Biker Stepbrother - The Complete Series (Parts 1, 2, and 3) (5 page)

I flew down the hall from Gray’s vacant hotel room and rode the elevator to the main floor.

Breathless and panting, I approached the clerk at the counter. “Did you happen to see a guy leave earlier? Big guy. Dark hair. Lots of tattoos…”

The scrawny clerk who couldn’t have been much older than nineteen shook his head. “I just got here about twenty minutes ago. Hadn’t seen anyone come through here but you, ma’am.”

“Fuck,” I said under my breath. I turned on my heel and headed outside for my car and drove straight to Chadwick Corporation to talk to Sterling’s head of security, Alfonso Dos Santos.

***

I pounded on his office door, which was unusually closed, and prayed to God he was in there. It was maybe nine at night, but Alfonso preferred to work the overnight shift. He didn’t sleep well at night anyway, he’d always said.

“Alfonso!” I yelled, pounding until the bottom of my fist was numb. Hot tears filled my eyes but I fought them off with every ounce of courage I had. Not knowing where Gray was or who took him caused knots in my stomach and sharp pain in the back of my throat where my words and feelings tended to get stuck.

The door flew open a few seconds later, revealing Alfonso Dos Santos in the flesh, head of security at Chadwick and Sterling’s top guy. A retired Navy SEAL who rarely smiled and could bend a lead pipe with one hand, Alfonso was one of the toughest son of a bitches I knew.

“Everly,” he said, holding his military posture straight as a damn statue. “What are you doing here?”

I hadn’t seen him in a good year or two, since our last family vacation. We’d gone to Dubai and Sterling insisted on taking Alfonso. People knew him there and a powerful man like him hadn’t climbed the latter of success without making a few enemies, especially in the oil and finance industries.

I brushed past him and shut his office door. “I need a favor.”

“Anything,” Alfonso said. The man was loyal to Sterling to a fault and that fortunately trickled down to me as well.

“Something has happened to someone I care about.” My voice trembled. Saying the words out loud made them much more real.

Alfonso squinted his eyes in my direction, studying my face. “Holden?”

“No,” I sighed. “God, no. I don’t care about him.”

Alfonso’s eyebrows raised as if he were surprised to hear me say that, but he said nothing.

“An old friend of mine recently came back into my life,” I said with a fond smile that left my face after only a moment. “We were going to leave town for a while. I went to his hotel room tonight and the door was open. All his stuff was there. His bike was in the parking lot. But he was gone.”

His arms crossed his chest and he squared his hips. “Who’s this old friend?”

I drew in a deep breath. “Remember when we were in Dubai a couple years ago, and we stayed up late talking that one night?”

Three weeks in a foreign country with your parents and no one to talk to would leave a girl vulnerable and desperate for a meaningful conversation with anyone who would listen. Alfonso was a quiet man, but he was a good listener. That night I’d told him about my past. About Everly Conners. I swore him to secrecy and he promised he’d never tell a soul.

Alfonso didn’t have the greatest childhood either. He grew up with a single mom in a dangerous neighborhood in Bronx, New York. He’d enlisted in the Navy the day he turned eighteen and he pretty much made life his bitch.

“I remember,” he said, his dark brown eyes kind and reminiscent of a sort of friendship we’d forged that had quietly remained in the background of our lives since then.

“This friend of mine, he’s from my former life. The one I told you about,” I said. “He was my older brother. He always took care of me. Protected me.” My voice faded as my hand clutched at my aching heart. I wanted to know where he was and if he was safe. “There are some men who think he killed someone, but he didn’t. Trust me, Alfonso, he would never kill anyone. He’s a good man. He didn’t do this.”

“I believe you, Eve,” he said, clearing his throat. “Everly.”

“I think they took him,” I said. “This motorcycle gang. We can’t involve the police.”

Alfonso’s face didn’t flinch. Nothing scared him. He reached over for his keys and jingled them in his hand as if he were going to go run an errand. “Let’s retrace his steps. I’d like to take a look at his hotel room too if we can.”

***

I stayed in the background as Alfonso paced Gray’s empty hotel room, opening drawers, walking backwards, and glancing out windows. I didn’t ask what he was doing. I let him do his thing. When he was finished we headed down to the lobby where the same clerk from earlier in the night was working.

Alfonso pulled out his wallet and slapped a small stack of hundred dollar bills on the counter as his eyes danced over to a security camera pointed towards the front door. “Where do you keep your security footage?”

The scrawny kid let out an audible gulp.

“You the only one on the nightshift tonight?” Alfonso asked, his eyes like focused arrows pointed at the kid.

The kid nodded. “Me and one housekeeper.”

He slid the cash in the kid’s direction. “Point me in the right direction.”

The kid grabbed his eyes and opened a room marked “Hotel Manager” and let us in, shaking the mouse on the computer to wake it up. Four screens filled the monitor in real time.

“I want to see what happened in the last couple hours,” he said.

The kid gave him a quick tutorial on the system and Alfonso seemed to figure out the rest. We scoured footage until we saw Gray walk across the lobby around eight o’clock. Alfonso switched to the parking lot camera, which showed Gray entering the back of a gray Range Rover.

“Dalton.” My hand flew to my mouth. “That looks like Holden’s friend’s car.”

Alfonso threw me a look. “You’re absolutely sure.”

I nodded. “It has to be. Yes. Yes. That’s him. That’s Dalton’s car. Holden is behind this. Not the motorcycle gang.”

Alfonso’s head fell back and then snapped forward as he let out a raspy moan. “I hate that fucking punk. Let’s get him.”

“Y-you hate Holden?” I asked, pleasantly surprised. He always seemed so nice to him whenever I was around, though I supposed he probably did it for Sterling’s sake.

“With a passion.” His words were slow and drawn out, as if there were more to the story than I knew. “Let’s get him.”

I hopped into Alfonso’s truck and we sped across town, towards Holden’s apartment.

“I don’t know where else he would’ve taken him,” I said. “We can start there.”

Twenty painfully long minutes later, we’d arrived to an empty condo. Holden was nowhere to be found.

“Everly, can you think of a way to lure Holden here?” Alfonso asked.

I nodded. “I broke up with him. I know he was upset. I could tell him I want to get back with him?”

“Perfect.”

I reached into the depths of my purse and retrieved my phone, my fingers trembling as I cleared my throat and dialed my ex.

The phone in Holden’s hand began to buzz, cutting him off mid-sentence and rescuing me from the pathetic excuse for a pistol whip he was about to inflict on me for the umpteenth time.

I watched as his lips curled into a menacing grin. “Huh. Imagine that. It’s my
fiancé
.” He held his phone out so I could see the caller ID.

“Hi, darling,” he said, placing the call on speaker.

“Holden, hi, baby. Is now a good time to talk?” Her voice seemed forcibly calm, but I was certain Holden didn’t have enough emotional intelligence to pick up on something like that.

“Now is a perfect time, my love,” he said, oozing slime with every syllable. He brought his finger to his lips to silence his minions.

“I’m at your place,” she said. “I was hoping to find you here. It’s late and you’re out. Where are you?”

She sounded like a concerned girlfriend, though it was plain as day to me that she was playing him like a fiddle.

“I’m just… taking care of some business,” he said. “I’ll be home soon.”

“Come home now,” she begged. “I have a surprise for you. I’m sorry for running out the other night. I want to make it up to you. Please. Come quickly.”

“Give me twenty minutes, love,” he said, ending the call. He sauntered over to me with a smugly victorious grin across his pink lips and rubbed his soft hands together. “Well, there we have it, Gray. Guess she wants me back. What can I say? I guess her tastes have… evolved back in the right direction.”

He lowered his face to mine, bearing his teeth like a Chihuahua who didn’t know how little and weak he truly was.

“You’re nothing but a mongrel. A piece of shit,” he seethed. “You’re never going to be good enough for Eve, and you need to leave now. Get out of town. Don’t call her. Don’t contact her. Stay away from my fiancé. Do we have an understanding?”

My face froze in an expressionless pose. I refused to acknowledge someone when they spoke to me like that.

“I said,” he rose his voice. “Do. We. Have. An. Und-”

And then I socked him. My wrists still bound and taped, I socked him with my two clenched fists. I then brought my arms down like a sledgehammer and applied enough force to rip the tape down the middle. His pals stood back in the corner, cowering like a couple of rich pussies while Holden pulled himself up off the ground. Blood dripped from his nose, and judging by the horrified look on his face, he wanted to kill me.

But I wouldn’t allow it. People had tried their hand at killing me before, but no one had gotten the job done. Not yet.

I slipped my feet out of my boots, freeing myself from the chair and charged at Holden. Grabbing him by the collar, I pulled him up off the ground to meet my eyes.

“Let me tell you something, you pink shirt wearing pencil dick cocksucker,” I growled. “You stay away from Everly. She don’t like you. She ain’t one of you. She never will be.”

I unclenched my fist and let him fall to the ground, crumbling in a heap of tremors. I charged toward his friends and they flinched, each of them, with each step I took.

They weren’t worth it.

“Keys,” I said to the driver. He pulled his keychain from his pocket and threw it at me. “Phones.”

I collected each of their phones and shoved them in my pockets before bolting out of the warehouse. As I drove, I did an internet search on one of the phones for the home of Sterling Chadwick, at least that’s who I remembered Everly saying her stepfather was.

I pulled into a gated driveway, backed up, and then reared the Range Rover through the metal gate, knocking it down before entering a circle drive of a mansion in Brentwood. The whitewashed stucco and red-tiled roofing of the sprawling mansion seemed a far cry from the tinned and dented trailer we grew up in.

I pounded on the front door until a petite Hispanic woman opened it, though that late at night I was lucky if anyone answered.

“I’m here to see Everly - I mean Eve,” I said with a sort of determination that seemed to scare her.

She looked me up and down, probably wondering why some rough and tumble leather and tattoos hooligan like me was doing in their pristine neighborhood.

“Eve is not home,” she said, blocking the door with her body.

“I need to know where she is,” I argued. “It’s very important. Her life may be in danger.”

“Rosa, who’s here this late at night?” a woman’s voice said from around the corner. I’d recognize that voice anywhere.

A woman with a face tight and smooth as glass and blonde hair dyed an expensive shade emerged from behind the Hispanic woman. Her lithe body was wrapped in a satin robe and her face fell the moment she saw me, like she was looking at a ghost.

“Tammy-Dawn,” I said.

“Gray.” Her hand flew to her chest, but she didn’t seem happy to see me. She turned to her employee. “Rosa, it’s okay. Go back to your quarters please.”

To my surprise, she let me in and led me to the kitchen table. She took a seat next to me and cupped her head on her hand as she stared long and hard.

“You look just like your father,” she said. Although her voice was the same, her words were different. She sounded like she came from money and privilege. It was all an act.

“You look nice, Tammy-Dawn,” I said.

“It’s Tamara,” she corrected me. “Tamara Chadwick. I haven’t been Tammy-Dawn since I don’t know when.”

“Since the night you left,” I said.

She placed her hand over mine. “Thank you, Gray. Thank you for telling me what you did, when you did. Who knows where we’d have ended up. What horrible things would’ve happened to my Eve.”

I nodded.

“I try not to think about that life,” she admitted, keeping her voice low as her eyes danced around the room to make sure we were alone. “I get so angry at myself for putting me and my daughter in that situation.”

“Looks like you’ve more than made up for that.”

She smiled as she ran her manicured fingers along the polished wood of the mahogany table. “I’ve worked hard to get us this life.”

Hard on her back.

“I’ll do anything to keep it,” she added, her eyes squaring with mine and her face hardening. “You can’t be around us, Gray. We don’t associate with our former lives.”

Her words cut through my chest like a jagged knife, and my jaw clenched in response.

“Your daughter’s in danger,” I said.

Her eyebrows rose. “How so?”

“That Holden is a psychopath,” I said. “He kidnapped me.”

A boisterous laugh flew from her lips and she slapped her knee. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in my life. Holden’s an angel. A fine young man. That’s why he’s marrying her.”

I didn’t have time to argue with an idiot. “She doesn’t want to marry him.”

“Don’t you think I know that? A mother always knows her daughter’s heart.”

“It’s not your decision to make. It’s hers. Shame on you for guilting her into anything she don’t want to do.”

Tamara rolled her eyes. “You can say all you want. You can lay the guilt on me as thick as you possibly can. It won’t change a damn thing. She’s marrying Holden. That’s all there is to it. Now, if you could kindly leave.”