Risky Obsession (Wolf Security #3)

2. Grant

CHAPTER 2

Grant

I slammed the secret door behind me. My heart thundered in my chest as I sprinted through the dimly lit underground tunnel.

“You can’t escape, Grant,” Lacey screamed through the sealed door.

“Watch me,” I whispered, veering left into an open doorway. When I’d built this mansion eight years ago, I’d planned the emergency escape room myself. I’d anticipated needing a rapid getaway, although I’d always dreaded having to use it.

Thumping noises echoed around the concrete floor and walls. Bullets. That bitch was trying to break in.

I raced across the large expanse, built beneath my house which stored everything from priceless artwork that I hadn’t found a place for in my mansion, to exercise equipment that I’d bought and never used to dozens and dozens of archive boxes containing vast amounts of evidence that could crush the assholes who had owned me for decades.

Trouble was, that evidence also incriminated me.

There was no way I was going to jail for those fuckers, even though most of them were dead.

My heart thundered in my chest, matching Lacey’s furious banging. That door was built to save me from attack, though that theory had never been tested .

At the shelf containing two Ming Dynasty vases and my Faberge egg that turned out to be a very expensive fake, I pulled down the backpack I’d prepared years ago. It was weighed down with a handgun, a laptop, nearly half a million in clean cash, fake passports, and a hard drive containing information that would burn a load of powerful people, which was priceless.

“I’m going to get you, Grant!” Lacey’s muffled voice echoed down the hallway.

I removed my loaded gun from the pack, pulled out my lightweight jacket and tugged it on, and added two boxes of ammunition to the bag. I shoved the gun into the jacket pocket with my emergency burner phone and zipped the bag up. With one last glance around the dusty items, I heaved the bag onto my shoulders and raced toward my escape exit with my mind careening between guilt, regret, and joy over what I had to do next.

Determined to outrun my past, and the bitch who threatened to bring it all crashing down on me, I stopped at the detonation timer. The decision to trigger the timer that would obliterate my most valuable physical asset was like a giant anaconda crushing my head.

“Grant!” Lacey’s scream only just reached me.

She was the reason I had to do this—she and Aria Morgan, and the cops who found the Drug Inventory Management Device inside Chui’s sunken yacht. I hadn’t been too worried because the data stored on the device was encrypted, but some fucker had cracked through my defenses and frozen all Chui’s offshore business accounts that I’d been dipping into for years.

I’d tried to make a runner then, but that ended in disaster when the pilot I’d hired to help me get away got greedy. Shooting him was the moment I’d shifted from white-collar criminal to murderer. It was his fault though. Stupid bastard. If he’d stuck to the plan, he would have been rich. Instead, he was a corpse in a seaplane at the bottom of the ocean, having his eyeballs eaten out by fish.

I should have tried to flee again and got away while the cops had no clue who I was.

I won’t make that mistake again.

I opened the trigger case. My fingers trembled. My heart thundered in my chest. “Fuck it.” Clenching my jaw, I pressed the red button .

The lights on the timer set the countdown. Twelve minutes. Precisely the amount of time I needed to get clear of this place before it blew sky high.

With the walls closing in on me, I forced my legs to run to the secret exit at the opposite end of my house. The silent ticking clock seemed loud in my head, matching my heart that thundered in my ears.

My lungs burned, desperate for air, and my nose throbbed from that bitch’s punch.

A pang of guilt washed through me. She didn’t deserve to die. She was just doing her job.

The words tattooed on Lacey’s wrist echoed through my mind: I am not what I have done . . . I am what I have overcome.

I was going to overcome this fucking mess. Just like all the other disasters I’d had in my life.

This was my chance to start afresh. To be the man I should’ve always been.

Not a man who was owned by ruthless bastards who had fucked with me since I saw something I should never have seen decades ago.

I skidded to a halt at the cabinet twenty feet from the exit.

Three gold bars were stacked in a priceless display. Frank Morgan, Aria’s father, had paid me with these bars of gold. I shouldn’t have taken them, but I did, and it sealed a pact that embedded me in corruption forever.

But he was dead now and our connection was broken.

And those bars were worth a fortune. Reality hit me like a wrecking ball. I’m about to destroy my luxury home and all my priceless artwork. And with just about all my cash trapped in frozen bank accounts, I need this gold. I grabbed a bar.

“Fuck.” The bullion was damned heavy, too heavy to take all three. Clutching one bar in each hand, I trudged toward the escape chute that I’d prayed I would never need.

The silent ticking of the clock in my head grew louder.

I gripped the cold, steel handle of the secret door and as I yanked it open, a gold bar slipped from my hand and landed on my foot. The weighted door snapped shut.

I howled at the pain streaking across my toes .

“Fuck. Fuck.” Wincing, I hobbled back to the exit hatch. Clutching the final bar to my chest, I opened the spring-loaded door again and dove headfirst into the narrow tube.

The door snapped shut behind me. As darkness swallowed all visibility, I slid down the chute with adrenaline igniting my veins.

I burst through the thin concealed exit hatch that had been painted to blend in with the rocks surrounding it and crashed onto the plexiglass helicopter landing pad I’d paid a fortune to have built years ago. My hands and knees took the brunt of my impact, scraping skin from my palms and my gold bar skidded across the glass.

The eastern side of the island bore the force of nature and wind howled in my ears, adding to the urgent ticking in my head.

My legs trembled as I picked up the gold and sprinted to my chopper. Each step felt like an eternity. I had no idea how long I had before the entire top of this hill, and my precious home, were blown to smithereens.

I yanked open the chopper door, tossed in the gold bar and backpack, and hauled myself into the pilot seat.

Trying to steady my trembling fingers, I fumbled with the controls. Sweat beaded my forehead as I frantically tried to remember every lesson from my flight training. The knowledge seemed slippery, evading my grasp as panic clawed at my brain.

Forcing my mind to focus, I flicked the necessary switches. The chopper roared to life.

“Come on. Come on!”

The silent ticking bomb in my head matched the beat of the chopper blades as I gripped the controls tighter. The chopper lifted off the ground and as the blades cut through the air with increasing urgency, the stick vibrated in my clammy palms.

The helicopter shuddered, and I wrestled with the controls, trying to find the perfect balance between speed and stability to counter the buffeting wind. My mind raced with images of the island exploding, and the destruction that would consume everything—including me if I didn’t get the fuck out of there.

The deafening ticking intensified, fueling my desperation. I wrenched the controls to the side and the helicopter lurched, banking sharply as I fought to keep it steady .

Sweat poured down my face as the glass helipad below receded. But the image of Lacey’s determined eyes blazed in my mind, tormenting me with the knowledge that, despite what that bitch had done to me, I’d just crossed the line from murderer to cop killer.

No amount of bribery was going to save me from that.