Chapter 23 #2
We were ghosts on that trip, daring each other to exist in stolen corners, laughing under borrowed stars.
She wore white like rebellion, mocking me with the knowledge I would never see her walk down an aisle.
It was her “fuck you” to me, a heartbreak carved from the fact that being with me was hurting her.
I watched her dance in hotel sheets, sunlight painting her skin, my name whispered across her collarbone.
Her laugh. Her body tangled with mine. Her hair was a riot of curls across my pillow. Her trembling when I promised we’d be fine, that I’d marry her anywhere, that we’d raise our kids on a deserted island if it came to that.
And no matter how hard I try to push it away, I remember the look she gave me afterward with perfect clarity. Hope tangled with defeat. Desire wrapped in doubt. She wanted to believe me, but she couldn’t.
It haunts me, the way her eyes searched mine as if begging for a promise I couldn’t give.
I wanted to reach for her, to pull her into the only safety I could offer, to tell her she didn’t have to shoulder the world alone, but I didn’t.
I couldn’t. I let her doubts stand between us, let the space stretch out like an ocean neither of us knew how to cross.
I was a fool who thought he had more time to work things out… until suddenly, I didn’t.
A shiver snakes down my spine just thinking about it, heat and ice colliding in my chest. And here I am now, surrounded by club lights, vodka still cool in my hand, and a pulse thundering like a drum in my ears.
Salvatore’s words echo again, predatory, silk-and-steel “Lily Davis is the only thing you truly care about.”
And he’s right. God help me, but he’s fucking right. Every instinct in me twists and coils, a storm barely held at bay, because I can’t forget her. I can’t stop thinking about her. Not when she’s out there, teasing another world the way she once teased me.
The club fades around me. The dancers, the money, the smoke, none of it matters. Not when every heartbeat is a reminder of her, every memory a tether I can’t cut.
Because the reality is—I belong to her. And if Antonio Salvatore thinks he can leverage that… he’s about to learn how fatal that belief is.
The day is long gone before I finally manage to slip out undetected. The early morning sun has been replaced by a late-night drizzle of rain that feels almost religious against my overheated skin, but it does little to settle the stripped, raw feeling I can’t seem to shake.
Salvatore’s still inside somewhere, probably with his hands down that dancer's pathetic excuse for lingerie. The last I saw Nico, he was three sheets to the wind, tucked in one of the corner booths with women all around him. The bouncers are swapping cigarettes, laughing like it’s any other night, not even glancing up as I slip past them.
But for me, something cracked open in there, and no amount of rain can wash it off.
Between the barely concealed threats, the strip club itself, and the eerie obedience of the woman trailing Salvatore, my suspicions are running rampant.
As the head of one of the five most powerful crime families in the UK and Europe, Antonio has been a key player at every Table meeting—gatherings where they hash things out and stand united in their disgust for the skin trade at any level.
And yet… he looked at home in a fucking strip club.
It doesn’t sit right. It makes my stomach turn, a cold knot of unease twisting with every thought of the implications as I make my way back to the estate.
My thoughts are stuck replaying the way Salvatore talked about the dancers.
How he touched her without a second thought, as if he didn’t have a wife at home.
The way she had to force herself to follow him.
The concerned look she shared with one of the other girls on her way.
Alone, these tiny details are insignificant, but together…
together they paint a picture that has my mind racing as I make my way back to the estate.
By the time I reach my room, I’m shaking so hard I can barely fit the key into the lock.
My skin itches like it’s on fire with the need to do something, and the minutes it takes to do a sweep for bugs feels like the single biggest waste of time.
Once I’m as sure as I can be that it’s safe, I pull out my replacement laptop and drop into the chair by the window.
My chest is heaving as I open the lid, and the blue screen comes to life.
I have no plan. No neat next step. Just this frantic, desperate need to move, to strike before the darkness decides I belong to it.
So I start pulling up files. Using all the tricks Bren showed me, and a few I stumbled across myself, I worm my way into their digital records, careful to cover my tracks as I dig.
I don’t even know exactly what I’m looking for.
I just know nothing’s been adding up, and if Bren taught me anything, it’s that the answers we need are always buried in code somewhere.
Numbers blur together, logs and ledgers scrolling past my eyes like a waterfall of data. Dates. Payments. Transfers. It’s all too clean, too deliberate. Something feels off, but I can’t pinpoint it—until a name jumps out at me.
Rosa Mancini.
Her face has been plastered across the dark web server Liam’s been practically living in as he hunts for answers.
What stuck out wasn’t just how fast the vultures latched on, it was the silence.
A seventeen-year-old girl vanished two weeks ago, and yet there’s been no news coverage.
No alerts. No desperate pleas from concerned parents.
It was like she’d vanished without ever existing.
Seeing her name in Salvatore’s coding, paired with a file labelled Asset Secured—Client Retained, my gut twists.
Asset.
The word shouldn’t mean anything. It’s typical business language. But I’ve seen it before in those damning emails, stripped of context, used when they talked about Lily. We’d assumed it meant she was an asset to the business. But what if we were wrong?
With this fragmented context, it’s clear now—asset holds a different meaning to these sick bastards. It’s a way to pretty up victim. Or target.
And the idea that Lily might have been meant to be one of them—that her parents were discussing her readiness like stock, like something to be moved and sold—turns my stomach.
Nausea hits hard and fast. All I want to do is run.
To Lyon.
To her.
To put my hands on her, feel her breathing, prove she’s still here—real, untouched, not swallowed by whatever nightmare this file is pointing towards.
Then the next thought lands, clean and lethal.
She’s alone.
No guards. No Points protection. No one watching her back in real time.
Fuck.
Every instinct I have is screaming to shut the laptop and go, to stop thinking, stop digging, and get to Lily. But instinct isn’t enough. Not when I don’t know who’s watching her, who’s connected to this, how deep it goes, or if I’m even right. Running blind could get her killed.
So I force myself to keep digging. Not because it matters more than her but because answers are the only way to keep her safe. Because every name, every pattern, every ugly truth I uncover might be the difference between reaching her in time or walking straight into a trap.
These girls aren’t just disappearing. It’s orchestrated, premeditated.
A machine of human trafficking coded into neat, clinical files.
And I’m seeing it all, helpless, two hundred miles away from her—my mind spinning with images of Lily, trusting, soft, laughing—and wondering if Rosa, if any of them, ever had a chance.
I slam the laptop shut and press my fists to my eyes so hard I see stars.
It’s like the entire room is tilting. Like the floor’s been ripped out from under me.
I thought I was joining a Mafia family known for their vineyards and drugs.
That this was a necessary sacrifice to help strengthen the Points.
But this… this isn’t vineyards and alliances.
This isn’t politics or power plays. This is something else entirely, something that will rupture the fragile alliances as we know them.
It’s fucking kids. Girls who should be finishing high school, trying on formal dresses. Not sold like fucking inventory.
I shove back from my laptop so hard the chair bumps into the wall. The room feels smaller with every breath, like the walls themselves are pressing in. My pulse hammers in my teeth. I can’t just sit here, not when girls are being stolen right now, ripped from their lives while I remain paralysed.
My fingers are still trembling when I ring Jonathan’s number. The phone feels slick in my palm.
He answers on the third ring, voice low and alert, the way it always is when he’s working in the shadows. “Matt?”
“Yeah.” My voice is tight, cracking under the pressure I’m trying to cage. “I’ve got something. You’re not gonna believe it.”
“You sound wired,” he drawls the words out slowly. His calm does nothing to slow the panic crawling under my skin.
“Because I fucking am.” My hand presses against the back of my neck, trying to ground myself, but it doesn’t work.
“Talk to me.”
“I’ve been digging into things like we agreed,” I’m already pacing, already wound too tight. “I know the Table rules say I shouldn’t be hacking into Salvatore’s servers, but I didn’t have a choice. Shit’s not adding up, Jonathan.”
My hand slices through the air. “There’s a file that someone tried to bury. It’s loaded with names, dates, photos. A goddamn inventory of girls who’ve just vanished.”
I stop, chest tight. “One was only seventeen. Took a modelling job Nico set up and then—poof. Gone. Liam saw her name pop up on that dark web server last week, but outside of it?” I shake my head. “It’s like she never existed. They’re labelled as assets just like—”
“Lily.” His shocked hiss cuts me off.