Vaughn’s eyes remained on Luca and the other man as he spoke. “His men were there too. That’s why I couldn’t get to you before the men in the van grabbed you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand,” I admitted. My head felt like it was going to explode. I could feel the chill settling over my skin, beckoning me to the darkness. It would be so easy.
“No, Aleks, stay with me,” Vaughn said desperately as he gave me a little shake. I felt his hand cup my cheek. “Baby, please, just stay with me.”
I forced myself to take several deep breaths in order to stave off the blackness that was lining the edge of my vision. I managed a nod.
“When I got to Seattle, I recognized Luca’s men sitting in a sedan on a side street near your shop. I wasn’t expecting to see them there,” he said, his eyes going dark as he snapped his eyes back to his brother. “I disabled them, but I didn’t know what was happening in the alley.”
“Disabled… like you did with the guys in the van?” I asked. Bile churned in my belly. As much as I’d hated those men and I was grateful to Vaughn for saving me, it had been a gruesome sight.
“No,” Vaughn said. “I knocked them out. I know both men and I know Luca… he wouldn’t have let them hurt you.”
I didn’t miss the fact that there was more to that sentence than he was saying. He clearly believed that his brother’s men had been given orders to take me just like the men in the van.
“I managed to catch up to the van, but I needed to wait until it was far enough outside the city to make sure those men were alone. Then I pulled ahead of them and parked my car in the middle of the road to force them to stop. You know the rest.”
I nodded. I hesitated and risked a glance at Luca, whose face was as bloody as Vaughn’s. But despite the cuts and bruises, he looked unaffected.
And very dangerous.
I automatically sidled closer to Vaughn.
“They took his son?” I whispered.
“Yes,” Vaughn said. “Gio. It happened eight years ago. Gio was eight.”
I felt my knees go weak.
The same age as me when I’d been taken.
“And you’re trying to find him?”
Vaughn wiped at his face with his gun hand, smearing the blood. The second he was done, the gun was trained on the two other men again. “Yes. We knew our only chance of finding Gio was by getting in on the ground level.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Vaughn went undercover,” the other man who wasn’t Luca said. He was nearly the same size as Vaughn and Luca and had the same dark hair, but it was long on top and pulled into a ponytail. The sides of his head were shaved. He had a little bit of dark stubble. Unlike Luca and Vaughn, his skin tone was darker, though. His jeans and dark blue T-shirt were a stark contrast to the dress clothes both Vaughn and Luca were wearing.
“This is Con,” Vaughn said as he motioned to the man. “Constantine. Luca and I grew up with him and his brothers, King and Lex.”
Con sent me a small nod and said, “Vaughn was the bestequipped of all of us to look for Gio from the inside. Luca’s name was too recognizable.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t care either. To Vaughn I said, “What does he mean ‘you looked from the inside’?”
“I started pawning myself off as hired muscle,” Vaughn said.
I felt like I was going to throw up. “You… you helped men like Father keep their secrets?” I whispered.
“Yes,” Vaughn said.
“No,” Luca cut in at the same time. “It was an act,” Vaughn’s brother said. “He never directly hurt any kids and he’d pass the information about the kids back to me. I’d send someone in to get them out as soon as Vaughn had moved onto the next client.”
It took me a moment to process what Luca had said. When I spoke, it was to Vaughn and only Vaughn. “But you had to wait to get them out until you’d gone to work for someone else?”
“Yes,” Vaughn whispered, and I could tell he knew where my mind was going.
I pulled away from him because it was hard to think when he was touching me. “So, when you worked for Father all those months, you weren’t really working for him. But you didn’t try to help me…”
