Kalista
It feels as though my rescue is over as soon as it begins. I can see the beginning of bruises forming on my arms—proof that I fought my way out just as hard as Griff and his friends did.
“Kalista, you’re hurt,” Griff exclaims, when he notices me looking at my arms.
I can see worry in his blue eyes—and anger on my behalf as well. I’ve never seen him look at me that way before. I have to say I very much enjoy having him openly care about my well-being.
I smile at him as I raise an arm for him to see.
“Let’s call them battle scars, Griff. But, honestly, the bastards didn’t really harm me at all. You saw my moves. I’m a regular Wonder Woman,” I giggle.
Giggle.
You’d think that immediately after having been kidnapped, I wouldn’t be able to do such a thing.
Griff bursts out laughing at my comment, which causes his friends to laugh, too. I guess we’re all riding a bit of an adrenaline high.
“I think we all deserve some alcohol,” Leviathan says.
I can’t speak for the rest of the group, but I wholeheartedly agree.
It’s only after we’ve sat down and consumed several shots in a tiny, obscure yet beautiful bar in the middle of the city that I’m ready to ask all of my burning questions about my rescue.
“So, how did you find me? How did you even know I had been kidnapped?”
I throw a sweeping glance over the men sitting around me—lingering on Griff. He stares right back.
Griffin gestures to Leviathan with a thumb, who dutifully grins in return. “He found you, of course. He kept tabs on certain buzzwords, and you came up. And just as well he was.”
Griff tries to play it off as if the whole thing is no big deal, but for once his facial expression betrays him—I can tell the prospect of me being taken had shaken him down to his core.
Again, I feel satisfied that he feels this way towards me. But more than that, I feel the overwhelming urge to take him in my arms and soothingly tell him that I’m okay.
That will have to wait, of course. I have more questions.
“I was so sure the hotel phone couldn’t have possibly been tapped. So how did the kidnappers know to catch me at the airport? Only my dad should have—”
Oh.
Oh.
If I hadn’t just worked it out for myself, the faces of the men around me would have given the game away.
“No,” I mouth in horror, the word barely audible. “My father? He wouldn’t. He couldn’t have.”
I don’t have any more words. I feel like my heart is breaking.
Griff puts his arms around me and pulls me in tightly to his muscled frame.
“Kalista…I’m sorry, love. It’s true.”
I glance up at him through my eyelashes, wet with tears that I don’t know what to do with.
“Why? Please, please tell me why.”
Griff looks uncomfortable, as if he doesn’t know how—or doesn’t want—to explain it. The Jackal makes a slight coughing noise, so I glance at him in my peripheral vision. Seems as if he’s sacrificed himself to explain it all to me.
“It was for money.”
Wow. Shocker. I had at least worked that much out for myself, even through the shock.
Griff shakes his head slightly. “Could have phrased that better, Jackal.”
He glances down at me, sad and angry in equal measures. There’s a sense of comfort knowing that he is here for me through this.
“But it’s true, Kali. Your dad was under severe financial pressure. His salary was capped at the company, and he had no means to combat his growing debt. You didn’t know anything about this?”
I shake my head furiously, teary-eyed and frustrated.
Did mom know? She can’t have, surely. She’d have let me know.
Griff waits for me to look back up at him before continuing his explanation. “Kali, were you aware that your grandparents set up a trust in your name, worth hundreds of millions of dollars? You gain access to it when you turn twenty-two. And your father is the co-trustee.”
I nod my head. That much isn’t news to me.
Griff raises an eyebrow at me, suggesting that he might have expected me to have mentioned it to him before.
I don’t want to say that I had been so wealthy in the first place that the trust hadn’t even crossed my mind over the past few months—I know that it would make me sound all the more like the spoiled, pampered heiress that I had been trying so desperately to break free from.
“Are you aware that it could be accessed by your father before your twenty-second birthday if it were for your own safety—such as for a ransom?”
I shake my head. Why would I be aware of such a thing, after all?
“Well, our dear Phoenix, that’s exactly what your father was going for. By having you kidnapped, he could access the trust to pull millions of dollars from it. And at the same time claiming back insurance money for both the Canary ring and yourself in the process,” Jackal adds.
My eyes widen at that.
“Kidnapping insurance is a thing?” I ask, incredulous.
Leviathan laughs. “Of course that’s what you ask. Apparently, it is a very real thing, Phoenix,” he chimes in.
I’m speechless. I’m sure that, in any other situation, Griff would revel in that. Instead, he’s mercifully silent, allowing me to process the news.
“So, my dad orchestrated it all from the very beginning? Including the attempted kidnapping on my birthday?”
Griff and his friends all nod in response.
“I know this must be hard for you to hear about your dad, love—” Griff begins, but I hold up a hand to stop him.
I can feel the fires of rage inside my stomach wanting to take over. I can’t let it all out—that would cause too much of a scene—but I can let out a little.
“Screw that bastard! Is my mom okay?”
Griff smiles softly at me. “She’s fine. She didn’t know anything. Still doesn’t. I’ll take you to see her once everything is sorted.”
Griff meeting my mom? Oh, wow. Seems as if all it took to make Griff serious about me was getting kidnapped. No biggie.
But knowing my mom had nothing to do with this helps quench that anger inside.
I don’t trust myself not to make some kind of comment that might shatter this new honesty of Griff’s, so I nod silently in response instead.
“If we’re all done with the explanation, I’d rather like to get a drink,” says a voice to my left.
The Manticore.
I’m shocked. I’ve barely heard him say a word since I was first introduced to him.
“Well, there’s a sentiment I can fully get behind,” I laugh.
Griff looks at me knowingly. I give him a small smile.
I won’t get over my father’s betrayal so easily. I probably never will.
But then I look at the people around me—men who all banded together to save me even though there was absolutely no benefit to them in doing so.
It seems as if—during the process of my blood family being destroyed—I’ve found a new family. One to which I can truly belong.
Then I look at Griffin.
Oh, I could get lost in that look. His blue eyes are looking at me so intensely that I feel my breath catch in my throat.
He’s looking at me like he loves me. God, I hope I’m not wrong.
Please don’t let me be wrong.
But now is not the time to explore such a matter. Now is the time to get drunk with my new family. Time to drown my pain with shots and to laugh and dance the night away.
“We can stay here for a few hours, but once morning hits, it’s back to full-throttle again, love. We need to get you out of here,” Griff says.
I nod at him, relieved that he seems to agree with me on this point: the serious stuff can wait for the morning.