“They were going to kidnap her kid to keep her working? That’s fucking diabolical,” Seven said. “Like, don’t they just sell knock-off handbags?”
“That’s what I said, too,” Nico said. “But, apparently, some of these handbags go for, like, half a million dollars at auction, so…I guess it’s lucrative and Amy was the best of the best when it came to recreating these bags. Like good enough to fool experts. You can imagine how much money could be made if Amy was capable of creating exact replicas of in-demand bags.”
“But Amy didn’t want to keep making the bags?” Shiloh asked. “Is that why they wanted to take Casey? Do people…do that? Just hold kids indefinitely? That seems like a dumb business model. Just saying.”
Mal smirked at his brother’s assessment. “Lisa thought the goal was just to hold Casey until Amy finished training the other seamstresses in their workshops.”
“Workshops or sweatshops?” Levi asked, his disgust evident.
Seven shook his head. “We all know the answer to that.”
“So, the guy Casey killed was coming to kidnap her to bring her to…Leo?” Jericho asked.
“We don’t know that for a fact. It’s just a rumor,” Nico said.
“You don’t think it’s true?” Mal asked, glancing up at him.
Nico shrugged, sinking his fingers into Mal’s curls, scratching blunt nails across his scalp to keep his hands busy. “I don’t know, but something is…off. If Eric was Frankie’s guy, why would Leo trust him with such an important task? Lisa made it sound like Leo didn’t even want Frankie in his crew but took him because Jason wouldn’t go without him. Wouldn’t Leo have sent one of Jason’s men to get Casey?”
“So, are you saying that Leo didn’t give the order? That Frankie had ulterior motives?” Jericho asked.
“Lisa also said there was a rumor that Amy had an issue with one of the twins harassing her and that she went to Leo and complained. Maybe they wanted to hurt Casey as revenge?” Mal posited.
“We don’t know which twin was harassing her,” Nico said before anyone could ask.
“So, someone’s lying,” Atticus mused.
Jericho frowned up at his husband. “What do you mean, Freckles?”
Atticus stood and started to pace the room. “By all accounts, Amy would never leave without Casey, so she didn’t take off on her own. But the rumors are that Casey and Amy ran, which means that the GTB didn’t hurt her. If they had, they wouldn’t be wasting manpower looking for her. But someone went to the apartment that night looking for either Casey or Amy. That means either someone in the organization is lying or someone outside the group took her and that seems like a bizarre coincidence.”
Jericho considered that. “You think someone in the GTB knows what happened to Amy?”
“We need to find out who’s in charge of the two guys who beat up Mal,” Nico said.
“Why’s that?” Levi asked.
Nico huffed out a sigh, his head throbbing. “We know that Leo controls Jason and Frankie, and that Jason and Frankie have their own crews. Whoever controls the two assholes who beat up Mal can be ruled out as a suspect. There’s no reason for them to waste time dispatching two guys to beat up Mal for hiding Amy if they know for a fact where Amy is. It just doesn’t track.”
“How do you propose we find out who they work for?” Seven asked.
“Easy,” Atticus said, a cold smile spreading across his handsome face. “We ask them.”
The pure malice behind Atticus’s tone reminded Nico that before Freckles became a husband and father, he used to torture and kill people on a regular basis. It was hard to believe until times like this.
“So, our working theory is what?” Jericho asked. “That one of the twins is lying?”
“Well, like Freckles said, it would be a really weird coincidence if some random third person just happened to do something to Amy when there was a gang breathing down her neck,” Nico said. “One of the twins is a good place to start.”
“But what about the blow back?” Seven chimed in. “The only reason they haven’t come after us for Eric is because someone believes Amy is the killer. If we snatch those two losers off the street and torture them, we’re going to war with not just the GTB but the Red Lotus Clan. Is that something we’re prepared for?”
Atticus sighed, then pulled his phone from his pocket. He pressed a button then put it on speakerphone and waited patiently while it rang.
“Who’s dead?” a voice on the other side said cheerily.
“You know, I liked you better when I thought you were a drunk and not James Bond,” Atticus grumbled.
Archer. Why was he calling Archer?
