30. Cassie
CASSIE
I practically held my breath as Bram walked over with Poe and Hawk. It was one thing to say he was going to let me explore the situation with the Hawks, one thing to thank them for saving my life.
This was something else: hanging out with the Hawks like they were friends, sharing information over burgers and beers.
I couldn’t even imagine it and it was happening right in front of me.
Vigo dragged one of the empty tables next to ours, along with two chairs, and Bram and Poe sat down.
It hurt me to see Bram uncomfortable. Until recently, there was only one person in the world who’d been able to make Bram uncomfortable, and that had been Maeve before they got together (Bram literally hadn’t known how to talk to her like a real person).
Now I was the one making him uncomfortable, and I hated it, especially after everything I’d found in the storage unit.
I couldn’t look at my giant, tattooed brother without seeing him as a little boy smiling into the camera, laughing with me as we jumped on the bed, holding my hand on the swings at the park.
“Hawk says you got something on the phone?” Bram asked.
“Nothing solid,” I said. “More like a possibility.”
Honey walked over to stand between Bram and Poe.
“Hey, sugar.” She looked nervously from the Hawks to me to Bram. “How’s Maeve?”
“She’s great,” Bram said. “Making those pumpkin cupcakes you love as we speak.”
“You’re lucky men,” she said.
Poe smiled up at her. “Don’t we know it.”
I’d always liked Poe and Remy, my brother’s two best friends. Remy was a bit of a wrecking ball, but he was nice, and Poe had the same kind of thoughtful, deliberate energy as Jagger.
“Burgers, rings, and beers?” she asked.
“You got it,” Poe said.
“Be right back.”
I waited for her to leave to start talking, then I told the Hawks and Bram and Poe what Daisy and Sarai had said: that the way “PrincessA” was written in the text on the dead guy’s phone made it sound more like a nickname or a social media handle.
Bram leaned back in his chair and took a swig of the beer Honey had dropped off. “So the guys at the paper mill were body men for a woman?”
“What’s a body man?” I asked.
“Security detail,” Jagger told her. “Like a personal bodyguard.”
We put a pin in it while Honey set down our plates, and I inhaled the smell of cooked meat and fried onions. Either I was starving or this food smelled like heaven.
“Need anything else?” Honey asked.
“I think we’re good,” Poe said.
“Give a holler if you change your mind.”
“What kind of woman would need security detail like the ones at the paper mill?” Jagger asked when Honey left.
“Someone famous?” Vigo suggested.
“Someone powerful,” Hawk said.
“But what would she have to do with Imperium Fratrum?” Bram asked.
“It takes more than men to run an operation like Imperium Fratrum.” I bit into my burger and closed my eyes with a moan. “Oh my god… this is… this is incredible.”
When I opened my eyes, the Hawks were trained on my lips like Freya waiting for a piece of raw meat.
Unfortunately for them, Bram’s gaze was trained on them, something they realized pretty quickly when he stared them down, like they could feel his icy gaze from across the table.
I never thought I’d see the Hawks flustered, but they got flustered now, and they hurried to pour ketchup on their plates, unwrap their burgers, anything to avoid meeting Bram’s eyes.
“You were saying?” Bram asked, clearly eager to turn the conversation to a safer topic than why three of the men at the table looked like they wanted to devour me like the burgers on their plates.
“I was saying…” What had I been saying? “I was saying it takes more than men to keep something like Imperium Fratrum going.”
“Like what?” Poe asked.
I thought about Lilah, about the “school” for girls being sold into sex trafficking. “Women don’t inherently trust men. We know you’re dangerous for us. Just look at the statistics on domestic violence homicides.”
Bram frowned. “What do you know about that?”
“I know it’s hard to believe,” I said, “but I read something other than picture books now. I read the news, I read articles online. I know the statistics.”
“It’s true,” Vigo said.” Women are way more likely to be murdered by a partner or former partner than a stranger. And random violence against women is basically always committed by men.”
“Exactly.” I dipped one of my onion rings in ketchup and forced myself not to go orgasmic again. Bram might literally die. “Which is why men need women to attract other women. They need women to tell other women it’s okay, that there’s nothing to afraid of, that all of… this is perfectly normal.”
“What’s ‘this?’” Bram asked.
“Whatever the men are doing to groom women, to get the women to do what they want, to sell them. Men need other women for that.”
“You think PrincessA is someone else at Imperium Fratrum?” Jagger asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just saying that just because the name in the phone is PrincessA doesn’t mean it’s not still about Imperium Fratrum.”
“I wonder if there’s a Princess B,” Vigo said.
I couldn’t even begin to contemplate that one. We didn’t even know the identity of the first princess.
We ate in silence for a few minutes and I let my mind spin on the identity of the woman called PrincessA, trying to work backwards from what we knew about Imperium Fratrum and the sex-trafficking ring: Aventine, Dimitri, the Cantwells (both dead), the school for kidnapped girls, Ethan Todd and Dimitri.
Dimitri.
Dimitri.
Dimitri.
His presence ran through the sex-trafficking ring like blood, from its beginnings at Aventine to his mentorship of Ethan Todd.
“Maybe we’re making this too complicated,” I said.
“How so, mouse?”
Bram side-eyed Vigo when he used the nickname, but no way was I explaining that to my big brother.
“What if PrincessA has something to do with Dimitri?” I asked. “We know a Russian hired Travis Dorsey to kill my parents and we know the money Anna transferred from Kensington was funneled to Dimitri via the Rooks. We even have that old picture of Dimitri outside the Kensington Trust building.”
“What picture?” Bram asked.
I wanted to wait until we were all out of danger to talk to him about the personal stuff we’d found in the storage unit, and I hadn’t had time to talk to him about everything else.
“I’ll tell you about that later,” I said.
“So… what?” Poe asked. “You think PrincessA may still be connected to Kaprolov?”
“It makes as much sense as anything else,” I said.
“What if he calls his wife princess?” Hawk asked.
I looked at him. “Or… his daughter?”