Chapter 1
GIO
Two weeks ago, I lost my best friend, Bryce. He was gunned down in some dark alley like an animal. The man they arrested, Donny, confessed to the whole thing.
The gun was retrieved from the nearby dumpster. His fingerprints were on the weapon, him on the scene. It was all perfect.
Too perfect.
So much so that neither my other friend, Grant, nor I believed Donny had actually done it. Didn’t stop me from putting out a hit on him in prison, though. Just in case. He’s still awaiting trial, but a lot can happen between now and then.
Stepping into my Bugatti Chiron, I hit the road and head toward Grant’s company, Westfield Enterprises—named after his grandfather, who started it. Grant makes a shitload producing the most popular cell phone and memory chip that’s currently on the market. He’s got his hands in AI tech too.
The most impressive thing about Grant, though, is his ability to hack anything and find anyone.
Grant, Bryce, and I met in business school. We were pretty close, knew all the fucked-up shit each other did. There were no secrets between us…as far as I knew.
But I still don’t know why Bryce was in that alley near some exclusive dance club.
He was supposed to meet Grant and I at one of the bars my family owns, but he never showed and never returned our calls.
Several hours later, I got a message from one of our police contacts, telling me they’d found his body and arrested someone.
There was nothing to go on other than the confession and the evidence, which was all the detectives cared about. There were no cameras in the area to catch what happened, either. At least none that we’ve found so far.
It could’ve been just about anyone who did it.
Anyone Donny is covering for. Bryce’s family has plenty of enemies.
They’re oil tycoons or whatever the hell you call those people.
I know we’re missing something. So when Grant called telling me to come to his office to look at some evidence he found on Bryce, I dropped everything.
A car honks when I veer into the right lane at an accelerated speed. This is me going slow. They don’t want to see this car do the max at 273 miles an hour.
Rolling off the highway, I make it to Grant’s office building and ease my car into one of the reserved spots.
The elevator ride is quick to the thirtieth floor, and I greet his secretary, Tamila, whose rosy cheeks get even rosier when I pass her by with a grin. She flicks her shoulder-length auburn hair back and answers the ringing phone as I head to Grant’s office.
The only reason I haven’t fucked her yet is so I don’t mess shit up for Grant. Otherwise, I’d have her on her knees sucking my dick by now.
I don’t even knock when I enter, finding Grant leaning back in his chair talking to someone on the phone. The view of the city is brightly lit behind him, visible through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
“I don’t deal with pussies, Tyson,” Grant chides. “If he can’t handle a twenty million investment, then I don’t want him.”
There’s a long pause.
“That’s right. You can tell him that.” He zeroes his gaze on me and gestures toward the chair in front of his desk. “You tell him that if I don’t have the money in my account by sundown, he’s out.”
The shouting of another man’s voice echoes as he pulls the cell away from his ear and ends the call while I settle down.
He presses two fingers into his temple, closing his eyes as he takes a deep breath.
“That sounded fun.”
His attention wanders over to me as he draws himself closer to the desk. “Some of these assholes think they can run in the big leagues when they haven’t even graduated from the minors.” He shakes out of his black suit jacket and fits it over the back of his chair.
“So, what do you have on Bryce?” I ask.
He gives me a tight look, his crystal blue eyes darkening right before he opens his laptop and presses a few keys. “Take a look at this.”
My pulse quickens as I drag my chair closer, just as he turns the screen toward me.
“I managed to borrow a recording from a satellite camera. This was taken the night he was killed.”
“By borrow, you mean…”
He nods with a satisfied look on his face and runs his fingers through his jet-black hair.
He hacked it. Of course he did. The rumor about him getting into the CIA database when he was in high school? All true.
The video begins to play, and my eyes zero in on the slightly blurry aerial image. I squint at it, unable to make out the setting. It’s damn dark and the video isn’t very zoomed in, but I can easily tell there’s no one there.
But a minute later, two figures appear, a third running after them in a hurry. I can only make out the tops of their heads.
I drop my face even closer, trying to catch their faces, anything at all to give me an indication as to who was there with him that evening. One of the individuals is holding a woman, I think, her long hair fluttering while the third keeps running after them. Could be a man or woman.
“What the fuck is this?” I glance up at Grant momentarily.
“Keep watching.” His features grow tense.
The one running approaches the two others.
“Is Bryce holding a woman?”
“Has to be him.” He nods once. “This was exactly where he was killed, around the time he was killed.”
Fuck.
My temples throb. “What the hell was he doing?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it was, it got him killed.”
I grind my molars, my eyes still on the screen.
The person continues to argue with the man we think is Bryce, hands flinging in the air, feet getting nearer. But he walks away a short distance and drops the woman he’s holding like dead weight.
I stare at the imagery before me, trying like hell to make sense of it all. Bryce was never violent with women. Not around me, at least. There has to be more to this.
Shadows cover their faces, and there’s no real indication that this is even Bryce, except that the person moves exactly like he did. Bryce was a big dude. Tall. Solid. And from the small glimpse, so is the person on the video.
While Bryce argues with the stranger, his arms slowly rise, and he collapses seconds later and the video suddenly cuts off.
“What the hell? What happened to the rest?”
“That’s all I was able to get.”
I ball a fist. Dead end again. No face means no ID.
“Now we know for certain Donny didn’t kill him. I mean…” I lean back into the chair. “Donny is over six feet, around Bryce’s height, and whoever shot Bryce looked smaller.”
“I know. It’s exactly what we thought. He’s covering for someone.”
Someone else killed Bryce. A single bullet struck him in the chest, and he bled out to death while whoever actually did it is living scot-free.
What the hell was he up to? What could’ve gotten him killed?
Was he saving the woman he was holding from that other person? Was he gambling again? Did that have something to do with it?
If it did, I would’ve helped him, if only he’d come to me. He told us he wasn’t doing that anymore, not since his family swore they’d cut him off.
“We need to find out who those people were and how they knew him,” I tell Grant, who nods in agreement.
His thick brows drag inward. “We will, even if it takes our entire life. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“I need to go see Donny,” I tell him.
“You can’t. I already told you. He’s in solitary because of that fight. They won’t let you anywhere near him, Gio. And we don’t have an in with that prison.”
“Fuck!”
I slam a fist on his desk, sending pens scattering everywhere. He doesn’t bother to collect them.
It’s my fault Donny is in solitary. The hit on him didn’t work out so well. The man I paid ended up dead.
“We can’t assume Bryce was doing something wrong,” I say, feeling the need to defend him.
He was our friend. We owe it to him not to think the worst. He may have not been a Boy Scout, but he wouldn’t have hurt a woman. Something had to have been going on.
“Never assumed he was guilty of anything.” Grant pauses, pulling in a heavy breath. “Don’t mention this to anyone. Not even his family.”
“You think it’s them?”
“Could be. We don’t know who is behind it.” He rocks back and forth, thoughtfully covering his mouth with a hand. “They were pretty mad at him when he stole money from the company to pay off the loan sharks.”
“Yeah.” I nod slowly. “I remember that. But it’s been years. Why now?”
He shrugs. “Who the hell knows? But I want this to stay between us just in case.”
“Okay.”
His intercom beeps.
“Sir,” Tamila’s voice comes through. “You have an urgent call from Taiwan on line three.”
“I’ll go, and you get that,” I tell him, getting to my feet.
“I’ll keep you posted on anything else I find,” he replies as he picks up the phone and hits a key.
I head back out toward the elevator, needing to go meet with Michael. And the whole way there, I keep wondering if we’re deluding ourselves into thinking we’ll ever find Bryce’s true killer.