Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Gabriel was in the ring at The Beast, sparring with one of his trainers, trying to burn off the restless energy that had been crawling under his skin since he’d left Bella at the penthouse.
He hadn’t slept. Hadn’t even tried. Just paced his apartment until the walls started closing in, then came down here to hit something.
It wasn’t working. Every punch he threw, he saw her face. Every combination, he heard her voice. I need time to think. Time to decide if loving each other is enough.
He should have stayed at the tower. Should have fought harder. Should have found the words to make her understand that he’d already chosen—had chosen her the moment he decided to believe in her innocence, had been choosing her every day since, even when he didn’t know how to show it.
His phone buzzed against the bench where he’d left it. He ignored it. Threw another combination. Ducked a counter punch.
It buzzed again. And again. And again.
“Boss.” His trainer stepped back, dropping his hands. “Might be important.”
Gabriel caught his breath. Looked at the screen.
Harper. Four missed calls in three minutes. And as he stood there, a text from her. 911.
Something cold slithered through his gut. He snatched up the phone and pounded the button to call her back.
“Oh, thank god.” Harper’s voice was wrong. Tight. Scared. As if she was trying very hard to hold herself together. “Bella’s gone. I think someone took her.”
The world stopped.
“What are you talking about?”
“I got back to the penthouse, and she wasn’t here. Her purse, her keys, everything’s still here. Just not her. So I used that location service thing, and her last location was the parking garage.”
Harper’s breath hitched. “I went down to check. Oh, god, Gabe, her phone is on the floor. Smashed. Like someone stomped on it.”
Fear and fury poured through him. And the beast woke up.
He made it to Grimm Tower in seven minutes. It would have been faster if he hadn’t hit every red light on the way, if his hands hadn’t been shaking so badly that he’d nearly sideswiped a delivery truck.
The parking garage was dim and cold, fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like insects. Harper was already there, standing near the elevator bank, her face pale and drawn.
“Where?” Gabriel demanded.
She didn’t answer. Just turned and led him deeper into the garage, past rows of luxury cars, past the reserved spaces with their brass nameplates, to a spot near the exit ramp.
And there, on the concrete floor, was Bella’s phone.
“I didn’t think I should touch it,” Harper said as he bent to pick it up, using a tissue just in case there were prints.
“You did good.” He managed to keep the words level, despite the rage roiling through him. Not aimed at Harper. No, this rage was aimed at Sterling Hart and the flunkies who’d taken her. At the bastards he was going to kill.
“Security cameras.” His voice came out steady. Controlled. He had to hold onto that control if he was going to get her back. “This building has security cameras.”
“I called,” Harper said. “They’re pulling the footage now. He said to come to the security office when you got here.”
He nodded, then held out his hand, then pulled her close and wrapped her in a hug. “Tell me she’s going to be okay,” he said.
“She will,” Harper whispered. “Of course, she will. Have I ever lied to you?”
“Not and gotten away with it.”
She laughed, then rose up to kiss his cheek before cupping his face in her hands. “No tears,” she said.
“I was an ass,” he said, his voice so low he was amazed she heard it. “I was an ass, and so she went to the penthouse instead of staying with me. If something happens to her…”
He trailed off with a shudder, holding Harper tight, and hoping for all he was worth that he’d soon be holding Izzy.”
“Come on,” Harper said. “The sooner we find her, the sooner you can bloody whoever took her.”
He didn’t laugh, but his lips twitched.
And she damn sure wasn’t wrong.
She held his hand as they walked to the security office, a cramped room on the ground floor filled with monitors and blinking lights and a building manager named Patterson who kept wiping his palms on his slacks.
“Here,” Patterson said, pointing at one of the screens. “I’m sorry to say, this is the only angle we have of that section of the garage. But at least it’s something.”
Gabriel scowled as he watched the footage play. A grainy, low-resolution image with a starting timestamp of 5:20:27 AM.
At 5:24:10, Bella walked into frame. Even in the poor-quality video, Gabriel could see the exhaustion in her posture, like she was carrying a weight too heavy for her shoulders.
His fault. He’d put that weight there.
She stopped. Looked around. Called out something. Harper, probably, based on the shape of her mouth.
And then they appeared.
Two men. Big. Professional. They’d positioned themselves carefully—faces angled away from the cameras, baseball caps pulled low, nothing that could be used for identification.
They knew exactly where the blind spots were.
Knew exactly how to move through the space without giving the cameras anything useful.
Sterling had sent pros. Not surprising.
He watched as Bella tried to back away, then as one of the men circled behind her to press something—a gun, it had to be a gun—against her back.
That’s when he saw the change. When all the fight went out of her.
They guided her toward a black SUV idling near the exit. She didn’t fight. What choice did she have?
The SUV door opened. Hands pushed her inside. The door slammed shut.
And then she was gone.
“I got back to the penthouse about twenty minutes before I called you,” Harper said.
“I thought about crashing in New York, but I figured Bella needed me. And then I realized she wasn’t there when I stuck my head into the bedrooms to see if she was awake.
If I’d just skipped the damn coffee and left earlier—”
“No.” Gabriel took her hand. Squeezed it. “None of this is on you. You did exactly the right thing.” He turned to Patterson. “And that’s it?” His voice was deadly quiet. “That’s all you have?”
Patterson nodded jerkily. “I’m sorry, Mr. Grimm. The cameras in that section... They’re older. Lower resolution. We’ve been meaning to upgrade, but the board keeps pushing back on the budget.”
“Get out.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Get. Out.”
Patterson fled. Smart man.
Gabriel stood there staring at the frozen image on the screen. The last frame before she disappeared. Bella, being pushed into that SUV, her face turned just slightly toward the camera.
She looked scared. She looked brave. She looked like a woman who knew she was in trouble and was already planning how to survive it.
God, he loved her.
“I’m going to kill them. Those men. Sterling. They’re going to pay for this.”
The words came out flat. Matter-of-fact. Not a threat—a promise.
“Dammit, Gabe, think.” Harper crossed her arms as she stood in the doorway. “For one thing, where? You haven’t got a clue where he took her. You planning to burn down the Monarch? Because that won’t work.
“Guess we’ll find out. At the very least, I can take that away from him. But, no. I’m only going to his penthouse. I promise you, he’s there. And he knows where she is.”
He stood up, and she moved in front of him. “You’re playing into that asshole’s hands. You go in there guns blazing, you’ll either end up dead or in prison, and then who’s going to save Bella?”
“Get out of my way, Harper.”
“No.” She moved to the security room’s doorway and spread her arms. “I know you’re scared. I know you’re angry. I’m scared and angry too—she’s my best friend. But Bella needs you thinking clearly, not running off to do something stupid.”
“He has her.” The words tore out of him, ragged and raw. “Sterling Hart is a goddamn monster, and he has her, and every second I stand here is another second that she could be—No.
He couldn’t go there. Couldn’t let himself imagine what Sterling might be doing to her. What those men might be doing.
“Leo’s already got people checking Sterling’s properties,” Harper said. “His known associates, anywhere she might be. The FBI has a warrant for his arrest—they’re looking for him, too. We will find her.”
“I’m going to the Monarch.”
“Gabriel—”
“He might be there. He’d probably take her there. Where she and David pulled one over on him. Where she and I have the Gallery. It’s the place she’ll inherit when she marries. And it’s the place where she finally started standing up to him.”
His eyes met Harper’s, hard and sure. “He’ll take her there. And I’m fucking terrified that he’ll kill her there, too.”