My chest grew tight when the first ring came through; I waited and waited and waited until the line cut. I called again, anxiety grazing the string of nerves in my body.
He didn’t answer.
I tried three more times, and on the last try, my vision blurred, and I gave up. My hands shook, and I bit my bottom lip hard to stop the tears threatening to let themselves out.
I couldn’t shake the feeling in my gut telling me how big a mistake I had made, but I hardened my mind, set my jaw, blinked away the tears, and held on.
All good things. You’re doing a good thing. This is the right thing. You’re saving lives. You’re doing the right thing.
It took two hours, but we got to a safe house, and I was handed a laptop after placing a call to Vitale.
“You better be right about this MCSS. Because I swearto God, Vitale, you’ll pay dearly if anything happens to my friends.”
I could almost see him rolling his eyes.“We don’t have time for your melodrama, Zahra; everything you have worked your ass off for is on the line, one bit of information away from being screwed to hell. The last things you should be worried about are your friends with weird names.”
I ground my teeth together. “Just letting you know,” I said as I inserted the USB drive into the laptop. Nerves racked my body as I clicked on the small icon displayed on the screen and stopped short.
“Marino Caporegime Sovereign Society?” I read aloud, my heart beating so fast against my chest.
“He’s there after all; what are they about?”
Names of different countries were labeled in different folders.
“Hold on,” I said, clicking on one of the folders markedITALY.Tons of documents were displayed on the screen, dating back years before I was born. “Hold on…” I trailed off, squinting as I opened one of the documents dated a few years ago.
My heart stopped, something shifted, my mind drew a blank, and I wasn’t breathing.
“Faizan?”
Shipping details… bank transactions… names and numbers of children, dates of birth, birthplaces, trafficking receipts, details of newborns needed—the when and the where, details of women and men designated to houses in different cities and regions in Italy. Names of headquarters in disguise like… like P. Deluxe Corp.
Everything… everything…
I opened and closed so many documents, my eyes burning as I read words that breezed past my head, words that hurt to read… my vision was blurry, my cheeks were wet, my hands were shaking, and my breathing was loud.
“Faizan, talk to me, what’s happening?”
Everything, every authorization, the largest funds collectedfrom the disgusting details right in front of me, every fucking line and link of the whole damn operation went back to one person. One name.
Elio Marino.
Even to the year I was born, the year I was trafficked, down to the Handler houses and the sex slavery base; his signature gave the final authorization.
I felt faint in the head. I wanted to pass out and die and scream and vomit.
“Zahra, talk to me.”
“It’s impossible,” I whispered.
“What?”
“It’s impossible, Vit. It’s not him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The MCSS. It’s them. They run the trafficking ring and so much more. P. Deluxe is a tiny portion of how large they are. This whole thing is bigger than us, Vitale. And it says here that Elio authorizes everything, but I promise you he doesn’t know about this. He can’t know about this.”
“What?”He sounded as shocked as I was.
