PaigeStanding in the basement of the Mansion, I handed the last woman a set of clean sweats and stepped back as she began to change. The ceiling, padded to reduce noise traveling upstairs in a way I hadn’t understood last time I was here, pressed down on me.No, it didn’t. It just felt like it did. I scrubbed my hands over the goosebumps on my arms and forced myself to stop looking. I didn’t need to see this place through all new eyes. Riccardo Marino was dead. No one else would ever be kept in the tall, metal cages I hadn’t known to appreciate when I was last here.That was another train of thought I didn’t want to follow. I turned to a couple of women, who’d already been checked out by Sera, sitting on the floor together and crying.“Is there anything I can get for you?” I asked. “We’re moving out soon”—as soon as Sera finished checking over the last few, if I had my say—“but if there’s anything immediate, I’ll see what I can do.”One of them looked up at me with her lower lip quiv
TommasoI watched the last van, with Paige in it, pull out of the Mansion’s driveway. In the end, I’d counted forty-five women. I knew she’d been ready for a lot, but that might overwhelm her shelter, no matter how prepared she’d been.Stan walked up to me. “All the bodies on the first floor have been stacked up. Do we have a disposal plan, or are we sending them back to families as a final threat?”Lyle leaned back from the laptop Killian had found in the panic room Marino was trying to escape into. “If we’re, um, sending bodies back, I wouldn’t make that list until I’ve, you know, finished up here.”I nodded. “Makes sense. Marino’s neighbors will know not to say anything by now. Does he have a walk-in freezer?”Stan frowned. “I think so, but we’re probably talking about too many bodies.”“Of course.” I scrubbed a hand through my curls. “All right, put everyone you know belongs to another syndicate in the freezer for now, and come find me when you hit capacity. Lyle, keep at that lap
PaigeNearly half the women we’d rescued from the Mansion crowded into the main common room at the Haven a few hours after we’d left. They’d all showered, dressed in outfits of their choosing, and most of them had already had brief conversations with Lauren. But they still refused to go to sleep.The brunette woman who’d been crying about going home in the basement, whose name I’d learned was Luci, swiped at her eyes. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked. I just don’t understand why you won’t let me call my family.”A murmur of agreement rippled through the room. I glanced at Sera, who just shrugged. We’d told these women every excuse we could come up with, and nothing was working.“I promise you’ll feel better after you sleep,” I said.“She definitely will.” The blonde, whose name was Natalia, wrapped her arm around Luci’s shoulders. “In her own bed at home.”Sera stepped forward. “You guys don’t know everything—”“Maybe you don’t know the meaning of the word loyalty, but there’s nothi
Tommaso“So, um, I have decoded this.” Lyle turned the laptop screen toward me. “It’s not everything, but, you know.”“It’s a start.” I stared at the table on the computer. Names, descriptions, locations of retrieval, all laid out in plain black and white. Worse, in a final column, Marino had made initial notes on who he thought might be interested in specific women. I scrolled down the page to try to keep the snarl off my face. Even though he’d said this was only a start, it looked like Lyle had found definite information on forty of the forty-five women. Paige would be thrilled to see this.“Good work,” I said. “Can I take a deeper look, or do you need to keep working?”Lyle looked at the four other computers sitting on the desk in the little room he’d become king of. “I’m okay.”I laughed and pulled the laptop closer. Most of the women had little links in their descriptions, which turned out to be pictures when I clicked on them. I siphoned through quickly, trying not to think of t
PaigeI trudged down the stairs after getting the last of the women into bed for the night with Beth and Sera at my sides. After Sera’s reveal, none of them fought us, but the mood was somehow even lower. At least six of them had still been crying when I left them, and that one silent girl still hadn’t even blinked, as far as I could tell. I would’ve given just about anything to trudge right out the door and home to bed, but I couldn’t leave my morning staff in a lurch.Beth nudged me as we reached the first floor. “Hey, we did a pretty good job tonight.”“You absolutely did,” I replied. “And Sera, you, too.”She shook her head. “And you didn’t?”I shrugged. It just didn’t seem like time to celebrate yet. Killian and Tom had sent over another van full of guards because our new occupants weren’t just random women who’d been kidnapped this time, but valuable mob relatives. I’d made a few security improvements in advance of the auction for exactly this reason, but we still weren’t nearly
TommasoI shoved my phone back in my pocket and stormed out of the little room that had become Lyle’s office, past Killian.“What the fuck just happened?” Killian demanded.“We took out a fucking kid,” I hissed. I knew the men around us were allies he trusted enough to bring in on enough of the plan to help us, but I only trusted them that far. The last thing I needed was anyone finding out that we’d accidentally kidnapped or killed a seventeen-year-old, or that Sophia fucking Marino was in the wind.Killian nodded sharply, seeming to go through the exact same train of thought. Without another word, we split in opposite directions. I headed for the basement.Fuck, I hadn’t seen Sophia Marino since she was, what, ten? I remembered her uncle Niccolo bringing her to a family event one of the more friendly syndicates held, after Freddie, Riccardo’s eldest, her father, died in that raid, and obviously wanting nothing to do with her. I kind of felt bad for the kid. She was so tiny, and she
PaigeIn the months since Lauren stopped being my therapist and became my best friend, I’d seen a lot of new sides of her. I’d seen her drunk, furious at the city regulations that kept us from adding additional protections to the Haven, flirting outrageously with a random musclehead at a bar. But never, in all that time, had I seen her cry. My stomach dropped instantly to my toes. She sank to take a seat on the stairs, and I sat instantly next to her. Sera, seeming to sense that, while she and I were closer than we used to be, that friendship didn’t transfer, passed me a box of tissues from the same hall table where Natalia left her phone and disappeared.I rubbed Lauren’s back and offered her a tissue.“Fuck, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t…shouldn’t be reacting like this.”“It’s okay,” I said. “This stuff is intense. You don’t have to be perfect all the time.”She shook her head and scrubbed at her tears. “I don’t want to be perfect, but—”I smiled. “Nope. You taught me about
TommasoAs soon as I saw the picture, I raced over to the Haven. The girl who wouldn’t speak, the one who’d barely moved, was the girl I’d been looking for all along. Riccardo Marino had stooped lower than I’d ever dreamed, to sell his underage granddaughter. I hadn’t changed clothes, so the iron reek of blood still clung to me, and exhaustion started to slow my every move.But all of that left my mind when I saw Paige at the top of the stairs. Her bright red hair had tumbled out of the messy bun I’d seen earlier, bags hung under her eyes, and she moved with aching slowness that reminded me a little too much of when I’d first found her, like she didn’t quite trust her body to keep holding her up. I just opened my arms.She stepped into me, and I held her. Part of me expected her to start crying. Part of me almost expected me to start crying, from the sheer intensity, the ups and downs of the night I’d had. I’d gotten everything I’d wanted, nearly lost it again, and none of it mattered