I always have a way out.
My eyes slide from the window, which shows nothing but darkness, to the man sitting across the aisle from me, and I cringe.I always have a way out until it comes to Lucien Boudreaux and the hold he’s had on me since I was twelve.
He still has that hold on my soul, his sticky fingers reaching inside me and finding their way into my most private spaces.
And gods, do I hate him for it.
He’s staring at me now, his dark eyes shuttered to keep me from seeing his thoughts, and it’s all I can do to keep from jumping up and strangling him.First he shows up at the bar, saying he has business with me, then he virtually kidnaps me, gets me into a gunfight, and brings me to the airport rather than the Rossi mansion, which was where I wanted to go.Within half an hour of him picking me up, I found myself on his private plane at JFK, my head spinning at how quickly it happened.
Is that how it goes for all girls when they’re kidnapped?
I wonder.
I’ve never been kidnapped myself, and though I have friends who have–Sloane and Dante both found themselves on the wrong side of a ketamine-soaked cloth in the last month–I haven’t asked them if it happened so quickly they could hardly remember the details of it.I certainly haven’t asked if they spent the entire journey fighting between burning love and ice cold hatred for the man kidnapping them.
My eyes go to Lucien again, and when I find him still staring at me, a slight smirk on that pirate’s mouth of his, I drop my gaze to the file in my lap and start reading, determined to take my mind off the man.Research.Research is a good way to distract myself from the man who was once the love of my life.
Especially when that research might lead me to my current mark.
The world falls away from me at the thought, and my brain finally decides to get down to business.
The folder in front of me holds thirty files, at least, and on top is a sheet labeled ‘Aislyn Brennan.’A glance at the picture shows me what I expected: A pretty girl, delicately blond and flushed.Freckles across her nose and bright blue eyes.The text to the side tells me her age–only twenty-three–and her family relations.Irish Brennan’s niece.In graduate school for an English degree, with the dream of becoming a teacher.No boyfriend.Decent credit.One car and a flat that her parents bought her.
Nothing that stands out except that relationship with Irish, and her striking beauty.
And if I was a sex trafficker, the fact that she’s young and looks untouched.
My stomach turns at that and I flip to the next file, and then the next.They’re much the same.Girls that look young and pure, with an innocent beauty that sets your teeth on edge.None of them stand out as anything special or different, but they’re all attached to prominent families.The Brennans in New York.The Boudreaux and Landry clans in New Orleans.A de la Roca, which means she may or may not be related to Duca.A Lafayette from New Orleans.Some names that I recognize as the Irish mob leaders in Boston.A few that say they’re from Atlanta.
All related to mafia or mob families.
All young girls.
I slam the folder closed and shut my eyes, trying to get my brain to work.It doesn’t make sense.Is there a collector out there, looking for girls who all fit this same mold?If there is, it doesn’t follow that they’ve all been pulled from our world.There are plenty of pretty girls out there that don’t come with the dangers of mafioso friends and relatives.Is someone specifically collecting girls from the underworld?
I pause and tip my head at that, wondering.It makes a certain sick sense.Men have eclectic tastes, particularly when they have too much money, and I can imagine someone wanting to collect girls who have mafia in their veins.
The bigger problem is the timeline.I know enough about trafficking rings like this to know they can’t afford to hold girls for long.The longer they have them, the better the chances that they’ll be discovered or killed.Two weeks, I think, horrified.And based on my surface-level knowledge, that’s an outside figure.
If we’re lucky, they keep the girls for two weeks before they ship them out.If we’re unlucky, they only keep them a week.
And Aislyn has already been missing for three days.
“Found anything yet?”
I open my eyes to find that Lucien has moved into the seat across from me, gliding so silently that I didn’t hear him coming.Made of smoke and shadows, that one.And mirrors that only show you what he wants you to see.
I don’t trust him.
But I need to know what he knows.
“Why are they all the same?”I ask bluntly.“Young, pretty, untouched.There’s nothing unique or interesting about any of them.”
His mouth quirks.“They’d probably take offense to that, love.”
“Don’t call me ‘love,’” I say, my stomach turning.“You lost that right a long time ago.”
He presses his lips together and narrows his eyes at me, like he’s weighing a number of possible responses to that, and I watch him warily.I’ve known Lucien Boudreaux since I was twelve.My mother and I had already escaped New Orleans by that time, moving to her family in the Irish enclave in New York, where we found shelter and sunshine after living in my father’s dark, abusive world for too long.
