“What makes you think it’s anything at all?” Drago asked.
“Kensington has ties to Russia,” Jagger said. “A lot of them.”
“Could be one of the Rooks,” Rock said.
I was going to assume the Rooks had something to do with the kids of Russian mobsters, just because it was the only thing that made sense and I was having trouble keeping up.
“Could be,” Jagger agreed. “Could be something else.”
“We’re going to need more before I go digging around in the Bratva’s finances,” Neo said.
“Someone was hired to kill my parents,” I said. “We think they were Russian.”
“Lot of Russians in the world,” Drago said.
“Are all of them connected to Aventine?” Vigo’s voice was so distracted as he looked around the room for something else to mess with that I was surprised he’d been paying attention at all.
Neo leveled his gaze at Vigo. “Probably not.”
Vigo shrugged.
Neo seemed to think about it. “You’d owe us.”
“We know.” Hawk didn’t sound happy about it.
Neo stood. “Send over what you’ve got. I’ll see what I can do.”
He left the living room without saying anything else, and I hesitated before turning to Rock and Drago.
“Could the Russian transfers have anything to do with the Aventine trafficking ring?” I asked.
Drago narrowed his eyes. “Why the fuck would you ask about that?”
I could feel the eyes of the Hawks burning into me. This hadn’t been part of the plan, but it was something I’d been thinking about: the missing girls, the money, whatever my parents had been digging around in.
It was true that my parents’ work — if that was what you wanted to call it — had taken place a decade earlier, but from the research I’d done online it seemed like girls had gone missing around Blackwell Falls for a lot longer than that.
“I’m just wondering,” I said. “It was a lot of money, and I know Aventine…”
I let my voice trail off. It seemed like bad manners to point out that the Aventine alumni — which the Kings’ parents were probably part of — had been involved in an enterprise that involved missing girls and what was probably a whole lot of money.
Like the kind that had been transferred from Kensington to Aventine.
“Fuck,” Rock said, clearly offended.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just… I’m just wondering.”
“We wouldn’t know.” Drago rose to his feet to signal that the meeting was over. “And for fuck’s sake don’t ever mention it to Neo.”
44
CASSIE
I came homea few days later to the sound of the vacuum on the second floor.
I’d spent the next few days on pins and needles, wondering how the Kings were making out, if they were really going to be able to find out who was behind the Kensington transfers to Aventine — and whether they’d tell us the truth when they did.
It’s not like the Kings were choir boys. Their parents made a living committing crimes. It was hard to believe they’d come clean if the transfers implicated the university in criminal activity.
