Chapter 12 The drive
The engine's low growl was a desperate plea in the quiet, a half-whispered prayer hanging heavy between them. Grey's knuckles, stark white on the steering wheel, mirrored the rigid set of his jaw,tight enough to shatter diamonds. Ahead, the hospital loomed, its brutal fluorescent glare slicing through the night like a thousand accusations he wasn't ready to face.
Liam slumped in the passenger seat, had shed his usual teenage swagger, leaving behind a raw, exposed vulnerability that jabbed at Greyson, pulling him back to his own youth. The boy's hands trembled, just perceptibly, as he stared out the window, the city lights blurring into streaky neon ghosts.
"You're driving like a maniac," Liam's voice was a low hum, barely cutting through the engine's roar.
He didn't ease up. He couldn't. Every single second they hurtled down this road was another second Cassie lay there, another tick of the cosmic clock deciding if it would snatch her from him, too. He'd learned the hard way that the universe had a sick, twisted sense of humour when it came to the people he clung to.
"She's going to be okay," he muttered, the words tasting like ash, more for his own ears than Liam's.Is she?"
Liam's question hung in the recycled air, thick as smoke. "Dad from where I'm sitting, it looks like everyone you care about ends up hurt."
The brutal honesty of it landed like a physical blow. Greyson wanted to snarl, to lash out and deny it, but the evidence was a towering, unstable house of cards built on graves.
Silence stretched, broken only by a distant horn or the wail of a siren. He tried to anchor himself to the road, to the familiar rhythm of driving, but his mind kept fracturing to the hospital, to Cassie's smile this morning after the most wonderful night
"Do you love her?"
The question, sharp and sudden, sliced through his thoughts. Jake glanced over, startled by the directness, by the way Liam's eyes seemed to bore straight into him.
"What kind of question is that?" He deflected, the words cracking, betraying him unexpectedly.
"The kind that deserves an answer." Liam's voice was steady now, ancient beyond his years. "Do you love her?"
Grey's foot pressed harder on the accelerator. The speedometer needle climbed, seventy, eighty. He could feel Liam's gaze, waiting, and suddenly the car felt suffocatingly small, a moving confessional booth.
"Yeah," he finally rasped, the word a ragged breath he'd been holding for months. "I do."
The admission hung, heavy with unspoken implications neither wanted to touch. Greyson had spent years building impregnable walls around his heart, convincing himself that caring was a luxury he couldn't afford, that love was a gaping vulnerability his enemies would exploit, but here, now, hurtling towards the hospital where Cassie fought for every breath, he couldn't lie anymore.
"I love her," he repeated, louder this time, as if the sheer force of saying it would make it undeniable, make it matter. "God help me, I love her."
Liam nodded slowly, as if he'd known all along. "That's what I thought."
"It doesn't matter," he snapped, his defensive walls slamming back into place. "It can't matter. Not in this life. Not with the things I've done."
"Why not?"
" love makes you weak." The words were harsh, bitter, a poison he'd been forced to swallow. "It's a target painted on your back, on everyone you care about. The second you let people see what matters to you, they use it against you."
He thought of his mother then, of her smile that last morning, promising to pick him up from school, to get him ice cream. She'd been on her way to him when it happened, when the brakes failed on that winding road. Or so the police had said. Brake failure. Mechanical error. An accident.
Owen had known better. Owen had cornered him at the funeral, voice low and urgent, explaining the real mechanics of their world, how enemies moved in the shadows, how they struck at the very heart of what you loved most.
"Love makes you weak," Owen had whispered, his hand a heavy weight on Jake's shoulder as they watched the casket disappear. "It's a target, son. Never forget that."
Greyson had never forgotten. He'd constructed his entire life around that bitter lesson, keeping everyone at arm's length, never letting anyone breach the fortress around his heart. It had worked, too, until Cassie.
"Mom used to say that love makes you strong," Liam said quietly, cutting through Grey's dark spiral. "That it gives you something to fight for."
"Your mom was..." He started, then faltered. He'd been about to say naive, but the word died on his tongue. Vivian had been many things, but never naive. She'd known exactly the kind of man she'd married, the world she'd stepped into. And she'd chosen love anyway.
"She was brave," Liam finished for him. "Braver than you."
The words stung, deep and true. Viv had faced down the encroaching darkness of their lives with only love as her weapon, and she'd won more battles than she'd lost. She'd carved out pockets of softness in a life forged from hard edges, had raised a son who, despite everything, could still believe in good things.
"Jake was at Mom's funeral," Liam said suddenly, his voice so quiet Jake almost missed it. "He smiled at me."
Greyson's hands tightened on the wheel, so violently he feared it would shatter. The car swerved, then corrected, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"What did you say?"
"Jake . He was there, at the cemetery. Standing by the old oak tree." Liam's voice was flat, matter-of-fact, but Grey heard the tremor beneath it fear, or perhaps, dawning comprehension. "He smiled at me, like he was happy about something."
The pieces clicked into place in his mind, forming a picture so grotesque he wanted to rip it apart. Jake . The rival family's enforcer. The man who'd been circling their territory for months, prodding their defenses, hunting for weaknesses.
Viv's accident suddenly twisted into something far more sinister than fate. A message. A brutal warning. A chilling demonstration of how easily Jake Morrison could reach into their lives and seize what mattered most.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Greyson's voice was deadly quiet.
" I knew you'd do something stupid," Liam said. "Because I knew you'd blame yourself, and I didn't want to watch you destroy yourself over something that wasn't your fault."
But it was his fault, he knew with a sickening certainty. He'd grown complacent, had let his guard down just enough for Turner to exploit the cracks in his armour. Vivian had paid the ultimate price for his lapse, and now...
"What if Cassie's next?"
Liam's whispered question was another punch to the gut. The car lurched as Grey's foot instinctively pressed harder on the accelerator, the engine screaming in protest. The hospital was so close now, its emergency entrance a beacon of harsh light, but suddenly it felt impossibly, terrifyingly far away.
"She won't be," he said, but even as the words left his mouth, they sounded hollow, fragile. He’d probably said the same thing about Sarah once, believed it just as fiercely.
"How can you know that?" Liam's voice cracked. "How can you promise that when you couldn't protect Mom?"
The question hung between them like a honed blade, sharp and unforgiving. He wanted an answer, wanted to offer some foolproof guarantee that would erase the fear in Liam’s eyes. But the truth was, he couldn't know. He couldn't promise anything except that he would try, and sometimes, trying wasn't enough.
"I can't," he finally admitted, the word tearing at his throat. "I can't promise that. But I can promise that I'll die before I let anyone hurt her."
"That's not good enough," Liam said, his simple honesty devastating. "Dying doesn't protect anyone. It just leaves the rest of us to clean up the mess."
The hospital parking lot stretched before them, almost empty save for a few scattered cars and ambulances lined up like sleeping metal beasts. He pulled into a space near the emergency entrance, his hands trembling slightly as he cut the engine.
The ensuing silence was deafening. Neither moved to get out, as if stepping into the glaring artificial light would solidify everything in a way they weren't ready to face.
"She's going to be okay," he said again, but this time it was more a desperate prayer than a statement of fact.
"And if she's not?" Liam asked, his voice barely a whisper.
He closed his eyes, the crushing weight of all his failures pressing down on him like concrete. His mother's death. Vivian's accident. The countless small betrayals and massive catastrophes that had funnelled him to this exact moment, sitting in a hospital parking lot while the woman he loved fought for her life inside.
"Then I'll make sure Jake pays for it," he said, his voice flat, dangerously cold. "I'll make sure he pays for all of it."
"Then what? You'll be dead or in prison, and I'll be alone, and Cassie will still be gone." Liam's words were searchlights cutting through the gloom. "That's not justice, dad. That's just more pain."
The boy was right, of course. Revenge was a luxury he couldn't afford, not anymore. Not when there were people depending on him, people who needed him to rise above his darkest impulses.
But as they sat there in the parking lot, watching the hospital's emergency room doors swing open and closed, he couldn't shake the chilling certainty that everything was about to irrevocably change. Whatever waited for them beyond those sterile walls would either shatter them completely or forge them into something stronger than they’d ever imagined possible.
"We should go in," Liam said finally.
He nodded, but neither moved. They sat in the suffocating darkness, two broken people clinging to each other, hoping it would be enough to keep them from crumbling entirely.
The hospital waited, patient and implacable, holding all their answers and all their fears in its sterile embrace and somewhere in the distance, Jake was probably smiling, utterly oblivious that his latest move had just awakened something in Grey that had been dormant for far too long.
Something that would either save them all or destroy every single thing they’d painstakingly tried to build.
The night stretched ahead of them, pregnant with possibilities and unspoken promises, and Jake Turner finally understood that some battles were worth fighting, even when victory wasn't guaranteed.
Even if love made you weak.
Even if it painted a target on your back.
Sometimes, the only choice was to love anyway, and pray it was enough to carry you through the darkness waiting on the other side.