63. Luke
LUKE
After a long moment, Lily pulls back, her hands gripping Mandy's arms like she's afraid she'll disappear. "How—how are you here? I thought you were dead. They told me you were dead."
"I thought you were dead." For a stone-cold killer, there’s a lot of emotion in Mandy’s voice. "They told me you died trying to escape that night."
"Oh my God.” Lily's face crumples. “Mandy—"
"It's not your fault." Mandy pulls her sister close again, her jaw tight.
I exchange a look with Jake and Mason. They’re thinking the same thing I am: This woman bypassed our security.
"What brought you here?" Jake asks, moving to Emma’s side, putting himself between his wife and Lily’s sister.
Mandy looks at him over Lily's shoulder, her expression unreadable. "Hendricks. He led me here."
"You followed Hendricks," Mason says slowly. "Without him noticing."
She shrugs. "As if it was hard.”
I laugh—I can’t help myself. If I had my phone, I’d text him right now to give him shit. "So he's been tailing you, and you were tracking him, and he was tracking you back."
"Yes."
"Why?" Harper asks, her cop instincts firing.
“Because he knows something about this.” She pulls her sleeve up to reveal a bar code tattoo, the same one Turner has branded on the women he steals.
Jake leans against the counter, arms crossed. "What do you know about the operation?"
Mandy's gaze shifts to him, cold and steady. "Everything. I know the network, the buyers, the routes. How product moves, how money’s laundered, how they keep law enforcement off his back."
"How?" Harper asks.
"Because I was part of it. For three years."
The room goes silent.
Lily's face goes white. "Mandy—"
"I escaped ten years ago," Mandy continues, her voice steady. "I've been hunting him ever since. Tracking his buyers, his suppliers, his enforcers. I've taken out six of his operations in three states."
"Taken out," I repeat. "What does that mean?"
Mandy's gaze shifts to me, and I see it—the cold, ruthless clarity of someone who's killed and doesn't regret it. "It means I burned them to the ground."
I smile. I gotta respect that.
Harper backhands me in the stomach, like she’s trying to quell my wild streak. I take her hand and kiss it, knowing she likes my type of wild.
Jake leans forward. "Who's behind Turner?"
“Turner?” Her gaze sharpens on Jake. “Who’s Turner?”
We all exchange a look.
Lily’s the one who answers her, though. “Cole Turner is the one who runs the trafficking operation.”
“Although it appears the Reyes family is behind him,” Jake adds.
Mandy's head snaps toward Jake, her eyes sharp. Then she shakes her head firmly. "No."
He raises his brow. "No?"
"The Reyes family does not traffic people," Mandy says, her voice absolute. "I know their operations. Drugs, weapons, protection rackets. They have rules and lines they won't cross. Trafficking women and children is one of them."
"You're sure about that?" Mason asks.
"Positive."
“They seem to be behind him somehow,” Jake says, “because it’s their shell company, Clearwater Holdings, that’s buying up Iron Ridge.”
Mandy's jaw tightens. "If the Reyes family knew Turner was running a trafficking operation, especially through their shell company, they would kill him. Slowly."
The room goes quiet as we all process that.
"So Turner's operating without their approval," Jake says slowly. "Using their company as cover."
"And they don't know," Harper adds, her cop brain putting the pieces together.
Mandy nods. "And if the Reyes family finds out what he's been doing with their company, he's dead.”
I study Mandy, taking in every detail. The way she stands. The way she moves. The way she talks. This woman isn't broken. She's weaponized, and she's here because she wants blood. Finding Lily was icing on the cake.
But Harper’s the one who says it. "You're not here for justice. You're here for revenge."
A fierce expression overtakes Mandy’s face, and for the first time, I see something other than control in her eyes. I see rage.
"I'm here for both." She pauses, meeting each of our gazes. "And I want in."