Rachel #2
“Oh, Luciu is honorable, is he?”
I frowned at her mocking retort. “He’s a client.”
“Thought the MC was your only client.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’ll bet it’s Rex’s.”
“He knows.”
She hummed. “If you say so.”
“I do,” I grated out. “Why are you waiting until tomorrow to tell the Valentinis about the boy?”
“Are you not listening or just being stupid? The laptop I was given housed enough data to keep an FBI department busy for the next three years.”
“What kind of data in particular?”
She pursed her lips. “Why?”
“I want to know,” I demanded. Rex called me the Queen of Loopholes, and well, I could scent someone with similar talents better than a bloodhound. “What did you find out? Blackmail material?”
Her eyes narrowed into slits. “You’re good.”
“Who?”
She shrugged. “A lot of prominent people.”
“How did the Valentinis get that laptop? And why was the boy’s location on there?”
“The people behind the Triad boy’s kidnapping—it’s a ring. The Valentinis broke into the ringleader’s apartment. The Don appears to have a grudge against him. I can’t blame him with the photos I found on the laptop.”
“What do you mean?”
“His girlfriend’s in a lot of compromising positions on there.”
Anxiety prickled down my spine. “What kind of compromising positions?”
Our eyes met. “You can imagine.”
I swallowed. “He forced her?”
“She was drugged.”
Sick to my stomach, I staggered over to the nearest desk and slumped in the chair. “The ringleader’s dead?”
“From what I’ve been told, he is. I think Luciu was behind his death. Bastard deserved it.”
“You can’t tell Luciu about those photos.”
“Why not? That he has the laptop at all tells me he at least suspects his woman was abused. Plus, he’s my boss, isn’t he? At least, in this he is.”
“It’ll…” I hesitated. “It’ll ruin everything for them. You don’t need to confirm or deny that she was hurt.”
“Not all men fear broken women, Rachel.”
Something in her tone was like salt in an open wound. Which was ironic considering she’d defended Rex at the group meeting.
“Rex isn’t the one who’s scared.”
“No?”
“No,” I ground out, outrage flooding me. I welcomed it though. It was better than wanting to vomit. “He was there… I was the one who pulled away. Luciu is—” I thought about what I’d seen of them at the gala, how he’d bid on that ugly purse. “He’s in love with her.”
“He’ll still love her after he finds out.”
“Why risk it?”
“You can’t play with people’s lives—”
Anger had me jumping to my feet. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, Lodestar. All you fucking do is play with people’s lives.
Leave—” An ache exploded behind my eyes as a thought literally struck me.
“Wait, the kidnapper drugged her and took photos?” More nausea hit me as I realized what that meant.
These bastards never did shit like that just the one time.
“There are more on there, aren’t there? Not just Luciu’s woman. ”
“There are,” she confirmed, no dissembling.
In fact, her candor had me rearing back in reaction.
“That’s the blackmail material, isn’t it?”
My stomach wasn’t just churning now. I darted over to the nearest trash can and I hurled. The breakfast I’d been proud to keep down, the lunch I hadn’t forgotten, all of it went in the trash.
Panting in the aftermath, tired and feeling ancient, I wiped my mouth as I whispered, “You were going to blackmail the women in the photos.”
She arched a brow and, without a shade of guilt, told me, “Only some of them.”
My mouth wobbled. “How could you do that? They’re like us—”
“Some of them are; some of them aren’t,” she bit off.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I spat.
“It means that not everyone was a seventeen-year-old babysitter, Rachel,” she snapped. “It means that some of them are important people who would serve us well to have in our pocket.
“I’m a survivor. I survived a lot of shit, and I will never be imprisoned again. But this is about more than just me. I have a lot of people to protect. This isn’t about a bunch of women sitting in a prayer circle discussing what men have done to us. This is bigger than any of us.
“The Sparrows are dying, but for every one of those pieces of shit that dies, there’s someone willing to jump into the vacuum. Don’t be naive about that.
“When Steel brought Donavan Lancaster back from Cambodia, I knew what I was faced with—I have thousands of women to bring home. Thousands of women like me. Like Alessa. Like Amara. Like Tatána and Sarah, God help their souls.
“Women like Jennifer MacNeill have their own men who’ll keep them safe, but what about the nobodies in Asia who are stolen from their beds to marry Chinese men whose idiotic government effectively legalized the culling of baby girls once upon a time?
“What about the Eastern Europeans and the Middle Eastern women who are commodities for the Sparrows? And make no mistake, those parts of the world still have Sparrows. They’re just going by a different name.
“No, Rachel, if it means blackmailing some politician’s wife or some businesswoman with what I have here, I’ll do it because this is who I am.
“You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to approve.
You have to accept that I’ve sacrificed a lot to be where I am, and I’ll sacrifice a hell of a lot more to make sure that people pay,” she growled, “for thinking that women are commodities.
For daring to believe that no one is watching, that no one is listening.
“They will drown in their arrogance, and I will watch them choke and I will bring fucking Flamin’ Hot Cheetos to watch the show because this will end with me.
“I will see to it, and no one, no fucking one, not you or Rex, not the NYPD or the Feds or fucking Interpol is going to stop me.” She slammed her fist against the desk, making the monitor jump. “Do you hear me?”
“I think the whole house did,” was all I said, placing the trash can on the closest table to me.
Stepping over to her, I rested a hand on her desk and rasped, “You might freak the fuck out of the Sinners because they’re blinded to what you can do, they just know you’re too clever for your own good, but you don’t scare me.
"You’re slating the Sparrows for using women as commodities. What the hell are you doing? Just using them in a friendly game of checkers?
“I want a list of names, and it had better be goddamn thorough, Lodestar. I want every single one. I will read through that list and I will be the one who ascertains the files you can keep. Not you.
“You’re not God, and to be frank, after that speech, I know you’ll throw us all to hell, yourself included, if it’s the difference between success or failure.
“If they’re underage, they’re automatically excluded. You will delete those photos. As for the rest, I’ll be the one deciding.”
“What the fuck makes you think I’ll listen to you?”
I leaned into her, unafraid of the psychopath staring back at me because I’d been tangling with worse motherfuckers than her for two decades. “I’ll have Katina thrown into a foster home faster than you can fucking curse me and your ass in jail for child endangerment and kidnapping.”
She sneered at me. “She’s Alessa’s next of kin—”
“I know. She won’t be in a home for long, but you won’t be around to know, will you?” I straightened up. “I have no desire to separate Katina from her family, but she’s the only person you seem to give a damn about.”
“Threatening her was a bad move,” she hissed, hatred flaring in her eyes.
“Threatening to burn down my house while we’re all in it was a bad move on your part. I think this is what we consider a stalemate.
“Your fight is a just one, Lodestar, and I’ll back you all the way to the goddamn Supreme Court if I have to, but you will not hurt my family. You will not bring the attention of ‘important people’ on my family, and you sure as fuck will not sacrifice them for this cause. Do you fucking hear me?”
With distaste in her eyes, she turned her focus back to the screen. “I’ll have the list of names to you by tonight.”
“Good.” My jaw tensed. “Rex told me you know someone called Dead To Me.”
She frowned. “I do.”
“I want to speak with her.”
“Anything else, your fucking majesty?” she ground out.
“No, that’s it. Remember, Lodestar, this is a balancing act. I help you; you help me.”
“Saying you’ll take my kid away from me doesn’t sound very balanced to me.”
“I have resources. I’ll use them to help you.”
“What resources could you possibly have?”
“An underworld of fuckers, capable of things worse than you, on my cellphone. Each of them owing me a favor for getting them off of heinous crimes. My rolodex, as it were, is yours…”
Our eyes met, measured with our mutual anger, cold reason clashing with bitter resolve.
I wasn’t a woman who believed she was better than anyone else, but I knew what I was capable of.
For the first time, I knew I’d met my match. But so, I recognized, did Lodestar.
“I’ll have Dead To Me call you.”
I dipped my chin, grabbed the trash can with vomit in it, and murmured, “Thank you.”