PaigeI sat in one of the many vans outside of the Mansion with Sera. We could just barely hear the few remaining gunshots, and Sera flinched almost every time. I sighed and fiddled with the radio.“It’s better out here,” Sera said.“No the fuck it’s not,” I spat. I would’ve given almost anything to walk in there with Tom, but he said that while my shooting was getting up to par, this was going to be all-out war. I wasn’t ready for a combat situation, so I had to sit in the fucking car. Again.She met my gaze steadily. “Let’s say you’re not gonna get hurt. Let’s say you can tolerate watching him get hurt. Would you really be able to walk back in there?”I swallowed and looked at my hands. Last night, I dreamt that Gamal, our house guest, was chasing me through the basement I remembered from my night at the Mansion, and all of the bastards I could remember bid on me when I accidentally stumbled onto the auction block. Once again, though, the dream ended before anyone won. But realistic
TommasoI slipped my phone back into my pocket and looked around the basement. Dead bodies lay everywhere around me, but thankfully, all of them were men. When I left Stan, he’d taken the guys directly down here and cleaned up before any of Killian’s allies—who might be supportive but also might not take the same care—could reach the room first. A few of the men milling around were just piling bodies off to the sides so the women could exit their cages onto something other than dead flesh.They reminded me of Hal, on the ground outside in a puddle of his blood. He might not have been the brightest bulb in the box, but he was ultimately a good kid who’d gotten roped into this mess by nothing more than a couple unlucky family ties. I made a mental note to take care of Hal’s mom. Anonymously, of course.“Conti!” one of the men called.I looked at him, and he tossed me something. I caught it on instinct. A sparkling ring of keys he’d clearly found on one of the bodies. I nodded to him and
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