Enzo’s eyes narrowed. “Did he?” The bitterness slipped out before he could stop it.
The table went silent. Then Seven smirked. “You know we can see you sulking, right?”
“And?” Enzo asked, folding his arms over his chest like a teenager.
Elio cackled. “And you look like you just smelled bad sushi.”
“I cannot believe how petty you are,” Ansel added.
Enzo scowled. “Can we just move on?”
“Canyou?” Seven countered, smug. “You’re the one pouting because my boss—who specializes in cybercrimes—taught me something about cybercrimes.”
“Fine,” Enzo huffed. “What else did he teach you?”
Seven rolled his eyes, but his voice softened as he explained. “Basically, you can bury data inside a picture. Looks normal when you open it, but underneath, there’s code. Invisible ink for the digital age.”
Elio snapped his fingers. “Exactly. And these gala shots? They weren’t just happy little snapshots of donors and smiling women WERC supposedly helped. Inside the code were dossiers. Names, routes, even destination ports. Each donor was paired with one or more women from the program.”
Seven’s face went white. “What do you meanpaired?”
Ansel’s grin dropped. He tapped the pages. “The files list who picked them up, where they were transported, and in some cases…who they were sold to.”
The room went quiet.
“Jesus Christ,” Enzo muttered.
Seven shoved his plate away, nausea written across his face. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
Elio winced, but pushed forward. “That’s not all. The spreadsheets had hidden notes buried in random cells—tiny GPS coordinates. They line up with warehouses near the rail yards. And one of the donor voicemails? Not just a voicemail. We cleaned it up. You can hear machinery, a train horn. They’re running a trafficking hub right under WERC’s nose.”
“So, my mom wasn’t stealing money,” Seven whispered, voice breaking. “She was digging too close to this.”
Elio nodded. “Exactly. They framed her to shut her up. And whoever’s behind it? Powerful enough to bury the trail, but not smart enough to cover it from me.” He smirked, then amended, “Well…us.”
Seven exhaled a shuddering breath. “We can’t take out an entire trafficking ring without permission from Thomas and Jericho.”
Enzo’s jaw clenched at Thomas’s name in Seven’s mouth, but he kept his temper leashed. “You said whoever did it was an idiot, right? How does someone that stupid run a trafficking ring?”
The twins exchanged a look. Finally, Elio shrugged. “My guess? Someone low on the ladder panicked. Dumped a bunch of files onto the thumb drive without realizing they included the real dirt. Maybe they thought padding it with harmless crap would make it look more legit.”
“Brioni,” Seven said at once. His voice was sharp enough to cut.
Enzo nodded grimly. “She’s been steering your mom in the wrong direction for months. Makes sense she’d frame her and then panic, dump everything she could find. Your mom suspected her.”
“Then this Brioni’s no criminal mastermind,” Ansel said. “She’s a lackey. Which means she’s protecting her boss.”
“What kind of sick fuck starts a charity with the sole purpose of trafficking vulnerable girls?” Seven asked.
“The worst kind,” Elio said darkly.
Enzo reached out, brushing a hand down Seven’s back. His brothers were brilliant—sometimes reckless, always too curious—but at their core, they were decent. Better men than he’d ever been. Pride and guilt twisted together in his chest.
“We’re gonna kill this guy, right?” Seven asked suddenly, eyes hard.
Elio choked on his coffee. “Wait—you really kill people? That wasn’t just a rumor?”
Seven shrugged. “Only the ones who need killing. The ones who’d walk if we left them to the courts. There’s a chain of command—Jericho, then Thomas makes the final call—but people like this? They deserve to die.”
