Chapter 53
MAEVE
Everyone froze.
“Ethan?” Remy leaned over to look. “Fuck me. You’re right. It’s him.”
I searched Ethan’s eyes, looking for any sign of the monster he’d become, and didn’t find it.
It scared me. If we couldn’t count on signposts to future monsters, it meant anybody could become one.
I set aside the picture. I didn’t want to look at his face. Not until he was staring down the barrel of a gun — mine or the Butchers.
Behind the picture was a set of stats: age, height, areas of expertise.
My gaze snagged on that one. There were three things listed under Ethan’s areas of expertise: debate, oratory, and rhetoric.
“Rhetoric?” Poe said over my shoulder. I’d been too engrossed to realize he’d crossed the room to stand behind me. “How the fuck is rhetoric an area of expertise?”
“It means an ability to persuade,” Remy explained. “Not just to speak, but to bring other people over to your way of thinking.”
Not exactly something that seemed like a valuable skill for the crime families behind Aventine, who relied on secrecy to keep their businesses alive.
There were details about Ethan’s history: parents killed in a small plane crash when he was three years old, no other family, raised by a foster mom in Blackwell Falls.
And then, at the bottom, something else.
Nominating alumnus: Dimitri Kaprolov.
“Who’s Dimitri Kaprolov?” I asked, still looking at the file.
“What does that have to do with anything?” The sharpness in Neo’s voice got my attention.
Up until that point, I wouldn’t have called him friendly, but now he sounded outright angry.
“He’s listed as the alumnus who nominated Ethan for the scholarship.”
Neo crossed the room and took the paper from my hands so fast I barely registered what happened.
“Careful,” Bram warned.
I was surprised to see the restrained anger on his face and even more surprised to realize it was directed at Neo for grabbing the piece of paper from my hands.
Like Bram was protecting me.
“Sorry,” Neo told me.
If I’d ever needed a sign of Bram’s quiet authority, that would have been it. I had the feeling Neo was in charge at Aventine — whether he was a current student or not — and he’d folded like a cheap umbrella after one word from Bram.
“What does it mean?” Poe asked.
“Dimitri Kaprolov was disavowed by the alumni a decade ago,” Drago said.
“Yeah, but Ethan attended Aventine before that.” I was trying to get my head around it all: why Dimitri Kaprolov would vouch for a foster kid from Blackwell Falls, why it would matter that he had been disavowed a decade later.
Poe rubbed at his jaw. “I have a feeling this has to do with the reason he was disavowed.”
“Your feeling is correct.” Drago took the piece of paper from Neo and looked at it.
Neo took a seat at the table. “This is starting to make sense.”
“Well, please clue us the fuck in,” Bram said.
“I was just a kid when the whole thing exploded,” Neo said, “but the rumors lasted for years after.”
“What rumors?” Remy asked.
We were all sitting around the table except for Poe, who was sitting on the edge of it, and Drago, who was still standing.
“Dimitri Kaprolov’s thing was sex trafficking,” Neo said.
“I don’t get it.” I didn’t want to say the rest: that I assumed the crime families at Aventine weren’t exactly opposed to sex trafficking.
“Yeah, isn’t sex trafficking one of your things?” Remy asked.
Neo scowled. “Fuck no. There’s a big difference between sex trafficking and voluntary sex work.”
I guess it made sense. Poe had told me about the sex trafficking ring that had run through Aventine a couple years back. The people involved hadn’t been protected by the Aventine families. They’d gone down for it.
“Plus, Kaprolov wasn’t exactly low key about it,” Drago said. “And he got picked up more than once by the BFPD for assault. Word is, he got really paranoid. He was the one who paid to have this room built actually.”
“Our business model only works if everyone is discreet,” Neo said. “And despite the room we’re sitting in, Dimitri Kaprolov wasn’t discreet.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He was a… proselytizer,” Drago said. “Had all kind of fucked-up views about women.”
Now it was making sense.
“Todd was his acolyte,” Remy said as it dawned on him. “They shared the same belief system, but Todd was better at spreading the word, bringing people in.”
“Sounds about right,” Neo said. “And it looks like Kaprolov gave Todd a Russian name, installed him in the Knights’ house.”
“Wouldn’t he have had to speak Russian?” Remy asked.
Neo snorted. “You think everyone here speaks their parents’ and grandparents’ mother tongues?”
The room grew silent as we processed the revelation about Ethan Todd.
“What happened to him?” I finally asked. “Dimitri Kaprolov, after he was cut off from Aventine?”
“He lived here for a while,” Drago said.
I blinked in surprise. “Here, here? As in Blackwell Falls?”
Drago nodded. “Not sure after that.”
“I heard he was somewhere in Eastern Europe,” Neo said.
The Butchers and I exchanged a glance. Hungary was technically more Central Europe, but close enough.
“Where in Eastern Europe?” I asked.
“I have no idea.” Neo glanced at his phone. “You need anything else or are you good.”
“I think we’re good,” I said. It was late, and Neo was obviously eager to get home to Willa and the baby.
I didn’t know what the revelation about Dimitri Kaprolov meant in the grand scheme of things, but it was another piece of the Ethan Todd puzzle, and I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that Ethan had been accused of sex trafficking in Hungary.
Was this another thing he shared with his scholarship sponsor? And if so, were they still in contact?
I thought about the missing girls I’d seen on the bulletin board at Cassie’s, the girl Lilah had talked about whose mom was still looking for her.
Rain.
Was it all a coincidence: Ethan and Dimitri Kaprolov, their beliefs about women, their shared predilection for sex trafficking, the missing girls around Blackwell Falls?
I didn’t know, but if it was, it was one in a million.
And that made me think it wasn’t a coincidence at all.