CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
In a small shack of a house in a wooded, secluded area in west Baltimore, Carlo Berrin was seated in the only chair in the house.
Vinnie stood in front of him, with Grayson and Pauly on each side of him.
Two of Vinnie’s armed men stood behind the chair.
Carlo had already been worked over so badly that his face was swollen and his eyes were nearly shut.
That was why Vinnie was shaking his head. “Poor Carlo. I remember when your ass was hot shit. Now look at you.”
Grayson was abhorred by the condition of their prisoner, but he had no sympathy for the man whatsoever. Not after what he and Eddie Hudgens put Latoya through. It could have been her car that flipped. She could have been the casualty instead of Eddie.
“I don’t know if you realize this,” Vinnie said, “but my guys did a number on that face of yours, Carlo. A face, to be honest with you, that already couldn’t afford to have no numbers done on it. But they did a pretty good number on yours. What did you tell them to deserve such terrible treatment?”
“I didn’t tell them shit!” Blood spewed from his busted lip when he spoke.
“Not a good idea, Carlo.”
“I don’t know nothing, Vinnie! I kept telling them I don’t know nothing. But they beat my ass anyway!”
“Because you’re lying,” one of the two armed guards said.
“I’m not lying!”
“Gotta be,” said Vinnie. “Otherwise, we would have to believe that you was driving by, saw Eddie trying to run a Porsche off the road, and you decided to join in for the hell of it. You don’t know nothing, but you just join in. You expect me to believe that bullshit, Carlo?”
“I don’t know nothing!”
Before Grayson could blink again, Vinnie lifted his leg up, and with his expensive dress shoe he kicked Carlo so violently that Carlo flipped over the chair he was sitting in and his slender body slammed against the wall. He cried out in agony.
But Vinnie’s two men hurried and grabbed him back up, stood the chair back on its four legs, and slammed him back down in the chair.
Vinnie was leaned over, with his hands behind his back. “Your ass still don’t know nothing motherfucker?!”
“I was paid to do the job,” Carlo said quickly. Then he looked up at Vinnie although his swollen eyes prevented him from seeing him clearly. “It was just a paycheck for me.”
“Was it a kill or a scare?” Vinnie asked him.
Carlo hesitated, which told Grayson all he needed to know. “A kill,” Carlo admitted.
“Who was the target? My brother?”
“I don’t know! I was told to follow Eddie. Whatever Eddie did, my job was to back him up.”
“Eddie works for Billy Joshua,” Vinnie said. “You ain’t never worked for Billy. Why would you be willing to back up one of Billy’s guys?”
“Because Eddie don’t work for him no more.”
That was news to Grayson and Vinnie. They even glanced at each other.
Billy Joshua was the father of the hooker Grayson’s father supplied with drugs at the family lake house.
Drugs that caused the girl to overdose and die.
Grayson called Vinnie in to dispose of the body, but they all assumed if any heat came down, it was going to come from Billy Joshua. But Eddie no longer worked for him?
“I never heard any chatter about Eddie being kicked out of Billy’s outfit,” Vinnie said.
“He wasn’t kicked out. He left on his own accord. He wanted to freelance.”
“Eddie Hudgens a hired hand? Get the fuck out of here!”
“I’m telling you the truth. I was hired as his backup.”
“Hired by who?”
“Crates McGraw.”
It was a name Grayson had never heard before. “Who’s Crates McGraw?” he asked his brother.
“He’s a drug slinger. A nobody. Small time shit all the way.” Vinnie looked at Carlo. “Why would Crates McGraw hire you and Eddie to do a job? His ass ain’t got no big money to hire somebody like Eddie Hudgens.”
“I don’t know about all that, but that’s who hired me.”
“For how much?”
“Forty thousand.”
Vinnie frowned. “Forty grand to take out Grayson Carrington? That’s bullshit! The going rate on a two-man operation is going to be half a million easy.”
“I don’t know what he agreed to pay Eddie. But that’s what he paid me.”
Vinnie was getting flustered. “This shit ain’t adding up. Why would--”
But before he could finish his sentence, the entire front wall of the house, including the front door and the front window, all caved in as a big, gray, armored-looking Tesla Cybertruck barreled through at full speed.
Grayson dived one way. Pauly grabbed Vinnie and they dived the other way. But the truck slammed into Carlo.
The two guards behind Carlo pulled out their weapons and started firing at the windshield, but like Carlo both of them were immediately crushed to death too.
Vinnie and Pauly had dived onto their backs, and had pulled their guns and were firing on that big truck as it slammed into the back wall and came a halt.
Grayson jumped onto the side of the truck and with the butt of his own gun busted out the side window. Then he grabbed the driver out of that truck as Vinnie and Pauly hurried around to assist him.
That was when they realized it was Crates McGraw himself, the supposed money man.
That was when they realized the gunshots of the two guards had penetrated the front windshield and Crates had been shot multiple times. They dragged him to the floor because he was injured. Gravely so. He was barely hanging on.
All three men knew, before Crates died, that they had to have the full story. But Vinnie also knew that it couldn’t begin and end with Crates. He didn’t have the reach to pull it off.
He and Grayson got on their knees. But Pauly ran outside to make sure there was no backup attacker lying in wait for another ambush.
Vinnie leaned down to Crates’ dying body. “Who hired you? And don’t tell me nobody because I know better than that. Was it Billy Joshua? The only way this makes sense is if Billy hired your ass. Was it Billy?”
“No.” His voice was weak and raspy, barely clear enough to be understood.
“Was it Billy Joshua’s son?” Grayson asked.
“No.”
“Then who was it gotdammit!” Vinnie’s patience was all but gone. He knew the signs. He knew Crates McGraw was on his way out of here.
But Crates looked at Grayson and actually smiled. “You clueless motherfucker,” he said with a grin.
Vinnie frowned. “What are you talking? What’s Gray clueless about?”
Crates didn’t respond and continued to grin. But Grayson’s main thought was Toya. He had to make sure this wasn’t about Toya. “What am I clueless about?”
“Those letters you were receiving.”
“The letters that claimed somebody else knew about what happened at the lake house?”
Crates nodded.
“They weren’t the truth?” Grayson asked him.
Crates grinned through his pain. “A pack of lies,” he said. “I sent them. Your old man paid me to send them to you. He said if you thought somebody else knew about what happened that night, then you would be too afraid to tell anybody about it. He thought it was funny.”
Vinnie shook his head. There were a lot of reasons why he couldn’t stand Sebastian Carrington. His twistedness was at the top of that list. “Sick bastard,” he said.
“And what about that car ambush?” Grayson asked Crates. “I was the target of that ambush, right?”
“Wrong,” said Crates as he continued to grin. “I told you you were clueless. She was the target.”
Grayson’s heart squeezed. “She? Who’s she?”
“You know who she is. That black bitch you’re fooling around with. After he saw her at his country club, he wanted her eliminated. He said nobody was contaminating his blood line. No Asian bitch. No Hispanic bitch. And no black bitch.”
Grayson and Vinnie both had frowns of confusion on their faces. “What are you talking?” Vinnie asked him. “Are you saying Gray’s old man hired you?”
Crates laughed, but they could tell he was laughing off his pain. “Bingo,” he said. “He hired me, and I hired Eddie Hudgens and Carlo Berrin.”
Vinnie and Grayson looked at each other in pure shock.
As soon as they heard that Eddie was involved, they automatically assumed Billy Joshua had found out what happened to his daughter and was seeking revenge from any Carrington he could get his hands on.
But that wasn’t it at all? A Carrington was behind the attack?
Grayson knew his father was despicable, but that despicable? “My father wouldn’t hire you to kill somebody he just met. There’s no way!”
“He’s protecting his bloodline fool,” Crates said. “How can you not understand that?”
Crates started coughing up blood and had to settle back down. “But it didn’t work anyway. Eddie died, but the bitch lived. But then I get a call from your father a couple hours ago.”
Grayson frowned. “A couple hours ago? About what?”
“He said there’s been a change in plans.
He said you and Vinnie were together at your house.
He wanted me take both of y’all asses out.
He said something about some endorsement he’ll be damned if he makes.
He said something about how the two of you know too much about his personal life and how y’all know where the bodies are buried and all that kind of shit.
But when I was heading to your house to handle my business so I can get paid, y’all were just leaving.
So I called your old man. He said for me to follow y’all and he’ll take care of the bitch.
So I followed you. And look what it got me,” he said regrettably.
But Grayson looked at Vinnie. “He’ll take care of the bitch?” And it was in that moment that they realized what that meant.
Grayson and Vinnie both jumped up. Grayson pulled out his phone calling Toya, while Vinnie pulled out his phone calling his men helping to guard Grayson’s mansion. Grayson was already running out of the house.
But Vinnie pointed his gun at a still breathing Crates.
He had to finish the job. “It never ends well when you latch your wagon to a lying sonofabitch like Seb Carrington. You should have known better, Crates,” he said, before he fired several shots.
He glanced at his downed men, with pain in his soul, but then he ran outside where Grayson was already getting behind the wheel of his Mercedes.
Vinnie ordered Pauly to send in a cleanup crew, and then he and Grayson took off.
Neither one of them could get any response from the guards on duty or, to Grayson’s horror, even Toya herself.
“We need to call 911,” Grayson said in panic as he drove faster and faster.
“No cops,” Vinnie said.
“They can get there faster, Vincent, because something’s wrong. Nobody’s answering their phones!”
“I know that. You don’t think I know that? But as soon as those cops arrive, all your old man has to say is that she attacked him and their riddle her little body with bullets. No cops.”
Grayson hadn’t even thought about that. But he knew Vinnie was right. Just like that Richard Lowe lied on Toya in Ocala and got her arrested.
Grayson pressed the button on his infotainment screen.
“Who are you calling now?”
“Father,” he said. But his father’s phone went straight to voice mail. It was turned off.
“Damn damn damn!” Grayson said angrily as he drove.
Vinnie looked at him. “You really love this girl hun?”
Grayson didn’t think he’d ever admit it to anyone but Latoya. “Very much so,” he said.
Vinnie nodded. “That’s a good thing.”
But Grayson was too deep in his head with worry to even hear him.