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“Don’t you dare finish that fucking sentence,” Kodiak warns and Jumper grins as he leans back in his chair, loving the chaos he’s started. I roll my eyes and pound my fist on the table.

“Can we get on with this, please? I realize y’all don’t have a personal stake in this but some of us do,” I snap, my gaze flicking around the room. Most of the older guys nod in agreement and Jumper has the decency to look thoroughly chastised so I’ll fucking take it. I can’t bring myself to care about hurting anyone’s feelings when there is so much at stake.

“Right,” Streak says, plugging a cord into his laptop so we can see his screen up on the wall behind him. About two hours after we got the photo of the second guy to Streak, he had identified him as Gio Rossi out of Chicago and had an address for us. Storm immediately added Rooster and Smith to stakeout detail three days ago but so far we haven’t gotten anything else and it’s driving me fucking crazy. “So, I went through the burner phone Smoke brought me and I did find some commonly called numbers but they are also burners so I can’t tell you who they belong to but I can tell you which cell phone towers they pinged off of.”

He pulls up a map with a section circled in red and I lean forward, my eyes widening as someone lets out a whistle behind me.

“That’s an expensive neighborhood.”

Someone else scoffs. “No fucking shit. Places around there go for a couple million, at least.”

“It’s all fucking mansions and gated communities,” Gear says, studying the map on the wall and I nod. He’s right. The area Streak has circled on the map has some of the flashiest homes in the city, grand mansions that cost more money than I’ll probably ever see in my life but I’m not sure how that helps us.

“Yep,” Streak says, nodding as he pulls up a house listing that makes my stomach sink. It’s a mission style home but calling it a home is honestly an insult to this monstrosity. It sits on twelve acres of wooded land that looks like something you’d see on MTV and it could have been yours for the low, low price of fourteen million. “I can’t confirm that this is where the calls are originating but this place was purchased nine months ago after being on the market for over a year through a shell company that I can’t get any information on. That’s right around the same time Gio and Luca got to town so it’s a safe bet that our big boss man got here around that time, too.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Nix says, shaking his head as Streak flicks through some of the listing photos, showing off spacious rooms with tall soaring ceilings and gleaming white marble floors. The kitchen alone is the size of the entire second floor of my house and large, ostentatious pillars are everywhere I look. For fuck’s sake, there’s even a massage room. Streak clicks to the next photo. It’s an aerial view of the whole house and it’s even more massive than I first thought.

“What’s the square footage on this thing?” Storm asks and I glance back at him. He studies the photos with his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face.

“Just over twenty-five thousand.”

I clear my throat and he glances over at me. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing, man. Just want to have all the information and I guess I’m a little concerned about how we’d go about getting into this place if it turns out that our guy is living there.”

He’s right.

I turn back to the photo and stare at it as a chill rushes through me because we are so out of our element that it isn’t funny. We help women escape their shitty boyfriends and abusive husbands, not this shit.

“Anything else?” Storm asks and Streak shakes his head.

“No, not right now but I’ll keep digging and we’ll find out who is running the show. Seeing where the calls are being made from, I’m more convinced than ever that Izzy stumbled onto something bigger than we ever even imagined.”

“Fucking clearly,” I hiss, trying to figure out what the hell all of this means. After confronting Luca the other day, I had been feeling better about this whole situation but Streak is right. If the person running this show is wealthy enough to snap up one of the houses in that neighborhood, this is a much bigger operation than we originally thought. It also means that we’re in a world of shit and I don’t know how the hell I’m going to keep Izzy safe.

“We’ll get this figured out, Smoke,” Storm assures me and I nod, unable to rip my eyes away from the map. “In the meantime, everyone, be extra vigilant. We have to assume whoever is running this thing knows Izzy is with us and if his operation is as big as we think it is, he knows a hell of a lot more about us than we know about him.”

Jesus.

Wasn’t he just trying to be reassuring to me and now he’s spelling out all my worst fucking fears about this whole goddamn mess?

Storm slams the gavel on the table, dismissing us but I stay in my seat as I stare up at the map, my mind spinning. I don’t want to jump to conclusions or entertain the worst-case scenario but I can’t help it. There is a part of me that is fighting the urge to pack up all of our shit and just disappear with Izzy for a while but it wouldn’t solve anything. Running would only delay this problem for another day. Once everyone else has cleared out, I stand and follow them. Gear, Jumper, and Ink are setting up a keg by the bar when I walk out of the war room and stop, arching a brow as I glance over at Chance. He shrugs.

“They wanted to have a party.”

“Yeah,” I say, turning toward the stairs. “’Cause we have so much to fucking celebrate, right? I’m not sticking around for that.”

“Oh, come on,” Jumper calls out and I shake my head as I scan the room. Izzy isn’t anywhere to be seen so I turn toward the stairs just as Ali reaches the bottom. She sighs when she sees me.

“She’s exhausted.”

I nod. “I take it she told you what happened?”

“She did,” she says before a soft smile stretches across her face. “I know it was hard for her but you’re the first person besides Carly and me that she’s ever told that story to so it’s progress. But I kind of knew you’d push her out of her comfort zone.”

“Oh, so you’ve been playing matchmaker this whole time, huh?” I ask with a grin and she tilts her head from side to side as she scrunches her nose.

“A little bit but you knocked her up all on your own.”