Chapter 117 Airtag convenience
Greyson
I'd been pacing my apartment for hours, the air tag app open on my phone, watching the little blue dot that represented Cassie move from her house to the airport to nothing. The signal had gone dark somewhere over the Indian Ocean, probably when she turned her phone off for the flight. The not-knowing was killing me.
The air tag was also my only way to find her if something went wrong.
The device came back online just after 6 PM Johannesburg time, somewhere in Cape Town. My blood went cold as I traced the movement on the map—she wasn't just in the Mother City, she was in the Waterfront area, near the harbor. An area I recognized from business trips with my father.
I started making calls. The pieces were falling into place with sickening clarity—my father's mysterious meetings, the whispered phone conversations I'd walked in on, the way he'd been asking about Cassie's schedule lately. This wasn't coincidence. This was orchestration on a level I'd never imagined.
When my phone rang at 8 PM Johannesburg time, Cassie's name lighting up the screen, I nearly dropped it in my haste to answer.
"Cassie." The relief in my voice was audible. "Thank God. I've been trying to reach you all day."
"I'm in Cape Town," she said quietly, and I could hear voices in the background, the clink of glasses, the hushed atmosphere of an upscale restaurant. "I can't really talk right now."
"Cape Town? Cassie, listen to me carefully. I've been doing some digging since you left, and I think there's more to this than either of us realized. My father's connections run deeper than I thought. If your father summoned you there"
"Greyson, stop." She cut me off, and I could hear the exhaustion in her voice. "I'm at a business dinner. That's all. Not everything is about your family's schemes."
"Where exactly are you?"
Something in my tone must have gotten through to her, because her voice changed, became more alert. "Table Bay Hotel. Rooftop restaurant. Why?"
My heart stopped. Table Bay Hotel. I knew that place.I'd been there once with my father, meeting with his South African associates. The kind of men who moved pieces on boards that spanned continents.
"Cassie, get out of there. Right now."
"What? Greyson, you're being paranoid"
"The Massa family," I said urgently, my mind racing through every fragment of conversation I'd overheard in my father's office. "That's who you're meeting, isn't it? Cassie, they're not just clients. They're partners with my father. Have been for years. This isn't a coincidence."
Silence on the other end, then: "I have to go."
"Cassie, wait, Cassie!"
The line went dead.
I was already moving, grabbing my wallet, my keys,and passport just in case . The next flight to Cape Town wasn't until midnight, but I was going to be on it. I called my travel agent from the taxi, pulling strings and calling in favors to get a seat on what was probably a fully booked domestic flight.
The flight was torture. Two hours of turbulence and stale air and the growing certainty that I'd sent the woman I loved directly into a trap of my father's making. I tried calling her repeatedly, but her phone went straight to voicemail every time.
When we finally touched down at Cape Town International, I was off the plane before the seatbelt sign had fully dimmed. I checked the tracking app,she was moving through Cape Town, the signal suggesting she was in a car. At least she wasn't still at that hotel.
I called her as my taxi wound through the streets toward the city center, Table Mountain looming majestically in the morning light, and this time she answered.
"Greyson?" Her voice was strained, careful.
"Are you safe? Are you still at the dinner?"
"I'm not ... it's complicated. I'm okay. I think."
Relief flooded through me, but it was short-lived. "Cassie, I'm in Cape Town. I'm coming to get you."
"No." The word was sharp, final. "Greyson, no. You can't just show up here. This is bigger than I realized, and you being here will only make it worse."
I could hear a male voice in the background, cultured, speaking in low tones with what sounded like a slight Italian accent. Someone was with her. "Where are you now?"
"They offered to see me home. I'm in a car with one of them Aiden. He seems... decent. Grey, I need you to stay away. At least for tonight. Let me figure this out."
Every instinct I had screamed at me to ignore her request, to track her down and extract her from whatever situation she'd found herself in. The fear in her voice was real, and the last thing I wanted was to make her more vulnerable by charging in blindly.
"Promise me you'll call when you're safe," I said.
"I promise. You can use my house I have a fully stocked up pantry. Eat something."
The line went dead, and I stared at my phone in frustration. I'd made it to Cape Town, but I was still too late, still too far away to protect her.
"Change of plans," I told the taxi driver, giving him the address to a hotel downtown. If Cassie needed space to figure this out, I'd give it to her. I wasn't leaving Cape Town until I knew she was safe.
What I did notice was the black Mercedes that had been following our taxi since we left the airport. I didn't see the two men in dark suits who took positions in the hotel lobby as I checked in. I was so focused on Cassie, so consumed with worry and guilt, that I missed all the signs that I was walking into a trap.
It wasn't until I was in the elevator, heading up to my room, that my phone rang with a number I didn't recognize.
"Hello, son."
My father's voice, calm and controlled as always, sent ice through my veins.
"Where are you?" I asked, though I was beginning to suspect I already knew.
"The better question is where are you. And the answer, I believe, is exactly where I need you to be.",
The elevator doors opened onto my floor, and there they were. Three men in expensive suits, the kind my father employed when he needed something handled quietly and efficiently. They were waiting for me like I was an expected guest.
"You really should have stayed in Johannesburg, Greyson," my father continued, his voice carrying that note of disappointment I'd heard so many times before. "since you're here, we might as well have that conversation we've been putting off."
I ended the call and slowly put my phone away. Whatever game my father was playing, I'd just walked directly into the middle of it. And somewhere in this beautiful, treacherous city, Cassie was dealing with the other side of whatever web he'd been weaving.
I only hoped that Aiden, whoever he was, really was as decent as she thought.