Cillian (The Boston Syndicate #4)

1. Cillian

Chapter one

Cillian

T he girls we rescued from the clutches of those asshole skin traders we took down had been gone for barely twenty minutes when the distant rumble of engines broke the silence of Viktor Petrov’s wooded property. When I got the call from Finn that his brother’s woman had been taken, I strongly suspected it was going to be a bloody night. And so far, I’ve been proven right. Fortunately for all of us, Liam Ashcroft was in Boston with his brother Jude, who happens to be good friends with Finn’s brother, Eoghan. As soon as Liam heard who we were going after, he was all too happy to offer his particular set of skills to our cause.

When Liam showed up with his team and wanted to seize the opportunity to eliminate some of the worst humans who’ve been freely walking the planet, I was more than eager to help. Scum like this deserves to be wiped from the earth, and if it helps my best friend and his family sleep better at night knowing these assholes are dead then I’ll gladly add some manpower to the cause. I certainly won’t lose a wink of sleep over killing these fuckers.

“Two black Sprinter vans. I make out a driver and passenger in each,” Sawyer says through the comms in our ears. Sawyer is Liam’s resident computer genius and hacker extraordinaire, at least according to Sawyer himself. With quick efficiency, he had cameras set up about a quarter mile up the road, transmitting to the military-grade laptop sitting on the desk inside Andrei’s office—the dead man on the other side of the room whom we haven’t had time to dispose of yet. This asshole thought being Petrov’s second-in-command would protect him. He thought wrong.

“I have eyes on the vehicles,” Abel says through the earpieces we’re all wearing.

Abel and Hendrix are concealed in the thicket of trees surrounding the house where Viktor Petrov conducts the sale of kidnapped girls to the highest bidder. Apparently, Liam and his team have been looking into Petrov for some time. Though Liam is known in most circles as a security expert and fixer of otherwise sensitive situations that need to be kept from the prying eyes of law enforcement, his passion lies in a side project funded by the exorbitant fees he charges his wealthy clients.

“Both vehicles have parked outside the back door,” Sawyer explains, looking at his computer. “They’re opening the cargo doors now.”

“Do you have a visual on the inside of the vans?” Liam asks, and Sawyer rolls his eyes.

“Of course. One man in each, but they’re getting out.”

“So, six total?” I ask, and Liam grins.

“Easy pickings,” he says with a cocky smirk on his face.

I walk to the other side of the desk where Sawyer is monitoring their movements. The six men are stretching after their journey, three of them lighting cigarettes and inhaling deeply as though they have all the time in the world and nothing to worry about.

I just love ruining these assholes’ day.

“Where are Andrei and his men?” one asks, looking around the property.

“Probably inside testing the merchandise, the horny bastard,” another replies and they all bark out a callous chuckle.

It makes me fucking sick to my stomach.

“I’ll go find him,” one of the nonsmoking men offers, and two of the others follow him to the door that leads to the basement.

“On my word,” Liam whispers into the comms.

The pounding footsteps of the men coming down the stairs can be heard from where Liam, Sawyer, and I wait in the office. Sawyer closes his laptop and quickly shoves it under the desk before the two of us move to stand against the wall on the other side of the doorway opposite Liam.

“Andrei, get off the girl and come out here,” one of the men calls into the cavernous basement. The three men snicker and the adrenaline flowing through me kicks up a notch. I’ll be happy to see these sick fucks dead at my feet.

Two sharp knocks sound at the door before it opens.

“Andrei?”

Liam steps from the other side of the doorway with his gun raised. “Nope.” He fires his weapon before the man has time to blink. “Now,” he says into the comms and gunshots explode from outside.

The two other men who are inside the basement begin firing into the small office, causing pieces of wood to splinter and fly off from their wild shots before we hear footsteps pounding back up the stairs.

“Not today, motherfucker,” Sawyer growls and stalks out of the office with me right behind him. We step in front of the stairwell and fire. Seconds later, a dead body rolls back toward us, landing at the bottom of the stairs with a bullet in his head and several in his back. I rush up the stairs and find the other man crumpled and unconscious against the wall. After kicking the gun he holds loosely in his grip, I check for a pulse.

“He’s still alive,” I call to Liam.

“Keep him that way for now,” is Liam’s answer.

Grabbing the man by the collar, I drag him down the stairs before dropping him on the cold basement floor.

“Hendrix. Abel. What do you have?”

“All dead,” Hendrix answers.

Liam nods, then turns to Sawyer. “Keep watch on the cameras. I doubt anyone followed, but we can’t be too careful.”

Sawyer holsters his 9mm before returning to the office. “Can someone remove the corpse? He’s starting to freak me out,” he calls from inside.

Liam shakes his head and chuckles. “Like you’ve never seen a dead body before,” he mumbles under his breath as the other two men reach the bottom of the stairs.

“You know how Princess is,” Abel teases.

“I can hear all of you,” Sawyer says through the comms we still have in our ears.

“I know,” Liam replies.

“What about this guy?” I kick the leg of the nearly dead man who has a bullet wound in his shoulder, arm, and stomach.

“I’m going to see if we can get some answers.” Liam looks at Abel. “Grab the bag from the truck.”

Abel’s hurried footsteps have him returning with a medic bag in less than thirty seconds.

“You’d better hurry,” I tell Liam as he opens the bag and pulls out a syringe and a vial filled with liquid.

Abel carries out a chair from the office while Hendrix finds an old extension cord from a darkened corner of the basement. After they have the asshole tied in a chair in the middle of the room, Liam plunges the syringe into the man’s neck. His eyes pop open and he struggles for a moment, his wild eyes scanning the four of us standing in front of him.

“You’re all fucking dead,” he spits out.

Liam chuckles, completely nonplussed by the man’s threats. “If I had a nickel for every time some asshole tied to a chair said that to me, I’d be a hell of a lot richer than I already am.” Hendrix and Abel let out a huff of laughter as Liam stands in front of the man, pulling a mean-looking hunting knife from his belt. “Really, the only question is how painfully you want to die. I have plenty of shit I can pump in your veins to keep you alive and in excruciating pain, or you can answer my questions and I’ll put a bullet in your head and end it quickly. Your choice.”

“Fuck you,” the dumbass answers with his chin tipped high in a show of absolutely ridiculous bravado.

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Liam says with a gleam of excitement in his eyes. “Let’s begin, shall we?”

“Well, this certainly isn’t the day I had planned when I opened my eyes yesterday,” Liam says, taking a long drag from his cigarette.

“Those things will kill you.” I tilt my head toward the cigarette he has at his lips once again.

Liam's eyes are full of mirth as he throws the cigarette to the ground and stomps it out with his foot.

“What did you find out?” I ask while he leans back against the truck we’re standing next to.

“Not much. He doesn’t work with a buyer directly. More like the buyer for the buyer for the buyer. Seems Petrov has made quite a name for himself in the industry for having some of the most beautiful women. You have to be rich as fuck to go through that many channels.”

My mind wanders to the girls who we found in cages when we arrived. That sick piece of shit was going to sell off his own daughter to some unknown man that would likely have her locked away halfway across the world. His own flesh and blood. I can’t wait until we catch up to him just so I can spit on his grave.

“So you aren’t any closer to where you were in finding out who is buying these girls?”

“It’s not always about getting closer to the buyers. Sometimes it’s simply about saving women and putting a few of those slimy arseholes to ground. If we can get information, great. But nothing we do is going to get rid of every single human trafficking ring on the planet. The best I hope for is putting a dent in the operations by taking out one outfit at a time.”

Looking around the property, I ponder what he’s saying. We saved nine women today, including Gemma, Eoghan’s girlfriend and Alessia’s best friend. I didn’t come with the intention of saving anyone other than her, but when I saw the helpless women who were dirty and scared for their lives in that dank room being held in cages, I was glad as fuck we were all there. Those women had experienced horrors that no one should have to face, and God only knows what would have happened to them had we not shown up. That idea makes me understand Liam’s point of view. Even if you aren’t taking out the heads of these operations, you're saving girls from a fate worse than death. It may not seem like much of a win to some, but to the women they rescue, it’s everything.

“He did have an interesting tidbit of information. Said they were transporting the girls to New Orleans. Some Italian guy named Massimo had a crew there waiting for them. Know anyone by that name?”

Only one comes to mind, and it’s rumored he still has connections to Petrov. In fact, we know his dead son had ties to another asshole we took out a few months ago who was making some serious money in sex trafficking.

“Could be Massimo Farina. His son worked with Carlo Cataldi, who was also working with Petrov to take control of Boston back from us. There were rumors that Carlo was making money from the sale of women, but we didn’t have any proof until Ozzy and his woman were kidnapped.”

Nearly a year ago, Finn got a call from his cousin telling us that something was going down at one of the Cataldi warehouses. It had to do with the president of the MC we work with and his woman who had just won a case that put Carlo’s father away for life. We called the VP of the Black Roses and busted into the warehouse before Carlo could enact whatever sick plan he had for the couple. That was the confirmation we needed that Carlo was involved in the skin trade and the first time I had a hand in saving a woman from it.

“Your outfit has some business ties to New Orleans, no?” Liam asks, his tone all too casual.

“We do, though I’m not entirely sure how you know that.”

“You'd be surprised what I know.” The smirk on his face tells me it’s a lot, but if I know anything about Liam Ashcroft it’s that he would never use the information he has against various criminal organizations unless he has a reason to. “Though I don’t know much about the Farinas. For instance, I’d never heard the name connected to trafficking until today.”

The Farina family has control of everything in Massachusetts, from Springfield to New York. If Massimo Farina has been dealing in human trafficking like the dead man in the basement suggested, then his days of having that power are numbered. There are few things the Monaghans refuse to tolerate from any family in Massachusetts, and at the top of that list is selling women. The Cataldis already tried to dip their toes in that business and were handled accordingly—meaning they were wiped from the planet and their former capos now answer to Finn.

“Neither have I,” I reply. “If I had to make a guess, it sounds like they’re picking up where Carlo left off.”

“Like I said, we don’t always get the big fish, but I think if we work together, we could fry the fuck out of that one. You have a long-standing relationship with people in New Orleans, specifically at the ports, which I don’t. If they’re moving women in and out of there, those relationships could come in handy.”

I nod in agreement while I consider what he’s saying, still surprised that he has that information. Though, I probably shouldn’t be. “You want our help in taking out Farina’s operation?”

Liam shrugs. “I mean, I think you and your boss would be inclined, considering he’s in your backyard.”

Looking around the wooded area and at the house—which will be charred wood and nails in a matter of minutes if the amount of C-4 that the others are rigging up is any indication—I consider his proposal. Of course, I’ll need to loop Finn in on Liam’s plans, but he’s always trusted my judgment when I’ve been in the position of making a deal here and there without getting his permission prior.

I turn back to Liam, needing to make a couple things perfectly clear before I decide on anything. “If we agree to this, we aren’t turning them over to the authorities. In our world, we take out our own trash.”

Though Liam skirts the letter of the law when he sees fit, he has connections to every alphabet agency across the globe. The last thing I'll ever be is a rat, and I want Liam to know exactly where my boundaries are.

The smirk he’s perpetually wearing kicks up a few notches. “This operation is completely off the books.”

I reach out my hand and he grabs it. “Then we’re in business.”