bone: Maybe her phone is on silent at the bottom of her purse. Maybe she’s dancing. Maybe she’s already back at her hotel with her face pressed into a pillow.
But none of these stories stick. The longer she doesn’t reply, the more I worry.
I start pacing. The carpet is thick beneath my bare feet, except for the spot near the closet where Sylas upended a bottle of slime, leaving it stiff and, despite my best efforts, permanently sticky.
I circle the room again, phone in my right hand, left hand jammed into my hoodie pocket.
I pause, check the messages, see nothing new, and keep moving.
Sylas is playing two rooms down, unaware that I’m in here trying not to come apart.
I check Instagram again. Nothing. I tap her profile photo, the one from the state fair where she’s wearing a paper crown and biting the end of a fried pickle, and watch the story ring fade to gray. I type out another message, delete it, then another, then just stare at the blinking cursor.
I force myself to sit on the edge of the bed, but after twenty seconds I’m up again. My phone vibrates and my heart leaps, but it’s just a notification from my email.
I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste iron. I’m supposed to be above this—composed and rational. But tonight, all those little balancing acts are peeled away, and what’s left is just me, raw and bristling, desperate to protect a woman who doesn’t want my protection.
That’s the problem: she was never mine to protect.
I drag a hand through my hair and stalk to the window. Every muscle is wound tight, thighs flexing, jaw locked.
I check the time. 5:57pm. I refresh the app. Still nothing.
Was Tiana talking about Markell? My vision tunnels, the edges of the room going black. I imagine Tiana’s face if he were to corner her in a stairwell, or say something ugly that she can’t forget.
The thought of him anywhere near her does something to me that is not rational or composed in the slightest. It strips away the polished layers of COO, architect, father, widower—all the labels I have used to keep myself contained, until what remains is a man with his blood turning hot and violent at the thought of someone frightening the woman he loves.
I drag a hand over my mouth and force myself to breathe through the pressure in my chest.
Shit. The woman I love is in another city with a man who once made her feel unsafe. I can’t sit here and wait for bad news.
I open Instagram again, even though part of me hates being this person —this digital stalker version of myself.
Her story icon is unchanged. I refresh compulsively, as if the act of checking could somehow will her into posting, into letting me know she’s okay.
The rational part of me knows this is pointless, but the rest of me is burning, restless, unable to accept not knowing.
I start looking beyond her page, casting my net wider.
Markell’s profile is still right there in my recent searches. I tap his name and a ring glows around his profile photo.
My stomach drops before the first one even loads.
The screen fills with pounding music and shaky rooftop lights, his laugh bleeding through the speakers as he pans over a crowd packed shoulder to shoulder beneath the LA skyline. There are glasses raised in the air, bodies moving too close, purple light sliding over faces I don’t recognize.
I tap through the next one. And the next. A sweep of the bar. Another of the pool. One of women posing near a glowing wall of flowers.
Then the camera swings, and I see Tiana.
She’s standing near the edge of the frame, half-hidden behind Renee, her shoulders tight, one hand curled around the strap of her purse.
Tiana doesn’t just look uncomfortable. She looks scared.
My hand closes around the phone until my knuckles ache.
The next story in the chain is a shot of the rooftop, and then a clear text overlay: Veyra Rooftop, DTLA. The location is tagged.
I swipe out of the video, my pulse pounding in my ears.
For a second, I just stand in the middle of my room, holding my phone like it’s about to detonate. All my fear has a direction now.
I hit Worth’s contact before I have time to second guess. He answers on the third ring, but his voice is rough with irritation. “Someone better be dead. I was in the middle of—”
“I need to drop Sylas at your house.”
There’s a long pause. “What’s going on?”
“I have to leave the city.” There’s a tremor in my jaw. I clench my teeth. “I need to get to LA.”
“Now?”
“Yes. I think something’s wrong with Tiana.”
Worth says nothing for another heartbeat, then: “Bring Sylas here. Mya and I will stay with him.”
The relief is sharp. “Thank you,” I say, ending the call and immediately dialing my pilot.
I’m already moving toward the closet when she picks up. “Jules. Have the jet ready in an hour.”
I pack a bag with the bare minimum: three shirts, two pairs of pants, socks, underwear, a charger. I move on muscle memory, not even thinking about what I’ll need, just grabbing and shoving. I throw in a toothbrush, hair gel, and deodorant. Then wallet, keys, passport.
I walk to Sylas’s room. “Hey, buddy.” I keep my voice light. “We’re going to Uncle Worth’s for a sleepover tonight.”
He frowns. “Why?”
I swallow. “Because I have to go help TJ.”
He thinks very seriously for a moment, his eyebrows pulling together. “Is she sick?”
“She’s just having a hard time and she needs someone to look out for her.”
He accepts this with a grave nod, then asks, “Can I bring my big dinosaur?”
“Definitely.”
When we make it out the door, I set the alarm, and scoop Sylas into his booster seat.
Twenty minutes later, we arrive at Worth’s house. Before I even cut the engine, the front door swings open and Mya comes out to meet us.
Sylas climbs out and she drops to his level, pulling him close. “Hey, troublemaker,” she says.
Worth appears behind her and gives me a look—a quick ‘you good?’—and I nod, even though I’m not.
I’m already calculating the next step. That’s how my brain works: threat, action, solution.
I hand Sylas’s bag to Mya, and crouch down so I’m eye-level with my son. “I’ll call as soon as I can, alright?”
When Sylas nods I give him a quick hug.
“Please take care of my sister,” Mya says.
“I promise. I’d do anything for her.”
The drive to the airport takes no time at all. It’s as if the city has emptied itself to make room for my anxiety.
At the private terminal, a uniformed attendant ushers me through security and out onto the tarmac, where my jet gleams under hangar lights.
I never liked putting my wealth on display.
I don’t buy things just to prove I can. I don’t collect toys for the sake of looking rich, and I sure as hell don’t enjoy the kind of attention that comes with wasting money loudly.
For the most part, I try to live as normally as a man in my position can.
But the plane was different. It was one of the few things I let myself buy without talking myself out of it—because years ago, I promised Lila I would show Sylas the world.
She wanted him to see everything. Beaches with water clear enough to see his toes.
Old cities with streets older than any story we could tell him.
Mountains. Museums. Places bright enough to make his life feel bigger than the grief he was born too close to.
So I bought the jet, wanting to keep the promise his mother didn’t get to see through.
I shake those thoughts out of my head.
I don’t remember climbing the steps or finding my seat, but suddenly I’m buckled in and the engines are whining to life.
As the plane lifts and the city falls away, I stare out the window at the shrinking grid of lights.
I try to distract myself by scrolling through old texts—Tiana’s threads, but also Lila’s, the ones that I never deleted.
My left hand circles my bare ring finger over and over, the habit so old that I don’t even notice I’m doing it until the skin is almost raw.
The chasm between loving someone and losing them is wide, but it isn’t bottomless. You think you’ll fall forever, but eventually you crash. Or you claw your way out when you find someone who doesn’t mind walking the rim with you, unafraid of the drop.
I am terrified of the drop.
The flight attendant comes by to tell me we’re beginning descent and I don’t even look up because the only thing I need is for Tiana to answer her phone, and even if she did, I wouldn’t know what to say without detonating everything.
Hey, I know you saw Markell because you told a faceless stranger, and I know where your party is because I tracked it down through Instagram stories, and I’m currently flying to Los Angeles because loving you has finally overridden the part of me that pretends not to be insane.
That seems unlikely to calm her.
By the time the jet touches down, my nerves are scraped raw.
A pick-up is waiting on the tarmac. I grab the keys and push through traffic with one hand locked around the wheel and the other checking my phone every time I hit a red light.
The Veyra rises above a boutique hotel with smoked glass windows and a line of expensive cars gliding along the curb.
Music thuds faintly from somewhere high above the street, bass vibrating through the night air.
Clusters of people linger outside. I leave the car with the valet, then stride toward the entrance.
A man in a black suit steps in front of me before I reach the elevator bank.
“Name?”
“Griffin Hayes.”
He checks the tablet. I already know what he will say.
“You’re not on the list.”
“I need to get upstairs.”
His expression doesn’t change. “Private event. I can’t let you up without confirmation.”
I look past him toward the elevators. Somewhere above us, Tiana needs me, and this man’s tablet is about to become the least interesting obstacle I have ever encountered.
“There is someone upstairs who may need assistance,” I say, forcing my voice to stay level. “I need to make sure she is safe.”
The bouncer’s eyes narrow. “You can call her.”
“If she were answering, I wouldn’t be standing here.”
“I still can’t let you up.”
I inhale slowly. Then I pull the full weight of my name, my money, and my rapidly thinning restraint into my voice. “What’s your name?”
His posture changes. “Excuse me?”
“Your name.”
He glances down, then back up. “Darren.”
“Darren, I am going upstairs. You can either let me do that quietly and forget you ever saw me, or you can explain to your employer why the co-owner of W.H.M. Construction, a firm currently overseeing projects with three hotel groups in this city, including this one, was blocked from checking on a woman who may be in distress because you decided a guest list mattered more than her safety.” I step closer, lowering my voice.
“And before you decide I’m bluffing, understand that I am very good at making phone calls that become other people’s problems.”
His eyes widen, then he looks down at the tablet again, swipes once, and steps aside. “Elevator on the left,” he says.
“Thank you.”
The ride up is too slow. When the door finally opens, I step out and scan the crowd for Tiana.
My eyes move over every woman looking for dark skin, short hair, and a black dress. I push through the sea of people, ignoring the irritated glances and curious looks.
Near the bar, I see Markell.
My whole body goes still.
He’s laughing with two men and a woman, one hand wrapped around a drink, posture loose. I want to cross the rooftop, go for the jugular, and ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing in the same room as my woman.
Then I see Tiana near a cluster of tall plants, half-turned away from the crowd, Renee beside her with one hand lightly touching her arm. The full sight of her hits me hard enough to empty my lungs.
She is beautiful, but her smile is too tight.
I start toward her, and halfway across the rooftop, her eyes find mine, her smile falling as shock takes over.
“Griffin?” She looks at me like she is seeing a ghost. “What are you doing here?”