Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Daphne followed Marcus through a door and into the Sweet Dreams house.
She tried really, really hard not to think about the things that had happened there, about the fear, the pain, the hopelessness.
They’d liaised with Hershorn when they’d arrived and learned that seven people were taken into care from the house—five women and two men—all either seventeen or eighteen.
They’d also stopped every client who’d left after half past twelve.
The only update Hershorn had on them was that they were all being questioned.
“You good?” Marcus asked, his voice low.
They turned and headed down a hallway. “I’m good,” she answered, nearly certain that was a lie.
How could she be? She was wandering around a house that had been used to essentially torture young people for the pleasure of rich, sick fucks, and she was about to walk into a room filled with people who had guns.
She knew better than to voice any of those concerns, though.
Not if she wanted to stand beside James.
Keeping her eyes focused on the broad shoulders in front of her, she passed through a kitchen, a butler’s pantry, and another long hall before the FBI team came into sight.
Charnette, with her thick blond hair still tied in a low bun, nodded at them, then jerked her head in the direction of the door.
She and Marcus went through a series of hand gestures that Daphne could have followed if she’d paid attention.
As it was, though, the low timbre of voices on the other side of the door caught her attention.
She leaned forward, as if those scant inches would make everything clear. “Kill,” “nice,” “bitch.” Scattered disconnected words she made out. A conversation, no doubt, but in her mind, they felt like words drawn at random, like the magnetic poetry set she had in her apartment back in Paris.
Marcus’s sudden grip on her arm startled her, and she jerked back. “Stay behind me, we’re going in,” he said. Her stomach tightened and her chest squeezed. Marcus no longer looked like the laid-back lumberjack she’d first met.
She gave a jerky nod and stepped to the side. In one fluid movement, he set his hand on the door, the other on her hip to keep her behind him, and walked in.
Chairs scraped, clothes rustled, a swear word or two filled the room, but Daphne let it all fade into the background as her attention locked on James.
Panic flashed through his eyes as he saw her.
Then they shuttered so quickly, a chill raced up her spine.
She understood why, understood that he didn’t want anyone in the room to know what she meant to him, didn’t want to give them a reason to use her to get to him.
Even so, his withdrawal felt as if someone had sucked the air from her lungs.
James wasn’t the only one with a bag of tricks to mask his emotions, though.
Channeling supermodel Daphne Sancerre, she adopted the expression and pose she’d shown the world thousands of times on the runway—bored, indifferent, nothing but a living, breathing clothes rack.
James blinked, then a tiny smile, more like a hint of one, teased the corners of his eyes.
“Don’t,” Marcus said, drawing her back to the situation. The situation that now included four guns pointed at them. Only Chanel and Adam Gareth remained unarmed.
One of the security guards had moved toward them, and Marcus was very politely suggesting he not. The man didn’t stop.
“Daphne,” Marcus said. She knew her part. Calling on all her confidence, she reached forward and pulled a second gun from Marcus’s waistband. With steady hands, she transferred it to her right hand and held it out to James.
Still looking at her, he had his back to both Ken and his brother. Seemingly unconcerned, he took the three steps needed to bring himself to her side. Then taking the gun from her hand, he turned and faced the room, keeping her behind him.
“Call him off, Carter,” Marcus said, jerking his head toward the guard moving their way. He could have been ordering an ice cream cone for all the tension in his voice.
“I call him off, it’s still three to two,” Malcom replied.
“That a problem for you, Lovell?” Marcus asked.
“Not a problem here,” he replied.
Malcom eyed them, then dipped his chin. The guard stopped.
“I wouldn’t shift that finger if I were you, Ken,” Marcus said. Daphne blinked, then zeroed in on the man. Even though she was tall enough to see over Marcus’s and James’s shoulders, she hadn’t seen Ken move an inch, only now that she looked, his finger hovered over the trigger.
A tense moment followed. From behind the wall of men, Daphne studied the four faces on the other side of the room.
Ken, Chanel, and Malcom wore the distant, disinterested look of people far too used to violence to be much disturbed or worried about it.
They planned to walk out of the office alive, but if she had to guess, they were motivated less by living and more by winning.
By coming out on top and beating their brother at his game.
Power and posturing, the only things that mattered.
Money, too, but that was the same as power.
Adam Gareth, on the other hand, stood out.
He’d risen when she and Marcus entered, and although he’d adopted a vague sort of interested look, sweat beaded his forehead and the fingers of his left hand twitched in an uncontrolled way.
The way a body does when it recognizes danger, feels fear, and doesn’t know how to deal with it.
“Feds?” Malcom asked. James tipped his head in question. “You’re not here on your own.”
“Feds and more,” Marcus replied. “Your teams are out of commission, your merchandise is safely away, tonight’s clients have all been collected and are currently being questioned.”
Malcom and Chanel shared a look, more a shifting of the eyes than a movement of the body. Daphne tensed as the energy in the room tightened and buzzed like a live wire. As if sensing what was coming, James reached back between him and Marcus and set a hand on her hip. A warm, steady hand.
Her moment of appreciation shattered as Malcom, without taking his eyes off of them, swung his gun to their left and fired two shots.
The deafening reports ricocheted through the room in an unholy echo.
Burying her ears between her shoulders, Daphne ducked her head.
In front of her, neither Marcus nor James moved as both guards fell.
“Less people to talk,” Malcom said, swinging the gun back toward them.
“The horse has left the barn on that issue,” James said, his hand still steady as a rock on her hip.
“You don’t know shit,” Chanel replied.
Daphne dragged her attention from Malcom, with his gun pointed at James, to the woman.
She stood as casually undisturbed as her brother, but something about her nonchalance caught Daphne’s eye.
Drawing in a slow, deep breath, she shut out the distractions in the room—the bodies of the guards, Gareth’s sweaty face, the four guns all drawn and pointed at people—and focused on Chanel.
Her hair, a pixie cut styled after Halle Barry’s, suited the roundness of her face.
Diamond studs sparkled in her ears, a matching solitaire hung around her neck, and a dozen rings bedecked her fingers, all signaling her status.
Makeup covered her acne-scarred face, a single mole marked her neck above her collar, and her fitted suit was tailored to perfection.
Daphne’s gaze rested on the solitaire hanging low on Chanel’s breastbone, shifting and glittering with the rise and fall of her breathing. The stilted, rapid rise and fall.
Her attention jerked back to Chanel’s face, and Daphne studied it closely.
Slowly, the signs grew clearer. She’d seen enough fear in the expressions of new models to recognize it.
Chanel masked hers well, but Daphne was an expert.
The tiny tic of her jaw, the forced blankness in her eyes, the jerkiness of her movements, as subtle as they were—an eye movement here, an adjustment of her feet there.
This was not a woman who would welcome death, not even passively. Unlike her brother, who truly didn’t seem to care one way or the other so long as he beat his brother in whatever game he’d created in his head.
“It’s all crumbling around you, Chanel,” Daphne spoke. She’d interrupted something Ken was saying, but she didn’t care. If they were going to get information about the trafficking ring, it would come from Chanel.
James’s hand twitched on her hip. She didn’t like speaking from behind the wall of muscle in front of her, but she wouldn’t press her luck.
“You know it is,” Daphne said. “I can see it in your eyes. The calculation laced with fear. You’ve gotten used to this life.
To the nice clothes, the three-hundred-dollar haircuts, the best makeup to hide your scars.
” Daphne paused. “Although there are doctors who can help with that. Makeup only goes so far.”
James’s fingers squeezed, but Marcus gave him a subtle shoulder bump.
“How did you start?” Daphne asked. “Businesswoman to businesswoman, I’m curious.”
Chanel’s gaze zeroed in on her, her eyes narrowing. “You look familiar.”
“I doubt you saw any of my shows, but you probably saw me on a magazine cover or two,” Daphne replied. Oh, James was going to make her pay for this. But they couldn’t stand there all night; they needed information.
Interestingly, it was Gareth who recognized her. “Daphne Sancerre. The model.”
“The one and only,” she replied. Malcom’s jaw tensed as he took in James’s hand resting possessively on her body. She almost smiled. Yet one more thing James had beaten his brother at—getting the girl. James wouldn’t see it that way, but Malcom sure as shit did.
“Pisses you off, doesn’t it, Malcom?” she said. A warning growl rumbled out of James, but she ignored him. She was already going to pay for it later, so may as well make it worth it.