Chapter 21
Grace
An incessant buzzing filled my head as I started to come to. Pain pounded behind my eyes as I slowly blinked them open. I’d expected to find myself in the truck, or maybe even thrown somewhere on the forest floor, but instead, I took in an office-like room.
My gaze moved about the space, finding a rich oak desk in front of me, a luxurious black couch in the corner, a minibar beside it, and a massive fish tank on the opposite wall.
I blinked, adjusting to the dim lighting and trying to figure out where the fuck I was.
This certainly wasn’t a hospital or the forest, and the last things I remembered were the truck and the fast-approaching tree. Everything else was blank.
The truck… Henley.
I searched the room for any sign of him, trying to crane my neck back to see if he was behind the chair I was apparently tied to, but the space was empty.
I yanked my arms back, finding no give in the restraints.
My mind felt fuzzy, an ache settling into my bones the longer I was awake.
I wasn’t sure if I’d injured anything in the crash, and couldn’t test out my limbs properly with the inability to move many of them, but the tickle trailing down the side of my face told me my head was bleeding somewhere.
A door opened behind me, and I froze, listening for footsteps to see if they were male or female, and if there was more than one person entering.
The steps were lighter than a man’s might be—maybe heels? But there was definitely more than one set, which made pinpointing difficult.
A woman with dark brown hair rounded the chair, aiming for the desk in front of me. She perched herself on the edge, hands splayed behind her as she faced me. Two men stood on either side of her, and I felt the presence of another two at my back.
“Finally. You’re awake,” the woman so helpfully acknowledged, gaze roaming down my body.
“Where is he?” I gritted out, wincing at the pain my words caused in my head.
She arched a brow, amused. “You’re not curious who I am?”
I cocked my head, fighting to ignore the pounding in my skull. “As much as you probably love for all the attention to be on you, I couldn’t give two shits less about who you are. Where. Is. He?”
A grin slowly formed on her face. “You’re feisty.”
I kept my glare leveled on her, not saying anything in response.
“You killed my son,” she stated, her tone taking a lethal turn.
“You’ll have to be more specific. Killing is kind of my thing,” I retorted.
Her eyes narrowed the slightest. “Tyler.”
Slowly, I nodded, masking the shock that this woman was his mother. Was she the one he’d been sharing his location with? I shook the idea from my head. That was impossible. He’d said his location was available to the people we worked with, not her. “He kind of deserved it.”
Her lip curled in a brief moment of weakness before she wiped the look away and spoke to her men, eyes still on me. “I employ a brat, boys.”
This time, I couldn’t hide my surprise. She noted it and smiled wide.
“There’s no way you’re my boss,” I said incredulously.
She pushed off the desk, stepping closer to me. “Why’s that? Because I’m a woman?”
I shook my head, eyes falling down her blouse to land on her black slacks while my fingers strained to feel for a knot on the ropes.
“No. Because if you’re Tyler’s mother, that means I was close to you this whole time.
” That means I was fucking blind. She’d been right under my nose this entire time, and I hadn’t even known it.
Satisfaction passed over her features before she looked down to study her nails.
“Men are so obvious. Guaranteed, if one had been in charge of this business, they’d have been killed by now, and this entire operation would be blown to shit.
But women? We’re discreet, smart, calculated.
” She dropped her hand back to her side, looking at me.
“Though I can’t say the same about you.”
She bent at the waist, resting her hands on the armrests of my chair to lean close to my face. “You kept him alive.”
I held her stare, staying silent to hide my victory at finding a fray in the rope. I grabbed it between two fingers and discreetly began to pull, hoping loosening it from the rest would weaken the restraints.
“The longer my employees take, the less money flows through our pockets.”
I snorted, feeling a spray of what was likely blood hit my upper lip. “Your son stole from me. I guess in the end, it’s an eye for an eye, right?” Maybe it hadn’t been my intention, but it worked out in the end.
She covered her annoyance with another small smile before shoving off my chair and turning her back on me to walk back to the desk. “Do you want to know why I started this business, Grace?”
“Because you’re a divorced single mom who hated her ex and wanted to take her rage out on people who also wronged others?” I guessed. All the props to single moms, but Tyler’s was a bitch.
She took her time settling back into position in front of the desk, crossing her legs at the ankles.
Her high heel scraped across the marble flooring, grating on my ears.
“Maybe I won’t miss you in my company after all.
” She picked a piece of lint off her blouse.
“I started this company to give women empowerment. We can be just as deadly as men, as you know, but we get no recognition for it. So Tyler recruited girls like you to work for me. To show men what we’re really capable of. ”
I shoved away old mental wounds that had been opened when Tyler and I were together, doing my best to prevent them from surfacing while the thread balled in my palm as I pulled and pulled.
Throughout our relationship, I’d always been suspicious of Tyler cheating.
Not only because of his frequent absences during the night, but because of how rough he was with me when he’d get home in the morning.
I’d chalked it up to him being an asshole when he was tired, but knowing that his mother practically forced that sort of job on him—and that this was likely where his anger stemmed from—I didn’t know how to feel about any of it.
I gritted my teeth, not giving a shit about what else she had to say.
She could kill me, but I had to make sure Henley was okay first. “Where the fuck is he?” I shouted, letting my anger get the best of me.
I tugged at the restraints, my heart rate increasing with the feeling of being stuck.
I just needed to get to him. To hold him, and tell him that it was okay to not say he loved me back.
He showed it in so many other ways, and I hated that I might’ve made him feel guilty for not speaking the words.
The woman pasted on a pouty look, head cocking to the side like she pitied me. “Poor, poor Grace. If you had simply done your job, we wouldn’t be in this position.”
“Henley has no part in this. Kill me? Fine. But if you lay a single fucking finger on him—”
“I signed a contract, Grace. That means I follow through, regardless of whether my client is dead or not. Killing that man got you two out of nothing. But now, instead of Henley being the only one on the list, you get the honors of staining the floor red as well.”
I wouldn’t let that happen. Not until I got to Henley and made sure he was safe.
“Tell me, was killing Tyler necessary?” she asked, seemingly oblivious to me unwinding the rope. The effort made it tighter around my wrist, but as it continued to pool in my hand, I knew it’d have to get me somewhere.
I licked my dry lips, remembering the blood spilling from Tyler’s chest. “We should’ve made him hurt longer.”
Her eye twitched. “Do tell why.”
“I already told you, he stole from me,” I seethed. “I guess mommy dearest didn’t pay him enough.”
She chuckled, low and full of malicious promise. She wanted to hurt me? Good. It meant she was focused on her hatred of me, rather than my attempt at escaping.
“He received as much as he needed to survive. Men are greedy, and I strived to teach him differently,” she stated confidently.
“So you took your hatred of your ex out on your son,” I surmised.
“I learned, and I applied that to my child. That’s hardly a bad thing,” she defended.
Finally, the pressure on my wrist began to loosen, confirming that this was working.
“No, it only led to him stealing from his girlfriend, becoming a cheater, attempting to leave the family business by getting into real estate, and having mommy issues.” I hummed as if I was pondering the severity of the list. “No biggie, though. At least he won’t become a divorced man because he’ll never find a girl willing to put up with his shit long enough for marriage. Oh wait…” I smiled. “He’s dead anyway.”
Her nostrils flared, and without even signaling them, one of the men moved. I didn’t see the fist swinging until it was too late. My head snapped to the side, my eye stinging with the impact of his punch.
“I’m bored of her,” she drawled, shoving off the desk to saunter past me. “Shut her up, then come meet me to finish off the boy.”
All four men closed in on me. I had no time to keep trying; the progress I’d made had to be enough.
One of them yanked my head back by my hair, and I took the leverage to yank my arm as hard as I could.
The rope snapped, freeing one of my hands.
I swung, clipping another man in the jaw.
Without hesitation, I reached behind me and found the man’s eye sockets, digging my fingers into the soft parts.
He yelled out, and I used my hold on his head to swing him sideways, knocking him into the two other men.
While they righted themselves, I quickly reached down and untied the rope on one of my ankles, freeing my foot.
I kicked out at the man approaching from the front, hitting him right in the crotch.
He keeled over, cursing as his face turned red and he cupped his balls.
His moment of weakness gave me the perfect opportunity to steal his gun.