Chapter 5 Kreed #2
“Did…did they ever touch you?” I had to ask, and at the same time, I didn’t want to fucking know.
She shook her head. “No, they made it clear that we were to remain untouched in that regard. The price was higher if we were virgins.”
“Kaylor’s not a virgin,” I mused out loud, contemplating if that made her less appealing.
Carson snorted as if he hated the reminder I’d slept with his best friend. Too fucking bad.
Kenny’s lips turned down. “No, she’s more valuable.”
“What do you mean?”
“I overheard them talking. Actually, they spoke about her frequently, but even if they didn’t use her name, I knew it was Kaylor they were referring to. There’s only one girl I know whose dad was the head of the Vipers. It’s her pedigree they find enticing.”
“Shit.” This was information I knew too well. It was why my father wanted her under his control, why he altered documents to gain guardianship of her. “Did you recognize any of the voices? Were you able to see their faces?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. They wore masks most of the time. But there was a woman. Silvia. She was in charge of our care, but I seriously doubt Silvia is her real name.”
I huffed, sinking hard into the seat. I was getting nowhere, and every goddamn second counted.
“God, I feel so useless,” she whispered, avoiding my gaze as she stared straight out the window. “I’m sorry I wasted your time for nothing.”
“It wasn’t a waste,” I replied. “Trust me. I’ll look into this Silvia person, and if I find anything, I’ll need you to confirm her identity.”
Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over onto cheeks already streaked with exhaustion. “We’re not going to find her, are we?”
“I’ll find her,” I said, and it wasn’t a promise. It was a vow carved into bone. “I won’t stop until I do. You did well, Kenny. I know this was hard for you, and Kaylor would be proud of you.”
She sniffed, brown eyes shining as she stared at me. “I never saw it before.”
My brows pulled together. “Saw what?”
Her shoulders rose and fell with a trembling breath. “What she sees in you, but I get it. I see you, Kreed Corvo.”
A humorless huff escaped me as I shifted the car into drive. “Then I must be losing my touch.”
The headlights cut through the darkness, twin beams slicing apart shadows that tried to swallow the road ahead of us, but even their harsh white glare couldn’t illuminate the storm brewing inside my skull, where thoughts crashed against each other louder than the engine’s steady rumble beneath the hood.
Kenny had opted to sit in the back with Carson on the return to her house. Her head rested on his shoulder, honey hair spilling across his sweatshirt. Carson’s arm curved around her protectively.
Raine sat beside me with uncharacteristic silence as I drove, which was fine by me because I had too many thoughts in my head I needed to sort through. Despite the assurances I gave Kenny, tonight hadn’t amounted to much information. Still, it hadn’t been completely worthless.
Yet something fundamental wasn’t clicking.
I kept cycling through her memories like a broken record.
None of it told me where Kaylor was at this exact moment.
My fingers drummed against the steering wheel in frustrated staccato as my mind spun.
There had to be a more effective way to find Kaylor, one that also wouldn’t get her hurt.
And then it smacked me, a revelation that stops your heart for a beat before kick-starting it into overdrive, an idea so simple I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it immediately.
Maybe I was asking the wrong fucking question.
I’d been approaching this like a bloodhound, nose to the ground, scouring every inch of Elmwood for traces of her current location, chasing ghosts through a labyrinth that shifted every time I thought I’d found the right path.
But what if the smarter play, the only play that mattered, was the endgame?
The auction.
My pulse stuttered. That was the constant. The immovable deadline. The one thing Rusty couldn’t afford to change, not without taking heat from the buyers and screwing with their schedules. It would be bad for business, especially one so curated and niche as human trafficking.
That’s where I’d hit him. That’s where I’d take her back.
Not in some random warehouse where she might or might not be held. Not during a transport that could go a dozen different routes. But at the moment when she’d be displayed, when all the buyers would be gathered in one place, when Rusty would be counting money instead of watching his back.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears as a plan began forming, crystallizing into something that might actually work.
Step one: Find the location of the auction. Figure out where these fuckers gathered to buy and sell human beings.
Step two: Find someone who could get in. Someone with the right credentials, the right look, the right combination of money and moral flexibility to walk into that room without raising alarms.
It needed to be someone wealthy enough that their presence wouldn’t be questioned. Someone ruthless enough to play the part convincingly. Someone who looked like they belonged in a room full of predators.
My father would be an obvious choice if he weren’t the damn enemy and he and Rusty weren’t connected.
No one came to mind, but someone who might have the answers and connections did. The perfect person for the job, someone who moved easily within the circle of old money and corruption.
Brock. Fucking. Taylor.
He also happened to be Kaylor’s cousin, making his stake in her rescue vital. His drive to find her would rival anyone else’s. Anyone’s but mine, that was.
My hands clenched against the steering wheel…prep school god turned corporate shark. He would know an asshole who had everything I needed: family money, social status, a last name that carried weight in rooms where normal people weren’t allowed to breathe.
More importantly, a closet stuffed with skeletons, of buried secrets that made a man malleable when you knew where to apply pressure.
Cocaine habits. Insider trading. Incidents hushed with enough money.
He brushed shoulders with the type of privileged predator who could slip into that world and play their role without anyone batting an eye.
Brock owed me nothing. Less than nothing. If anything, the ledger between us was written in red ink and bad blood.
But Kaylor?
She was worth swallowing my pride. Worth making deals with devils. Worth crawling through hell on broken glass if that was what it took.
She was worth everything.