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Chapter Ten: Grayson
The Everglades passed by in a blur as I sped toward Miami. I was following a pin Jace had sent me on my phone, a location where we believed the Viper was holding Sofia and Victor captive. I was racing to rescue them, alone, quite aware that Teo was still recovering in the hospital and Jace and I weren’t exactly in fighting shape.
The explosion had been as disorienting as it was harmful. I had gotten lucky; really, we had all gotten lucky. The fact that Sofia and Victor were alive at all was an incredibly lucky break.
As I hit the gas, pushing the car past its limit, I could only think of what I'd do to that snake when I found him. I had seen what people like him do to their prisoners, and God help me if he had hurt Sofia.
The car's engine roared beneath me as trees and shrubs raced by in a blur of green and brown. It felt like an eternity before I spotted the pin on my GPS. Miami, so built up and full of people, so close to the shoreline, wouldn’t have been the ideal place to build an underground bunker.
But the Viper was a man proficient in the art of deception. He loved playing games and he thrived on the thrill of the hunt. An underground bunker in the heart of Miami was just eccentric enough to be his idea.
Fuck him.
I continued to push the car—not my car, I’d stolen it from the hospital parking lot—engine growling in protest as I raced around bends and over hills. My mind was filled with images of Sofia and Victor, trapped and helpless. The guilt clawed at my insides; it ate away at me, making me feel hollow and empty.
I should have been there with them when they were taken. I should have been strong enough to protect her. But I wasn't, and Victor must have jumped in at some point. I hadn’t.
As I pulled up to the location Jace had marked, my breath hitched in my throat. It was a seemingly innocent warehouse settled among a cluster of similar buildings. It looked like any other place in Miami - full of color and life, a building that could house anything from a tech startup to a trendy coffee shop.
But I knew better.
Eyes narrowed, I parked the stolen car several blocks away. My footsteps echoed ominously on the street as I began making my way toward the warehouse. The streets were surprisingly quiet.
I tucked my hand inside my ridiculous bermuda shorts—I really needed to go shopping after this. I fingered the cool metal of the gun hidden there. In my other hand, I held my phone, ready to call Jace if things went sideways.
As I approached the warehouse, there was no sign of movement. No guards posted outside, nothing that would suggest it was more than just an ordinary warehouse. But there was a sinking feeling in my gut - a whispering intuition that told me everything was not as it seemed.
I heard a car park up behind me and turned my head to look. Jace.
He looked like shit. His face was pale, eyes rimmed with red. There were bruises all over his body, still healing from the explosion. He looked tired and worn out, but ready to go.
"Jace," I greeted, "You look like hell."
He smirked weakly at my comment, "Ever heard of a mirror?”
Despite our banter, I could feel the tension in the air. We were both scared; for Sofia, for Victor. The Viper was a dangerous man and we had no idea what he was capable of doing.
Jace walked up to me, pulling a gun from his jean pocket. He checked the magazine before sliding it back in place with a click.
“I disabled all the outside cameras already,” he said. “This should be easy, in and out.”
“How big is it?”
“Hard to know,” he replied. “There are no pictures of the inside. I expect it’s bigger than it looks.”
I nodded, scanning the innocuous building one more time. "Okay, so we go in quiet, neutralize any threats, and find them."
“Roger that.”
We exchanged a final look before setting off towards the warehouse, our hearts pounding in our chests. The door was steel, locked with a heavy padlock that wouldn't be easy to break. Jace pulled out a couple of lock picks from his pocket and started working on it, his brow furrowed in concentration.
The silence outside felt deafening, making the soft clicks of the lock pick echo around us. My eyes kept scanning the surroundings, knowing we could be walking right into a trap. But we had to risk it. For Sofia, for Victor.
Jace gave a triumphant grin as the lock clicked open and he carefully pushed the door open. It creaked ominously, revealing nothing but darkness inside. We stepped inside, our movements careful and silent as Jace shut the door behind us.
The concrete floor was cold against my bare feet - I had ditched the stolen hospital slippers on my way over. Turned out that the gift shop didn’t have any footwear.
The air was stale, a mix of mildew and dampness that assaulted my nostrils. The only sound was our quiet breathing and the faint drip of water echoing through the vast space. We stood there for a moment, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the dim light filtering in through small, high windows.
