Page 11 of The Beast

Chapter Four

Leo’s text is burned like a brand into my mind.

He called me. Gabriel’s alive!!!

Another text arrives.

He says he’s coming! The GT penthouse.

It’s all I can see, all I can think about. Just getting to Grimm Tower Atlantic City.

Getting to Gabriel.

I have never appreciated a VIP access elevator more in my life. I use my keycard, and even though it probably takes less than three minutes, I bounce on the balls of my feet until those doors slide open and I leap inside, then keep bouncing as I use my key to shift the elevator to express mode. I try to hold myself together as I text down my order for a Town Car to be pulled around. Then I try to will the damn elevator car to move even faster as it drops the forty-plus stories to the subterranean valet level.

When the doors finally open, I burst out, racing across the sub-3 lobby, my untied sneakers slapping against the marble tile. I probably look like a crazy person fleeing the scene of a crime. I don’t care. I can’t care about anything except the two words still burning on my phone screen.

Gabriel’s alive.

The words keep looping through my head, a drumbeat drowning out everything else. Every step I take pounds out the rhythm. Gabriel. Is. Alive. Gabriel. Is. Alive.

And right now, all I want in the world is to get to Grimm Tower and throw my arms around my beloved.

Five years of grief. Five years of lighting candles on his birthday. Five years of visiting the gallery like it was his grave and my only solace. Five years pressing my hand against his paintings as if I could somehow reach through the canvas and touch him.

He’s been alive this whole time.

And he’s on his way to Grimm Tower!

Gabe and I used to crash regularly at the Grimm’s residential penthouse. No one actually lives there. It’s just available to the family as needed. Just like the ones in Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, Rome, Sydney, and at least a dozen other places.

And how wonderful that he’s here now when he could be at any other Grimm Tower around the globe. Or even back at their home in Connecticut.

Once I’m released from the elevator, I burst through the glass doors to the VIP car service area, startling a couple in evening wear who give me the kind of look you’d give a woman who just escaped from a psychiatric facility. I ignore them.

I don’t ignore the on-duty valet. Him, I practically interrogate, and am assured that a car will be arriving for me at any moment.

As he scurries off to get the elderly couple’s car, I rock from one foot to the other, twisting Mom’s ring and realizing suddenly how much better I’m breathing. It’s as if a ton of cement has been lifted off my chest.

He’s alive…

Dammit. Where is the second valet? Do we really only have one working?

As I mentally add an audit of the valet service to my list of things to monitor and upgrade, it occurs to me that David has a car here. Maybe I could go get his keys and⁠—

David.

All my breath leaves my lungs as I think of the man I left naked and confused in my bed. David, whose hands were on my body less than an hour ago.

A wave of nausea crashes through me. I slept with David while Gabriel was out there somewhere, alive, breathing, existing in a world I thought he’d left forever.

David must think I’ve completely freaked out, and the guilt is like a knife in my heart—toward him and toward Gabriel.

But I can’t deal with that right now. I can’t deal with anything except getting to Leo and actually seeing with my own eyes that my love is back from the dead.

A solid three minutes pass, and I’m about to fire the entire car department when—finally—a sleek Town Car pulls up. The driver’s window is already down, and he steps out, then opens the back door for me. I tell him to take me to Grimm Tower, then slide in, noticing first that the overhead light didn’t come on. Yet another thing to put in my report about this department.

Then, just as the attendant shuts my door, the door on the other side opens, and a man slides in beside me, though I can’t see him properly in the dark. He shuts the door, and as the car pulls out, I hear the click of the locks.