Bryce's P.O.V.

"Don't lie to me, Ernie." I put my arm on the closing elevator door, not hasty to step in right away. Going for my phone in my back pocket, I cupped it in my hands, ready to start dialing. "I want to know if you're certain about this information."

"We're positive." Conner countered and motioned for me to hurry into the elevator. "Get in. The only thing we don't know is if she's there still or if she has left."

"You didn't try to get backup to arrive at the location and scope the place, right?" I inquired. It was a trick question.

"No, that's your job. We came here so you could go with us." Conner had responded correctly. The only one that should be able to flash the green light was me. If I, for whatever reason couldn't, then of course he could. But I was happy to see he didn't overstep his boundaries.

I walked into the elevator. When the doors reopened, a stunned Kelsey gazed at the four of us with sunglasses on her head and a textbook in her hand. "Where are you guys off to?"

Conner strayed behind, comforting her with whatever lie he needed to sell her to believe. The three of us, the ones who weren't being tail-gated by Kelsey, waited for Conner at the lobby's main exit. I held open the door, waiting for their love-fest to end. Since I didn't know how this mission to reclaim the drugs was going to play out, I let them say goodbye for a moment longer than usual.

This could be their last goodbye.

"You aren't answering my question, Conner. What's going on?" she blew out a shallow-breath, retracting from their kiss.

Conner pecked the top of her head. "We'll be back before five PM. I'll be fine."

"Promise?"

The corner of his mouth tilted upward and he kissed her for a second time. "I promise."

Witnessing them act this way didn't make me want to yell at them for being openly mushy. Typically, I would've teased them at a moment like this. I couldn't get an insult out of me.

I missed her.

It been twenty-four hours since Sophia left. I was too stubborn to call and I had a feeling that she was nearly just as stubborn to be the first to ring me up.

A pound of lead sat on my chest, seeing them be together, knowing that I was close enough to that kind happiness with Sophia - until I ruined it.

"If you two love birds are done sucking-faces, we have things we'd like to get to. Preferably in this lifetime." Anthony said, pushing the door wider open. "If that's not too much to ask for."

Conner flipped him the bird. He then gave Kelsey one last parting farewell before jogging up to the exit with the rest of us.

Conner promptly slapped Anthony's head moments after leaving.

"What the hell?!" Anthony rubbed his scalp. "What was that for?"

"Don't talk to me like that. Especially not in front of my girl."

"Your girl." Anthony cooed, laughing uncontrollably. "You've gone soft; you shouldn't have a girlfriend. It's turned you into a wuss."

I scoffed, wanting to use the insult he had used on me earlier this week, I said: "Oh, who knew the C in Conner stood for C—"

"Hey." Conner shouted. "Not today. I'm in a good mood."

"This is you in a good mood? I'm astonished." Anthony said, rubbing is eyes comically.

"This is me in a better mood than I was minutes before I found out about Audrey's hiding spot." He concluded and clasped his hands together. "I hope she's there."

"I don't." Anthony withdrew his car keys from his pockets and unlocked the doors for us. "An easy, clean mission is what we should hope for."

Conner shook his head. "Nah, I liked some action."

"That kind of mentality is going to get you killed."

Anthony got into the driver seat and we all buckled up. Taking his car was a better choice than taking Conner's. His windows weren't tinted and his loud engine could be heard from a mile away, rumbling up the street.

I hadn't gotten myself around to the task of asking Conner a vital question. It was something that was rattling in my head for ten minutes.

Quickly after my call with Mister Santiago, it had dawned on me that Conner was family friends with Sophia when she was younger. Her dad was friends with his dad.

"Conner." I said, out of the blue. "Wanna know who called me?"

"Let me take a shot. Mister Santiago? Tell him you'll get his profit cut. He needs to stop bitching and moaning." Conner snarled. "My God, doesn't he have any other people to terrorize? We've gone through enough."

"That wasn't the only thing he brought up though. We got an extension for when we should bring back the assets."

"Whoa, how did that happen?"

"He said an old friend called him up and told him to give him an extension." I continued. "He also told me about why his Hitman targeted Lora in particular. It's because he couldn't get to Sophia."

"I already knew that. Sophia was with you."

"No, you don't get what I mean. The same guy who gave us an extension is Sophia's dad. He's part of the De la Torres crime family."

The car came to a sharp halt.

Luckily, there weren't any cars behind us. Anthony braced himself before easing off the footbrake. He twirled in his seat and looked at me from the gap where his headrest stretched from the chair. "That's wicked, man. Doesn't that family loaded if that's her dad?"

"Last time I checked, her dad isn't in her life," Conner filled in.

"Did you know?" I sought out the chance to corner him with my questions. "You knew about her dad?"

"No, not necessarily. I had suspicions." That reminded me of the times he had warned me of getting involved with her, saying that I had to be cautious. Had he known then? His expressions weren't telling me anything. They were blank, bleak of any emotion. "I knew her last name was De la Torres, but just because someone has a name similar to a criminal doesn't mean they're related. Heck, I knew a guy with the last name Escobar, that doesn't mean he's related to Pablo Escobar."

We started moving again, toward our destination.

"Your dad was friends with her dad though." I adjusted in my seat, turning my body so I was fully facing him. "I thought you would've known since they were close."

"Close? Who the fuck lied to you?" Conner whipped his head around. "Sure, they may have been cordial because they did business together, but close is a stretch. I didn't even know what my dad did for a living until I was sixteen. That was long after we had moved up to San Francisco and my dad stopped working for her dad. And my dad didn't willingly tell me what his connection was with her family, but he told others. If you know what I mean."

I got a small hint of what he was nodding towards.

I had totally forgotten, even though Conner had told me before in the past.

Three years back, Conner's dad got locked up for tax evasion. It was the only thing they could pin on him, despite his many ties to illegal activities.

They had no solid proof when it came to the amount of people he killed and the amount of cases of loan-sharking in the Bay Area he was linked to. His inability to pay taxes was what put the final nail into the coffin, leading him into a downward spiral of dismal agreements to avoid jail.

When the Feds got a hold of him, they found a way to get him to talk about his ties to the crime families. One of them being the De la Torres family.

Conner's dad left jail early because he had worked with the cops, giving him a shorter sentence time. On top of that, his time was cut in half because of good behavior, which put him on parole for year and a half.

He was a free man to the eyes of the law but the crime world had written him off as a rat. No one liked an informant and no one wanted to do work with a traitor. Conner had told me that his mother tried to patch things up with Sophia's mom by reuniting the two families one summer, but their invite was never answered to.

They moved from their home, hoping to seek a safe place for the newly freed Mr. Blackwell and his family. He swore to Conner's mother that he would get a legitimate job and start things off the right way for their family.

Two months after his release from jail, Mr. Blackwell was found dead with his tongue ripped out, lying on his stomach in the backyard. Conner was the one who found him.

Conner sat forward, resting above the glove compartment.

"Close friends isn't something I would use." Conner changed the radio station that was playing Boys Don't Cry by the Cure. He turned up the volume of the song on this new station. It was Can I Kick It? by A Tribe Called Quest. Conner started humming the rap lyrics, blocking me out and obviously displaying that it was the end of the conversation.

Probably not the best time to bring up his dad. I realized too late.

Having an openly dreadful relationship with my own parents made me unintentionally blind that not everyone hated their parents. His dad was a sensitive topic.

Conner had told me that his dad didn't tell him much about his work. And that he didn't want Conner in getting in mixed up with the people he dealt with.

So, the likelihood of him being aware of what kind of power Sophia's dad had when they were growing up was probably impossible.

With that straightened out, I let the discussion end the way it did, not pushing him any further than I already had.

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A/N: Please don't forget to vote & comment your thoughts (: