Page 95 of Callum

“Rosalind? What the fuck?” Harlowe hisses down the line, the panic lacing her voice making me nearly regret dragging her into this.

“Hey, Harlowe,” I mumble, scuffing the toe of my boot into the ground. “I need a favor.”

“You broke my fucking nose, Ros,” Harlowe huffs, but her use of my nickname tells me she isn’t as mad as she wants to be. “Why would I do anything for you?”

“Because I still care about the GiGi’s and refuse to stand by and watch Ginetta run them into the ground.” Harlowe doesn’t say anything, but I hear her breathing on the other end of the call. “Come on, Harlowe. We both know Ginetta needs to be brought down a peg or two.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, but I can hear the laugh behind it. “She might have lost the plot a bit.”

“A bit?” I laugh, shaking my head even though she can’t see me. “She tried to kill me, Harlowe. That implies she’s lost it more than just ‘a bit’.”

“She wasn’t trying to kill you.”

“What? Of course she—”

“No,” Harlowe insists, and I hear her moving something around. “She wasn’t. She was trying to make it look like we cut you loose so you would go running to Callum.”

My heart pounds, the blood rushing in my ears gets so loud I almost don’t hear myself ask, “Why did she need me to run to Callum?”

“Because Ginetta is a lying psychopath. She told Dodge we kicked you out that night we went to his Table.” Harlowe spits something about “bad decisions”, but I can’t hear it all.

Wiping the sweat from my palms on my jeans, I try to bring the conversation back around. “Someone needs to stop her, Harlowe.”

“I’m already working on that.”

Her tone is timid as if she isn’t sure she should be saying the words, and everything clicks into place. “You called Grim.”

“How do you know that?”

“I heard you screaming at Ginetta the night Kyler was torturing me. You suggested calling Grim, but Ginetta said she had it handled.”

“I knew Dodge was going to come for you, whether you were with the MacAlisters or the GiGi’s. I was just trying to protect the GiGi’s from that.”

My mind races as the pieces slowly start to form a better picture. Ginetta and Dodge have been in this together from the beginning. There’s no other explanation for it. “How does Ginetta feel about you calling in Grim.”

“Oh,” Harlowe’s voice cracks, and I straighten from where I’d been leaning beside the payphone. “She doesn’t really know about that.”

“Harlowe,” I whip around to face Callum where he’s sitting in the Range Rover a few feet away, making his own phone call. I wave a desperate hand in his direction, hoping he will see me and know I need him out here. “Why doesn’t Ginetta know?”

Callum quickly says something into the phone before getting out of the car and walking toward me with a concerned look etched across his face. I point to the phone in my hand, mouthing “Harlowe” at him.

“I knew she would just tell me we didn’t need to involve Grim,” Harlowe huffs, and I try to mouth the words at Callum. He clearly doesn’t understand what I’m trying to say, though. “So, I took matters into my own hands.”

“You called Grim behind Ginetta’s back,” I repeat the obvious, this time for Callum’s benefit. His eyes widen, and he immediately pulls out his phone. “You know Grim is going to tell her, right?”

Harlowe sighs, a soft thumping sound starting up on her end. I can just picture her toes methodically kicking against the underside of her desk. “I know, but it’s for the good of the GiGi’s.”

“You care about the GiGi’s enough to rat Ginetta out to Grim?” I can’t help the surprise lacing my voice. I didn’t think Harlowe cared about the GiGi’s at all beyond the fact that they keep her safe from the people hunting her.

“I do.”

“Then, I think you and I might be on the same side of this, Harlowe.” My eyes meet Callum’s over the soft glow of his phone screen, and I see him nod. He trusts my opinion on this. I just hope I’m right. “And I still need that favor.”

Harlowe doesn’t speak for a long time, and I think maybe she’s going to tell me to fuck off. I was always on Harlowe’s side against Ginetta and Kyler, and I hope she remembers that.

“What do you need?”

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