“Grady.” I spit the name out, tasting bile.
“You’re a smart man, Thorton. So, do you want her back or not?” Vince Grady’s voice was hard but full of what I thought might be boredom. What the fuck? He was asking me if I wanted my little girl back as calmly as if he was asking if I wanted extra cheese on my pizza.
“Of course I fucking want her back!” I exploded and heard the babies whimper, but my concern didn’t even reach to caring if I scared my boys just then. I was too scared, too fucking terrified for Lucy. “How much?”
“Two million.” I didn’t even blink at his demand. I would have handed over every damn penny I had if it would get me Lucy back. “I want it by tomorrow at noon. I get the money, you get Lucy. A fair trade, yeah? And if you’re smart you won’t involve the cops.”
“Don’t worry about it, fucker. There won’t be any need for the cops.” It wasn’t like I wanted the cops to witness a murder anyway. Because I was going to fucking bury that bastard as soon as I got my hands on him. “Let’s do this tonight.”
“You can get that much money now?” He laughed like he thought I had said something incredibly funny.
“I can’t, but Emmie could.” Emmie would call the president of the bank, get his ass in the vault and have the money within the hour. But Emmie wasn’t here and I had no idea where she was, or how badly she was hurt. That fucker had her phone, had sad that she was still breathing when he last saw her… How long ago had that been? Of fuck, what about the baby? I squeezed my eyes shut. “Where is she?”
“Probably the closest hospital by now. Fine, tonight it is. You have until midnight.” He told me the place, and I repeated it aloud, nodding.
“Let me talk to Lucy,” I demanded, when I realized that Grady was going to hang up. I needed to hear her voice again, to know that she was alright.
“You have thirty seconds to talk to her,” he said before I heard Lucy’s whimper.
“Lucy? Are you okay, baby?” Where my voice had been full of rage just seconds before it was suddenly choked and broken. I swallowed hard, trying to hold back the tears and the gut twisting fear. “Did he hurt you?”
“M-my f-f-face,” she stuttered.
“I’m going to get you back, baby. I swear it. I’ll have you home soon, okay?”
“D-da-daddy… She was bleeding,” Lucy sobbed, and I knew she was talking about Emmie. “She wasn’t moving.”
Before I could say anything the line went dead. “Lucy?” I said her name, praying that she would answer me but knowing she wouldn’t. A roar was bubbling up inside of me and I raked my hands over my scalp.
The rage was building again and it was like nothing I had ever felt in my life. Nothing compared to how explosive I was at that moment. That fucker had hurt Lucy, had hurt Em. He had my baby and I couldn’t get to her. Couldn’t protect her and that was driving me crazy.
“Jesse?” Layla’s voice made me raise my head and I saw the same emotions swirling in her eyes that were tossing me around on the inside. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Vince Grady took Lucy,” I snapped, unable to calm down even for her. “He took her and he wants two million tonight. I have no clue where Emmie is but he hurt her, left her bleeding somewhere.” Her already pale face turned alabaster and I saw her start to shake.
Lana rushed to take Luca from her before she accidently dropped the baby. Then she was placing the baby in the incubator because she was shaking too. “I need Em to get the money because I don’t even fucking know our bank account number…”
There were a million things I needed to do, but I had no idea how to get them done because the one who was the sane one, the one who took care of me and all my problems was lost to me at that moment. I felt impotent and useless and terrified and that only made the rage burn higher.
“…Nik.” Shane’s voice distracted me for a moment and I realized he was on the phone doing one of the things I should have already been doing. Calling Nik. Oh fuck, he was going to go crazy.
“Calm down, Nik,” Shane yelled and I could hear Nik exploding over the line. “You’ll scare Mia. Call a cab, don’t fucking drive, okay? You’ll only wreck and you don’t want to hurt Mia, do you? Good, call a cab and get here… It’s going to be okay. We’ll find her, bro. Her and Lucy both.”
“This is the closest hospital,” Harper said, already placing Lyric in the incubator with his brother. “If Em was hurt this is where the paramedics would have brought her. I’ll check the ER.”
She left without me even really understanding a word she had said. It was all surreal to me and I was seeing things with tunnel vision with shades of red all around me. I watched everything around me as if I were someone watching a movie. Lana sitting on the bed, holding a now sobbing Layla. Drake on the phone to someone, but talking in hushed tones so I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying. Shane still on his cell with Nik, talking him down so that Mia wouldn’t be scared. Twin babies lying cuddled in an incubator, curled around each other. None of that really registered to me on an emotional level. I had shut down like I had the day Layla had gone into labor. All I could feel was the rage and the need to make Vince Grady bleed.
My cell phone buzzed again and I didn’t hesitate to answer it. “Yeah?”
“She’s down here,” Harper’s shaky voice informed me. “You need to get down here… Bring Shane and Drake.”
“Is she alive?” Was that my voice, dead and cold?
“Yes, Jesse. She’s alive and bitching. Just get the fuck down here,” she yelled at me. “Snap the fuck out of it and move!”
I blinked. Harper wasn’t one to raise her voice but she had just ordered me around in a way that only Emmie would do. Almost as if she had flipped a switch inside of me, I began to calm down a little. “We’ll be right down.”
I stuffed the phone in my pocket and turned to face Drake and Shane. “She’s downstairs. Alive, and Harper says she’s bitching, so that’s a good sign… Right?” They nodded, giving me tight smiles. I glanced at Layla, still clinging to Lana just as hard as Lana was holding on to her. I wrapped my arms around both of them, kissing the top of Layla’s head. “I’m going to get Lucy back, baby. I swear to gods, I’m getting her back.”