“What exactly are you hoping I’ll give you?”
This time, I have to clench my fists to keep from hitting him.“I already told you what I want.”
“But you didn’t tell me why.”
I snort.“Duca, have I ever told youwhyabout anything I asked for?”
This is the truth, and he knows it.Duca might not be in the Rossi leadership yet, with Fat Jimmy still ruling the operation and Joseph a mere underboss, but he’s high enough that he always has access to whatever information, weapons, and money the family has.Joseph trusts him with his life, and that means that if Joseph knows something, Duca does, too.He’s always been my first call when I needed something no one else could get me.
Right now, that’s more information about Sloane’s missing cousin, Aislyn.
Logically, anything Duca knows will already have gone to Joseph, and from there to Sloane.Logically, my best friend already knows everything Duca is about to tell me.But Sloane herself–and therefore Joseph, and therefore Duca–don’t know what I do about New Orleans or the deals they do for girls down there.
And I’m not exactly going to tell them.
But I need to know whether their information matches with my suspicions.
I need to know whether I have any shot at fulfilling Sloane’s plea that I find her cousin.
Duca watches the thoughts flick across my face, though I’m working hard to keep them hidden, and finally nods.
“Right.I’ll tell you what we know, but it’s not much.Aislyn has been missing since the day of the battle.She went out to walk her dog in the morning and never came home again.No one knows what that means, of course.She could have decided she wanted a different life.Run off with a man.Could be playing some sort of game.”
“But that’s not Aislyn,” I say quietly.I don’t know the girl well, as she isn’t mixed up in the mob side of Irish Brennan’s family.She’s his sister’s daughter, and they’ve always kept her far from the blood and corruption of his life.But I know enough about her to know she’s blond, very pretty, and very well-mannered.She doesn’t do things she isn’t supposed to, and never talks back to her parents.
In short, she’s Sloane’s polar opposite.
And she wouldn’t disappear unless someone had taken her.
“That’s not Aislyn,” Duca agrees quietly, his eyes flitting around the bar.“Which is why everyone is worried.But there’s more.”
Of course there is.There’s always more.
“She’s not the only one who’s gone missing,” he continues.“Word is, a number of girls are suddenly disappearing.Girls who should have security around them.High-end families who can afford to keep their girls safe.Half of them are from mafia families.The other half are from society elite.”
I almost drop the glass I’d picked back up.Mafia families.The society elite.Sure, there’ve been a couple of kidnappings lately–Sloane and Dante–but those are very specific to the war with the Poffo clan.Normally, the unwritten code of the Costa Nostra keeps women and girls safe from the wars.They don’t disappear unless their own family disappears them, and that happens rarely.
A rash of girls suddenly disappearing is odd.
And it raised all the hackles on my neck, because it sounds all too familiar.
What the fuck is going on here?Girls are out of bounds, particularly when they’re rich enough to have good security around them.And losing another Brennan...
We killed most of the Poffo men, and a good number of Massimos and Carusos, but the city is still in chaos as other families try to fill the power voids our war created, and now girls are being yanked off the streets.I’m starting to wonder whether we actually won the war, or if we just made everyone less safe.
Did I go all the way to New Orleans and open up that fucking closet of horrors, just to make New York even less stable?
As if on cue, my phone buzzes, rattling the table, and I grab at it, my nerves on high alert.One glance at the screen tells me that it’s Lucien again.Like he heard me thinking about him or something.
Heard me doubting the move I made to bring him and his men up here to help me fight my battles.
You owe me, Brooklyn,the text reads.
I snarl at the phone and drop it back on the table.He isn’t lying–I do owe him, and I made a promise–but I’m getting really tired of him rubbing my face in it.I’ll pay up when I’m ready, and only if I decide it’s what I want to do.I always pay my debts, and I never desert my friends.But he’s asking the world, wanting me to move back to the Big Easy, and I’m not ready to think about it yet.
I also don’t know whether I trust him.
I don’t trust men in general.I did, after all, grow up with my father.And I saw how hard my mother fought to break free of him, packing up and leaving in the middle of the night with me in tow.Running for New York and her family here, like we had demons on our tails.
