I felt my stomach drop out because I thought that was his answer, but relief shot through me when he quickly added, “I would never ask that of you.” He glanced at Magnus and I saw the pair exchange a smile. But it wasn’t until my brother tucked his gun into his waistband behind his back that I finally relaxed.
Until I remembered where we were.
And why.
I dropped Vaughn’s hand and rushed to Dante. “They lost someone just like you did, Dante. I need to help them.Weneed to help them. And all those kids out there. Please—”
“We will, Aleks,” Dante quickly assured me. He looked at Ronan. I still felt like a fool for not having recognized the man at first when he’d entered the room, but I’d been too scared to really process what was happening. The sight of Dante pointing a gun at Vaughn’s head had pretty much caused my brain and my body to go to war as one tried to win out over the other.
“How did you know about Stylianos?” Luca asked. “We never posted his name online.”
“You think you’re the only ones who know how to track who hired a bunch of assholes to kidnap a person?” Dante asked.
“We also know they weren’t the only men sent to take Aleks that day,” Ronan said. “The part that wasn’t clear was why the brother of the man who’d had his own men try to kidnap Aleks would stop them… and then let Aleks call home to tell his family he was okay. It took longer than we would have liked to figure out exactly who you were,” Ronan said to Vaughn. “But once we did, the pieces started to fall into place. And led to you,” the man continued as he stopped in front of Luca. “You all are pretty good with computers,” he acknowledged. “But you don’t have what we do.”
“What’s that?” Luca asked.
“Our wife,” one of the men near Luca said. He was huge with short black hair. He was motioning to the man next to him.
“That’s Cash and that’s Sage,” Ronan said as he pointed first at the bigger guy, then the one with the reddish-orange hair. “They’re married to Daisy, who’s currently expecting their first child. Daisy is the one who helped us put the brakes on your plans by messing with your tech.” Ronan nodded toward Luca’s suit jacket and I knew he was talking about the button that was also a video camera.
“Once we found out who you were, we had to find out why you’d taken Aleks. The picture nearly ended it all,” Ronan admitted. “You have Magnus to thank both for stopping Dante from storming into your house and killing you all and for making us look harder for the truth.” He looked at Vaughn. “He was convinced that something he saw between you and Aleks two years ago was the real deal.”
I looked at Magnus. He sent me a reassuring smile and then his eyes met Vaughn’s and he tipped his head.
I got the impression they were even now. Vaughn had saved all our lives two years ago and Magnus had returned the favor.
“So you know about Gio?” Luca asked, his voice losing some of the edge it’d had before. “And Stylianos.” I knew it was just now hitting him that we weren’t any closer to finding Gio.
“We do,” Ronan said. “As I said, Daisy is the best. She hacked all of your computers and found the transcripts you’d saved whereyou tried to draw the man out two years ago. We made the connection as soon as we saw you were trying to locate a child with hair that was so light it was almost white and nearly clear eyes.”
My heart broke for Luca as he dropped his eyes. I felt fresh tears stinging my own eyes as I realized we’d never really even gotten close to finding the now sixteen-year-old boy.
“We found Stylianos, Luca. We have him,” Ronan said softly. The entire room went so incredibly quiet as Luca, Vaughn, and I, and presumably Con and King, looked at Ronan.
“What?” Luca whispered.
“He was in Chicago. He’s now in a secure location trying to save his ass by naming names.”
“And Gio?” Vaughn asked, his voice breaking. I suspected he and his brothers both couldn’t wait to hear the answer and were afraid of it too.
“He told us about a boy who matched your son’s description,” Ronan said to Luca. “But he swore up and down he didn’t know where he was.”
“He was probably lying,” King cut in as he stepped forward. “You have to question him the right way!”
“We did,” Ronan assured him. “This is Vincent,” he added as he motioned to one of the taller men in the group. He was older than most of the other men in the group, but just looking at him intimidated the heck out of me. “Vincent came out of retirement to help us with this,” Ronan said.
King turned on Vincent and began asking him what techniques the man had used. He wouldn’t even let Vincent respond before he turned back to Ronan and said, “Let me talk to him. I can get the truth out of him.”
“We got what we needed,” Ronan responded. “Vincent,” – he nodded toward the older man – “got what we needed.” Ronan looked at Luca again. “Stylianos didn’t know where Gio was or who he was with, but he did eventually remember something.”
“What?” Luca breathed. He seemed terrified to even ask the question.
“The online screen name the man who was talking about Gioused.” Ronan paused only for the briefest of moments before saying, “Daisy’s motto is that you can’t ever really delete things from the internet and she was absolutely right. She found the alias and that led us to the man who your son was sold to shortly after he was taken.”
“And?” Con asked.
Ronan kept his eyes on Luca. “We found a boy that matches his description, Luca. Alive.”
