Grier had thought a fight would get the anger out, help him to clear his head enough he could form a plan, and he would know what to do. Sadly, it solved nothing. “Go ahead. I’ll be there in a little while.” He wanted to get out of there, find a place that didn’t remind him of her and her perfume and all the things about her Tyler Sedotal was probably busy trying to destroy.
He climbed on his bike before Kye could stop him then zoomed out of the lot. He needed time. The business would wait long enough for him to return. He drove through Southie to the old neighborhood, where he’d grown up in a group home after running away from the last foster home. Not that the group home was better. But he’d found a way out of there, been smart enough to figure out how to stay in school and still not have to go back there.
The old group home had been converted to a dance studio that was no longer open. The windows, high on the walls, were boarded up and the whole place was enclosed by a makeshift fence. He sat out front staring, remembering the time the O’Hally brothers had locked him in the basement with the old, creaking boiler and no light. He’d been ten and stuck down there for two days before anyone found him. He also remembered the day Kye showed up. Thank God for Kye. Together, they were unstoppable, but then he’d been fostered out. He still came back for Grier, though, helped him get out of there.
For a dollar, maybe less, Grier would’ve set the old place on fire, but it was mostly concrete and block so it would just become another eyesore in a neighborhood with way too many eyesores. He stared at the building and through a crack in one of the boards on the front window, he saw light. Like electricity light.
He crossed the street on foot and made short work of climbing the fence. A long time ago, he’d gone inside, when it was a dance studio. Walls had been knocked down, the old dirty gray paint had been covered in stark white with red accents, and the dingy carpeted floors had been stripped and covered with a high sheen hardwood. They’d taken out the day room and made it into a shop with racks of sequined costumes and those little skirts ballet dancers wore. Rooms, where he’d endured all manner of torture, had been transformed into a place where kids learned to twirl and tumble. But Grier hadn’t been able, even with all the transformation, to see anything but his own memories.
He stayed in the shadows of the building and crossed to the back of the building. The grass was damp on the side and he slipped into a tiny trench full of water and got a boot full of sludge and mud. He couldn’t imagine why he’d decided to do this, morbid curiosity maybe, but he moved through the side yard and stopped at the corner of the building and counted. Twelve bikes, three guys outside smoking, one black SUV, and one way out. The math didn’t favor Grier, but damned if he was leaving. Not until he knew who was inside this place. He shot a text with the address—one he still remembered—to Kye and Sage. Then he snapped a couple of pictures—bikes, guys, the license plate, before he crept back around the building to his bike.
There were no clubs in this part of Southie. This was gang territory because those guys didn’t mind the “up and coming” aspect of the neighborhood. Motorcycle clubs like the Demons didn’t favor so much traffic near their business center. Too risky to run big trucks full of stolen merchandise and black-market drugs down such widely traveled streets. And it wasn’t like this was some sort of secluded hideout. This was so close to downtown Southie he could smell the garlic from Alfredo’s Italian Kitchen.
If Grier would’ve had any Spidey senses, they would’ve been tingling. He didn’t want to leave, but he needed intel and he needed to set up on the other side of the building. Not like he could do anything for Fiona, but at least when she returned, he’d be able to tell her he’d done what he could to save her business. No other club was coming to town. Not now.
Fiona’s face would never heal if she couldn’t figure out a way to get him to stop hitting her. Every time she looked in the mirror, she had a new bruise or something else that needed stitching up. Now that he’d stopped trying to sleep with her, he’d taken to using her as a punching bag, and it was starting to piss her off.
She looked again in the mirror at her face. Only her eyes appeared to be hers. Nothing else matched the woman she’d been a week ago. And, God as her witness, she would make him pay. She imagined the look on his face when she took the first shot. The thought gave her comfort and she blew out a slow breath. Anything bigger or faster than the shallow inhales and exhales might have killed her. But at least he hadn’t taken London or hurt her.
London slept quietly in her seat with Fiona on the floor next to her. He’d taken the chair and the rug and now she had the hard floor and the mirrors and nothing else. Someone brought her food a couple of times a day—energy shakes with lots of protein and a straw since she couldn’t open her mouth wide enough to eat—and she had plenty of supplies for the baby. So, there was that.
The door swung open and Tyler stood, same sick smile as usual on his face, same angry eyes glaring at her. “Stand up.”
Easier said than done but she used the bar and pulled herself to her feet.
“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” Normally, Fiona would have answered with a reply that would have let him know she was certainly smarter than him, but she couldn’t speak at all anymore. And sarcasm would only make it worse. “Password protection. And my guys can’t crack it.”
Of course they couldn’t. They were little better than circus clowns who’d lost their circus.
She nodded and he jerked his head toward the door. “We’re going into the office and if you try anything—” he picked up the baby chair, “—I’m gonna take it out on her. Do you understand?”
She nodded again and walked beside him down the hallway, taking note of the exit door ahead of her and the three other closed doors in the hallway. A camera hung next to the exit.
Tyler unlocked a door with his free hand and pushed Fiona inside ahead of him. The office, little more than a closet, had a wall of screens that each showed a different view of the building, inside and out. Fifteen TVs and some of them showed a split view of the same area from different angles.
Fiona watched the screens for a minute before Tyler grabbed her by the hair and pulled her toward the desk. But she’d seen enough. The outside didn’t appear to be guarded although the number of bikes out back indicated that there were men in the building she hadn’t seen. She thought of the three hallway doors. Probably, they were behind those.
He pushed her into her desk chair and spun it with his free hand so she was facing her own computer. “Open the file.” There were hundreds of files on her computer. Some real, some she’d faked in case of a police raid. She had one smidgeon of a second to decide which to open. He slapped the back of her head. “Open. The file.” Fake it was. And once she opened it, she would have a limited amount of time before he discovered her deception.
Even typing hurt, the sound of the keys clicking, the fingers he’d stomped yesterday. But she opened the file and waited while he stared over her shoulder. “Good girl.” He pushed her chair back and leaned over her, bracing a hand on each of the chair arms. “You can end all of this right now, you know. All you have to do—” he pushed his knee between hers and shoved hers apart, “—is help me kill Grier. Then we’ll merge the clubs and get rid of the trash and we’ll run the whole thing together.” She would’ve rolled her eyes, but the pain… or Tyler, would have killed her.