Alphas of Sin Read online

  They stood like that watching the storm play out in front of them. The longer they stood together, the more the stress and tension left her body.

  “Come on,” Greyson spoke softly. “I found something for us to eat.”

  She was proud of herself for not whimpering at the loss of his arms around her, but secretly felt like a teenager again, falling in love for the first time.

  He led her to the reception area of the floor, and she smiled at the fact he’d moved the furniture, so they’d be able to sit on the couch and continue to watch the storm.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” he said as he sat down and grabbed a package of Nutter Butters. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’s food.” He handed her the cookies.

  “Thank you.” She smiled at him, noticing that out of the bunch of snacks laid out on the table, he’d made sure her favorites were there. He obviously paid attention to what she liked.

  If felt perfectly natural to sit there next to him, their thighs touching. As they talked one or the other would reach out, wanting to feel the warmth of the other one’s skin. As the evening wore on their talks became more serious, deeper.

  “There’s a lot to me that you don’t know Vanessa.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We didn’t have much money growing up. I learned at a young age to take what I wanted, but my mama, being a southern woman and all, made sure I had manners.” He smiled off in the distance. “Don’t get me wrong, she may be the sweetest thing you‘ve ever seen or heard, but she had a steel rod as a backbone and wouldn’t take anything from anyone.”

  “I think I’d like her.” Vanessa smiled.

  “I know you would, she’s one of the strongest women I’ve ever known. Just like you.”

  Her heart swelled at his words. Being considered strong meant so much to her. Having him acknowledge that she was, she felt another piece slip into place.

  “I never knew my father. He left when I was young. He attempted to see me for a few years, and then he stopped. It was me and my mom against the world. I started working for your father when I was sixteen. The youngest kid on the crew, I pretty skinny back then. The guys picked on me something terrible, but your daddy always made sure it wasn’t taken too far. Soon enough I started moving up. He was always there for me, helping out when I needed it.”

  “I’m glad he was there for you. He’s always tried to help all of his employees as much as he could. What about your dad? Did you ever see him again?”

  Greyson shook his head. “He tried to get in touch with me a few years ago. We met; I was curious. I only had a few memories of him and wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I tried real hard to get past the fact that he abandoned us, and all the struggles my mom went through. Ones she didn’t have to if he’d at least paid child support. I figured we all make mistakes. So I met with him.”

  “How did it go?”

  “He seemed happy to see me. Liked the person I grew into. I was able to meet his new wife.” Greyson shrugged. “I think it meant more to them than me. Hearing about his other son, the one he had with his new wife, made me realize, again, that other child was more important to him than I was. He called a few times after that day, and I talked to him, but I never made an effort to contact him. Why should I? He was the one who left all those years ago.”

  “So he stopped calling?”

  “Yep. I haven’t heard from him for a year and a half now after his wife posted something on social media on Father’s Day about how he wasn’t one of those dads who tosses their kid aside. Through the grapevine, I heard he has cancer now. He’s trying to contact me again. Is it because he’s faced with death and wants to make amends, or does he need money for treatment? I still remember all those years of barely having anything to eat. I can’t image the stress my mom was under during those years. I was a kid, I didn’t know better, but now I do.”

  “What does your mom say?”

  Greyson smiled. “She has her opinions, but she agrees it is up to me on if he’s in my life or not. My mom remarried when I was in my late teens. Besides your father, he’s been the one who was there for me. He’s my dad, not the man who shares my DNA.”

  “I don’t understand how someone could just leave their child and never want to be a part of their lives.” She laced her fingers with his.

  “Me either.”

  They sat in silence as the storm still raged around them. Vanessa jumped when an extremely bright flash and loud boom shook the whole building. “What was that?” The fear she felt could be heard in her voice.

  “I don’t know.” Quickly Greyson stood up and walked over to the windows, keeping their hands together, he pulled her along with him. They couldn’t see anything, but could hear something different than the storm. They ran to the other side of the building and looked out the window. Moen Construction was on fire. Her heart leap to her throat. They could see the reflection in the building opposite of them. Lightning had hit the roof, and the blaze was spreading fast. Fear started trembling through her body.

  “Oh shit.” Greyson turned to look at her. “We have to get out of here.”

  “How long before the fire department is notified and the doors are unlocked?”

  He shook his head. “Not fast enough.” He pointed to the reflection of the fire. “That’s right above us. It’s going to come through the ceiling before the alarms are going to sound.”

  Vanessa dropped his hand and ran for the fire alarm on the wall by the elevators, and pulled it. Nothing happened. “Help me.” She pointed to the fire hose.

  Without a word, Greyson was by her, breaking open the glass and pulling the hose out. “I’ll try to soak the ceiling with water, aiming directly under where I think the lightning started the fire. Hopefully it didn’t short everything out. If you have any sneakers in your office, I’d put something on those feet.”

  “On it.” Vanessa raced back to her office. She always kept a pair of field clothes and work boots in her closet. As quickly as possible she changed, her fingers fumbling with the buttons. Like in the restroom, she took a few precious seconds to take some deep breaths and assess the situation. Lightning could have made the whole building go haywire. Nothing could be working like it should. They needed to get out as soon as possible, but being on the fifteenth floor was going to make it hard.

  She went back to the idea that there was an escape route out of her father’s office. When this building was being built, she remembered seeing the blueprints. She had studied them. Of course the building, and especially this floor, had gone through some modifications over the years, but her father’s office had stayed the same.

  Grabbing her tool kit that she always kept handy, she ran back out of her office to the front stairwell and tried the doors. There was a chance the electricity from the strike had malfunctioned the locking mechanism, but it hadn’t. Grabbing her purse from where they had sat and talked, she barely acknowledged Greyson drenched in water trying to keep the ceiling wet and the fire at bay. Grabbing one of the chairs from the reception area right outside her father’s office, she swung with all her might toward the huge glass walls of his office. With a resounding crash the glass broke and rained down. Before it all had fallen, she was racing through the opening and to her father’s inner office. This was his private area where he would hold selective meetings. Only a few people in the company who were ever allowed back into this room. Knowing her father, this was where he’d install an escape route.

  Waiting for the lightning to come and illuminate the room, she focused one specific corner based on the floor plan. Once she knew where she was going, she started pressing on the wall, looking for some kind of spring release. Her father loved the old movies with secret passages.

  When she couldn’t find anything, she went to the bookshelf to her left. Pulling and pushing on every book was taking too long, but there wasn’t any other way. Using both of her hands, she tossed the books on the floor, searching desperately for the one that
wouldn’t come off the shelf. Finally, she found it and with a cry of relief, she pulled the lever then pushed it, and a door swung open.

  “Thank you, Daddy!” she cried. Turning around, she sped from the room to find Greyson and screamed. The blazing ceiling buckled with the weight of water and the collapsing building above them. Vanessa could see it was about to crash in on him, but from his angle, Greyson couldn’t. Racing toward him, she reached out to push him out of the way, but slipped on the wet tile and slid right under the unstable ceiling panels.

  Her hip screamed with pain where she landed. Everything happened in slow motion. She saw he look of horror on Grayson’s face as he flung the hose out of the way and reached for her. Her outstretched hand searched for his. The relief when their hands came together. Scrambling up, she tried to keep her footing and her eyes focused on him. She was too scared to look up, afraid she knew what was coming.

  “My father’s office,” she rasped out.

  Nodding, he started to pull her toward their escape, but she heard the ceiling above them protesting and cracking. She moved faster, her muscles shaking with adrenaline. Greyson used his strength and power to swing her forward in front of him. She lost her balance and slid along the floor toward the broken glass and her father’s office. Looking back, she screamed again as the ceiling fell right behind Greyson. He had wasted precious time making sure she was safe, and now it looked like he wasn’t going to be able to outrun the collapse of the ceiling.

  Tears ran down her face as a huge piece of plaster hit him in the back, and he went sprawling. Scrambling up, ignoring the bite of the glass cutting into her hands, she raced back to him. Using every bit of strength she had, she threw off the debris, trying to unbury him. Fire dropped around them. She sobbed his name when she finally got to him.

  Moaning, he tried to move, and relief buoyed her. “Come on honey, we’ve got to move, quickly. I found a way out. Come on,” she begged. “You can do this.”

  Too slow for her nerves, he got up with her help, and they started limping, both injured, toward her father’s office. He was dragging his left leg behind him a bit. She tried to help as much as possible. Putting blinders on the chaos around them, she focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

  “We need to get down the stairs as quickly as possible.”

  “I know. Make sure the door is firmly closed behind us. That will give us a little more time.” His voice was filled with pain as he panted out his words. “Then start down. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “I don’t want to leave you.”

  “You’re not. I promise. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “You’d better be.”

  “Trust me, darlin’, I’m not leaving you. Ever.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  “Good, now go.”

  Vanessa didn’t want to trip down the stairs, so she turned forward, but she kept her ears open, listening for Greyson’s behind her, hoping not to hear anything that sounded like the building collapsing or the fire getting closer. Every once in a while, she’d hear him cry out in pain and knew he’d misjudged his step and had somehow put pressure on his hurt leg. She wanted to make things easier for him, but they had a lot of stairs to go, and he was able to use both handrails to hold onto and jump down multiple stairs at a time. Helping would just get in his way.

  She counted the stairs and floors to keep her focus, knowing each one brought them closer to the end and what they’d find at the bottom. There were no exits on the different floors, just a glowing number painted on the wall. Lucky for them, there was emergency lighting here, too. She didn’t want to think about the emergency lockdown mechanism. Greyson had said that a fire would unlock the doors, but the alarms never triggered. They could end up trapped in the stairwell with no way out and the floor above burning down on them.

  By the time they got down fifteen stories, her muscles were shaking with fatigue, and she was holding onto her wits by a thread. She stood looking at the door, afraid to try the knob, hoping it was a way out but scared it was locked, and they would be trapped.

  Greyson caught up to her and put his arm around her. They leaned into each other, trying to give the other one as much of their own strength as possible. After a moment, Greyson reached his shaking hand out and turned the knob. At first nothing happened. Greyson leaned against, grunting, using that big body of his to force the door to swing outward.

  She smelled the rain. Her calves were getting wet. They were in the parking garage under the building. And the garage was flooding.

  Vanessa moved forward helping to push the door with him, allowing both of them to wade into the rapidly rising water. They came out next to her father’s parking spot, and hers. Her poor little car was almost completely underwater. The massive amount of water was moving in a powerful current toward the pumps at the bottom of the garage. They were protected from the current for now, but it wouldn’t be long before the water would have nowhere to go except where they stood.

  “What can we do?” She turned huge eyes up to Greyson. Between her short height and his hurt leg, they weren’t going to be able to fight against the water.

  “If we stay along the wall, we should be able to get to my SUV. It’s a couple up from yours. If we can climb on top of that, we might be able to crawl out of the opening at street level. Hold onto the back of my pants and stay behind me.”

  With every step, he took he yelled in pain, but he kept moving forward. Tears fell from her cheeks, from terror, from watching him fight against his pain. He was exhausted and needed to stop, but he kept on, to get them to safety. When they reached his SUV, he held onto the handle and rested his forehead on the driver’s side door, breathing heavily. She tried to rub the tension out of this back. They’d made it this far, but there still was further to go. They had to get on top of his SUV and attempt to climb out of the slick opening to the street. They had been fighting their way up the ramp, so the water was not as high at his SUV as it had been swallowing her little car. But she could see the water gushing in from the street drains and knew they didn’t have long.

  Hitting the keyfob, the running boards dropped down, and they used them as a step up to the top of the tire and then the hood of the SUV before heading up to the roof. Greyson let her go first and tried to help as much as he could. She’d stop at every level and tried to get a firm hold and help him up. They worked well together, neither one of them wanted to leave the other behind.

  Once they were both standing on the back edge of the SUV, it was just a matter of climbing over the small wall. They were so close, she began to shake with fear. All she had to do was lean forward and allow herself to fall on top of the wall. Lucky for them, Greyson had backed all the way in. They were so close now she was afraid something would go wrong. It always did in the movies. This is where it would all go tragically wrong.

  She turned to him, framed his face with her hands and pulled it down toward hers. Searching his eyes, she knew what she had to do. “I love you.”

  His pain-filled eyes softened. “I’ve always loved you.”

  “I can’t lose you. Not now.”

  “You won’t. Just please, go. I’ll be right there.”

  “Do you know how many times things go wrong when you’re just about to have everything you want?”

  “Yes, but we have to keep trying. We never give up. Now please go.”

  Taking a deep breath, she turned from him and fell forward, carefully swinging one leg over, and then the other. It was much easier than she thought it would be. On firm ground outside the building she turned back around and saw Greyson right behind her, his torso already on the wall. She grabbed onto his hip, hoping to help him and pulled, rolling him off of the wall and onto her. They hit the muddy ground between the building and the street hard, and it knocked the air out of her lungs. There she lay, blinking as the rain hit her face and saw the top of Moen Tower still on fire. They weren’t safe, but they were closer. She could hear the
sirens coming and knew everything was going to be okay.

  “We need to move away from the building.” Greyson’s voice was tired. “And I should get off of you.”

  Vanessa smiled. “I like you on top of me.”

  Chuckling, he moved his hand to squeeze hers, but he didn’t roll his weight off of her “Are you making inappropriate comments at a time like this, Ms. Moen?”

  “Yes, yes I am, Mr. Hughes.”

  “Keep up the good work.”

  “Oh, I plan to. For years and years.”

  “Then you’d better make an honest man out of me.”

  “You were already an honest man, Greyson.” Her voice was soft.

  “Then let me rephrase that. Don’t make me wait any longer. I’ve loved you since I first saw your picture on your daddy’s desk all those years ago. Marry me, Vanessa Moen.”

  “Nothing would make me happier, Greyson Hughes.” He leaned down, water dripping into their faces, and took her lips in a tender, yet joyful kiss. “As long as you realize I expect time to plan the perfect wedding. The daughter of Victor Moen requires nothing less.”

  “Anything you for, my love.”

  Slowly, they stood up and made their way around the building where the emergency vehicles had stopped. Amid the flurry of activity, they found themselves being attended to, the first responders assessing and caring for their wounds, but when they tried to shuffle them off into separate ambulances, they refused, never letting go of the other’s hand. Their bond had formed well before the walked through fire and waded through floodwaters to finally find a life together.

  The End

  M. STRATTON

  M. Stratton is an International Amazon bestselling author in the romantic suspense and mystery suspense categories for her Storm Series and Bender. She lives with her husband and son in Arizona, which is a big difference from where she grew up north of Chicago, Illinois. As an only child she learned to tell herself stories to make the long winters go by quicker while dreaming of summer vacations. Now as an adult she still makes up stories to pass the time, but now she writes them down to share with other people.