We kissed each other as we expressed the things words couldn’t.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gwen
My fist connected with the man’s jawagain.
My patience was nonexistent. I thought I lost it in Boston.
Actually, I lost it in Charlston, when Dean, James, and I came across eight hundred women and children, ready to be shipped and sold across the globe. Kay’s message said there were going to be about eighty women in a shipping container at the port of Charleston.
We werewrong, and I had never been so disgusted yet relieved to be wrong.
The first container contained one hundred children. My legs virtually gave out, Dean being the one to hold me steady in this unwavering sea of gloom and despair. My chest caved in when a young girl around Aiden’s age came forth holding a baby.
As if we hadn’t already been in the seventh circle of hell, a boy fled the container, crying out for his mother.
Of course, we all thought that was just normal behavior…until he started reading the numbers on the sides of the containers out loud. Dean approached him with a blinding gentleness, the same way he approached our son. The boy appeared scared at first, but Dean got down on his haunches a few feet from him and began asking him questions.
The little boy said his momma was in container 44857 and pointed his finger up. James and I followed his finger, and there it was, 44857.
Already on the fucking ship. The agent next to me muttered something about not being paid enough and he should be allowed to kill more people for this shit as he called the mayor.
He was right; his mother was in that container, along with one hundred more women. And next to that container were five more filled with innocent souls.
Fast forward to now, I was standing in front of a bleeding man tied to a chair. He was one of the buyers who had come to Charleston to sample the product before the transaction, andthanks to Kay, we knew where he was staying. Unfortunately, Collin got to him first. He was already missing an ear. According to my best friend’s vague message, there might have been more pressing matters elsewhere.
There was a man James arrested in Boston. When he was questioned by Dean, the man told my fiancé all the ways he was going to tie me up and fuck me.
My man didn’t like that.
Dean beat him withthebarbed wire bat until he was unrecognizable.
After running his DNA through the system, he came up as a low-level player under the late Roman Barone.
Barone was an up-and-coming mafia man in Boston. After the death of his father six months ago, Roman took over. Not for long, it seemed. The youngest Barone, Anthony, was next in line for the head of the table in Boston, according to James.
A grunt brought me back into the room as irritation crawled over my skin.
The man before me was Sven Grismol, and he had a criminal record worse than Ted Bundy, a far bigger threat than Barone’s.
He grunted as blood and spit dripped from his lips.
“Answer my question, Sven,” I drawled, inspecting my nails. Years ago, I would only wear them naturally, but when I went to New York to seduce the insane mafia prince, I started getting them done.
I liked how the black contrasted against my skin and the powerful feeling the nails provided me. Aiden said it made me look like a vampire. Sadly, blood didn’t agree with my human stomach.
Torturing them would have to suffice.
“I don’t speak to whores,” he spat.
Slowly, I raised my leg, pressing the heel of my thigh high boot into his groin. He winced and trembled. “And I don’t showmercy, pissant. Answer the fucking question. Where were they going?”
Casey had been working on tracking down the shipping routes for each container, but Jeremy pulled her away to go rescue Haley. However, Haley had been back in St. Louis for two days, and Casey had yet to tell us anything.
Thus, I was torturing this man instead of going to see my best friend and my son.
We had him brought back to St. Louis for questioning, but we weren’t at the field office.
