CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The chief of security for Carrington Capital hurried into Grayson’s office. He didn’t knock, even though Grayson was in a meeting with a potential acquisition partner. But Grayson knew, when he didn’t knock, that something was wrong. “What is it?”
“The GPS we have on your automobiles, sir, is indicating a car crash.”
Grayson heart nearly stopped. But he knew many of his servants took his cars in for routine maintenance often. “Which car?” he asked.
When his security chief said the word Porsche, Grayson’s heart dropped through his shoe and he jumped up, grabbed his suit coat off of the back of his chair, and began hurrying for the exit. “Where?” he asked as he ran.
“Near the Balmoral-Brightman intersection, sir,” his security chief said as he attempted to hurry out of the door behind him.
But Grayson was so fast that he was on the elevator with the doors closing him in by the time his chief made it over there.
The door closed completely before the security chief could wedge it back open.
Dena ran up to him. “Did the system say who was driving his Porsche?”
“The system couldn’t tell me that, but when I phoned his residence, I was told that a Jameesha Morgan was driving it.”
Dena was floored. “Her again? I cannot believe it!” What on earth, she wondered, did that big mouth nobody of a human being have on a man like Grayson? It was inexplicable to her!
But Grayson didn’t care what it was to Dena. He wasn’t thinking about her. He got off of that elevator, ran through his busy lobby, and was out of that building so fast that lobby security wondered if they should follow him.
But by the time they hurried outside to ask, Grayson had already hopped into his big, black Mercedes Maybach and was speeding away. In the decade the chief of lobby security worked for Carrington Capital, he’d never seen the boss move that fast. What, he wondered too, was going on?
But Grayson’s entire thought process was focused on what was going on with Latoya as he drove toward Balmoral and Brightman.
Nothing else consumed his mind. She was supposed to be driving over to discuss his father’s refusal to endorse Emily Preston.
Which meant trouble for Latoya. By four, which was only six hours away, his father planned to give his full-throated endorsement to somebody else.
And now this! Grayson couldn’t get there fast enough.
When he finally arrived at the scene, fear gripped him at just the volume of police cars and ambulances on the scene already.
And when he saw the mangled car that was upside down in the middle of the road, and parts like bumpers and wheels and glass were littering the entire area, his heart began to hammer. Where was Latoya?
When he got out and realized it was a Dodge that had flipped and not his Porsche, he felt some sense of relief. Until he saw his Porshe.
It was mangled too, as if it had been hit on all sides.
All of the windows were shattered, which was unusual, but what nearly stopped him in his tracks was the fact that there were holes all over that car.
And not just any holes, but bullet holes.
Bullet holes? What the fuck! This didn’t look like any ordinary car accident to him.
And where was his woman?
He didn’t even try to correct his thought process this time. Because given how his heart was hammering, given how he was on the verge of panicking he was so worried about her, there was no other answer for it. Latoya Morgan was his woman. Pure and simple. But where was she?
He didn’t see her because she was seated on the curb with two policemen surrounding her. And neither one was very friendly.
“You need to tell us the truth,” said the taller one. “Why were they shooting at you?”
“I told you I don’t know.” Toya was so shaken by the incident that she could hardly think straight. But they wouldn’t let up. It was as if she was the blame for everything that happened.
“And I’ll bet you don’t know if drugs were involved. Do you?”
Toya didn’t even dignify that question with a response.
The shorter cop decided to go a different route. He, too, was suspicious of her. “That Porsche is registered to Grayson Carrington. To Governor Carrington’s son. Why would you be driving Grayson Carrington’s car?”
“He gave me permission,” Toya said in a voice that bespoke her emotional drain.
“Like hell he did!” the shorter cop said.
“Latoya! Latoya!”
When Toya heard her name, and the voice calling her name, she stood up and began looking around frantically. The cops looked too.
Grayson was calling her name because he hadn’t found her yet. It wasn’t until she stood up was he able to see her. And as soon as he saw her, he ran to her.
She tried to run to him, but the taller officer pulled her back. That was when both cops realized that the man running toward them was the very man they’d just been discussing. “Ain’t that Grayson Carrington?” the shorter cop asked.
As soon as Grayson got up to her, he snatched that taller cop’s hand off of her and pulled her into arms.
And she broke down. “Oh Gracie,” she cried. “It was awful!”
Grayson’s heart fell through his shoe. He was relieved. Lord knows he was grateful. But she was shaking in his arms, and the way she said his name broke his heart. And why were those cops holding onto her like she was the criminal?
He pulled back and took a look at her. “Are you hurt at all?” he asked her anxiously.
She shook her head. “No.” Not physically, she wanted to add. She only hoped he didn’t ask if she was okay, because she wasn’t.
“What happened?” he asked her instead.
“They tried to kill me.”
Grayson frowned. “To kill you? Who tried to kill you?” Then he looked at the cops.
“According to witnesses,” said the shorter cop, “one car sped away. We have a description, but that’s all. The other driver, in that car that flipped over there, had driver’s license that identified him as Edward Hudgens.”
“Do you know him?” the taller officer asked Grayson, although he could see that Grayson had no reaction to the name.
That was why he quickly moved on. “And there’s the matter of this lady here,” the taller officer said as if catching Toya in the act of some crime seemed more his concern than if Grayson knew some dead guy.
“We caught her driving your Porsche, which we thought was strange. Did she have permission to drive it, sir?”
Grayson frowned. “Of course she had permission! Why are you even asking me a question like that? What does what she was driving have to do with any of this?”
Neither officer had expected that reaction. “We just wanted to make sure,” the smaller cop said. “We needed to know.”
“Well now you know,” Grayson said, his patience gone. Then he looked at Toya, who was his only concern. “Let’s get you home,” he said, and he took her hand.
But the taller cop stopped them. “We still have questions for her, sir.”
“She’ll answer them later.”
“But we need her to answer them now, sir.”
Grayson gave that cop a hard look. “She’s going home. She’s not the criminal here. She’s the victim. She’ll answer your questions later.”
He was so firm, and had such a determined look, that the shorter cop got it. But the taller one still didn’t. “She says they tried to kill her. We need to find out why and what level of involvement did she have.”
Grayson angrily got in that taller cop’s face. “Didn’t I just tell you,” he began saying until the shorter cop pulled his partner back.
“Have a nice day, sir,” he said to Grayson. “Have a nice day, ma’am,” he said to Toya.
Grayson stared at that taller cop a few seconds longer, and then took Toya’s hand again and they walked away.
The taller cop was livid. “Why did you pull me back like that?”
“You know right?”
The cop frowned. “I know what?”
“You know who his brother is, right?”
The taller cop had no idea. “No I don’t know who his brother is. I didn’t know he had a brother. Who’s his brother?”
“I figured you didn’t know the way you were going on and on about it.”
Now the taller cop was too curious. “Who’s his brother?”
“Vincent Marino ring a bell?”
The taller cop was floored. “Vinnie Marino? Are you telling me that Vinnie Marino is Grayson Carrington’s brother?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“You’d better start believing it. That’s why I pulled you back. Because I heard he’s very protective of his kid brother. I heard Vinnie Marino don’t play when it comes to his brother.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did!”
But the taller cop was still floored. The last person on earth anybody wanted to be on the wrong side of was Vinnie Marino.
“Motherfuck,” he said out loud as they both watched that Mercedes Maybach back up, turn around, and take off.
But as Grayson drove Toya home in his Mercedes, he was troubled.
Those cops were more than ready to blame Latoya for that craziness, even before they knew she’d just been involved in that store robbery.
They were ready to pin it all on her as easily as the state’s attorney was ready to make her equally as culpable for that robbery/murder as her sister’s boyfriend was.
And his father already told him what he was going to do.
Why was she being targeted all of a sudden?
Was it because of her association to him?
It wasn’t as if they spent much time together.
But he wasn’t immune to what went on inside his house.
He knew the rumor mill was churning out all kinds of lies about his affection for Latoya and how much he favored her.
He favored her. That was no lie. But it ended right there.
But whomever targeted her might not have known that.
Which alarmed him. Because the name the cops named, that name he worked hard to not react to, made it clear what this was about.
Latoya was targeted because of her association to him.
She was in more danger than he at first realized.
That was why, when he pulled around to the back of his house, he told her to go on inside and he’ll be in behind her.
Once she was inside, he made two phone calls. Two very tough phone calls.
But he knew he had to do it. For Latoya’s sake, he had to put it all on the line.