Chapter Fifty-One

Safiya

A ngry clouds bursting with lightning whipped around as rain slashed against the windows in heavy torrents. Wind whistled up the elevator shafts, and the top of the building swayed.

I could not think about the helicopter that had taken flight from the roof, then briefly dipped down into my view before flying even higher into the sky and taking on the storm like the pilot behind the controls took on life.

I could not think about those thin blades carrying the man I had just walked away from as they chopped through this weather, and I could not think about all of those women.

I needed to concentrate on myself right now.

Which was why I had bypassed that room harboring sixteen souls as starved for attention from a ghost as I was, and went straight for the largest office. Taking up a whole corner of the towering high-rise with walls of glass, I aimed right for it.

But it was empty.

In fact, all the offices were empty. Not of furnishings—there was more expense in wood and metal and natural stone than I knew how to process. But there was no sign of the powerful men I had expected to be occupying a space with a black granite wall in the reception area that displayed three gold letters with such prominence and importance, it was as if they needed no explanation.

I was about to leave when a voice came from behind me. "The apartment is two floors down."

I turned, and the man from the roof, still holding a laptop, was looking intently at me. "So Grayson said."

"But you're not going there."

Hesitating, I reached for a gold filagree heart on a delicate chain that was no longer there. Somewhere between a kidnapping, a gun fight, and a plane crash, I had lost it. Placing my hand against my naked neck, I shook my head. My heart was gone, and so was the ghost who had given me a gold necklace. I could not stay here.

The man with the laptop tipped his chin before glancing down at his device. "You have questions."

So many, I could not count them. "What is your name?"

"November." He looked up. "Alpha's detained at the moment."

"Alpha?"

"Alpha Elite Security." He stated the name for the acronym in the lobby in a monotone that did not give any hint of emotion.

"Okay." I nodded as if I were not free-falling.

His laptop or a cell phone made a sound, and his focus shifted. "Excuse me." He turned to leave.

Desperate jealousy cut past decorum. "Did he marry those women?"

The man with the laptop and haunted eyes who was named after a month as cold as his demeanor glanced over his shoulder. Then he did the same thing a ghost of a man did when he did not want to answer a question.

November silently walked out of the office, letting the glass door close behind him.

Inhaling past a crushing weight I did not know how to bear, I looked back at the view from too many stories high to count, and I told myself to put it all away.

Another few breaths, and I was about to walk back to the lobby when the whisper of a door being pushed open sounded behind me.

"Miss Savas."

The deep and quietly commanding voice made me turn.

Black hair, penetrating blue eyes and an impeccable suit, the man looked both lethal and studiously serious.

Thinking that he was too handsome and his movements too purposeful, I belatedly registered his form of address for me. "You know my name."

He glanced at his phone. "I do."

"I do not know yours."

Pocketing the device, he met my gaze. "Adam Trefor. What can I do for you, Miss Savas?"

In that moment, I knew he both hated my presence in his office and the man who was responsible for bringing me here. "I am sorry. This was a mistake." I turned to leave.

He waited until my hand was on the office door. "Are you frightened of me or him?"

I lied. "I fear no one."

"Then you have that advantage over me."

I glanced back. "Who do you fear?"

He gestured to one of the two chairs facing his desk. "Take a seat."

Unsure if it was a request or an order, only recognizing his air of authority, I knew my options were limited at best, so I did as he bid.

Once I sat, he sat.

Steepling his fingers, he rested his elbows on the arms of his chair. "If you fear no one, then why was coming to speak to me a mistake?"

Setting my borrowed tote bag at my feet, I did not see any point in stepping around the answer. "I was not seeking you out specifically, but rather the largest office because the favor I intended to ask is greater than the resources I have to cover it. But now that I am here, I see that there is anger in your eyes, and I am not sure if it is directed at me or Grayson."

"Definitely not at you," he admitted freely.

"So you know him." To know Grayson was to either love him or hate him.

"As much as anyone can."

Unused to information being given so freely, I latched on to it. "Do you know where he went?" I did not know why I asked. Knowing would not change the outcome. I could neither help nor stop him. But the part of me that had grasped on to a cool-eyed ghost for eight years was still grasping.

"I can make an educated guess."

I made one of my own. "Because you were a SEAL and you own this company?"

"Yes, I was a SEAL, and yes, I own AES, which affords me certain advantages, but that wasn't what I was referring to. I know Grayson's behaviors. He doesn't leave unfinished business."

I did not think he was speaking about the same thing Grayson had been speaking of mere minutes ago. "Meaning?"

"You're unfinished business."

My pulse jumped, and my nerves took flight. "Is he coming back?" I hated the lift in my voice as I asked, especially when it was me who had walked away from him.

"That, I can't answer."

"Because you do not know or because he told you not to say?"

"No one controls what I say, Miss Savas."

That meant he did not know the answer to my question, and my decision was made. "Can you assist me in leaving?"

"City, state or country?" the former SEAL asked too casually.

"Yes."

"No." He leaned back in his chair. "But I can take you home."

"Home," I repeated, suddenly startled.

"Yes. Your house." He recited the address of the mansion on the beach without looking it up.

For a single, shocked moment, I stared at him. Then I dropped my gaze and stood. "Thank you. That will not be necessary."

"Because?"

Because I could get there myself. Because Grayson was not coming back. Because this man knew about the house and was indirectly telling me it was safe to go there, but in the previous breath, he had said he did not know what Grayson was intending. Which meant he did not truly know what was or what was not safe, and I could not live like this anymore—at the whim of every controlling, dominant man who thought he was saving the world when hapless victims stood right in front of them.

"Goodbye, Mr. Trefor." I picked up the tote bag. Shouldering both the burden and testament of it, I turned toward the door and did what I should have done before this conversation had ever started.

I walked away.