33. Valentina
VALENTINA
Frank has a change of clothes in the boot of his car and I’m quickly able to trade the alcohol-soaked clothes for an oversized T-shirt and black cargo pants. It takes a little creativity in order to get them to fit comfortably, but it’ll do for the drive.
“If he’s telling the truth,” Bradley says from the front seat of the car as we weave through the city, “there’s no telling what we’ll find there.”
“And if he’s not telling the truth,” says Ruslan from beside me, “he’ll be exactly where we left him.”
“And I’ll cut his balls off,” I mutter while staring down at my cut forearm.
Ruslan’s doing his best to apply on-the-go first aid to the worst of the cuts.
Luckily, adrenaline and the pain from the blow to my head are keeping most of the pain at bay, but every touch from Ruslan as he cleans my wounds is unpleasant.
Every stroke of cotton pulls at cuts, and every brush of antiseptic feels too rough.
Diego was so gentle with me.
I miss that.
I miss him.
I pray we’re not out of time. As pissed as I am that he left, I just want him back with me so I can yell at him.
“Two squads will meet us there,” Bradley says, glancing up from his phone as he finishes making plans. “If Diego is there, we will get him out.”
The silence that follows remains heavy with everything no one dares to say. It’s been hours since Diego left and hours since that bastard handed him over. Anything could have happened to him in the time we’ve been tracking him, and there’s no guarantee he’d even be there anymore.
My heart squeezes tightly, and I cast my gaze out the window until Bradley turns slowly in his seat and faces me.
“You said you remember everything,” he says. “Tell me.”
“I can’t,” I murmur. “I can’t think clearly.”
“We have time,” Frank says as he expertly weaves through several cars driving far too slow for my liking. “We won’t be there for at least seven minutes.”
Seven minutes is far too long.
“Valentina.” Ruslan’s hands quickly secure the last bandage around my forearm. “You have to tell us what happened so we have an idea of what or who we’re walking into here. We all know they don’t really want Diego. He’s collateral. They want you. But who and why?”
I turn back to him as he rests back in his seat.
“You need to tell us.”
“Sorry. It feels weirdly real if I say it out loud,” I admit. “It’s all only just come back to me.”
“Speaking of…” Bradley winces and glances up as if he’s trying to somehow look at the wound on the back of my head. “If you start to feel dizzy or sick…”
“I know. I’m fine. Really.”
“So…” Bradley’s eyes narrow faintly. “Armenians?”
“Right. You know Aria Giorgio, the Italian Dona? She reached out to me a while ago. I know we’re not supposed to maintain contact with families we knew before but after what happened with you, Bradley, I didn’t see the harm.
We’d worked together in the past and we attended the same private school.
I wouldn’t say we were friends, but there’s a mutual respect there. ”
“I know her.” Ruslan nods. “She’s powerful but quiet.”
“She reached out to me because her niece had gone missing and she couldn’t trust the cops to look into it and she didn’t have her own people to spare because they’ve been dealing with intense pressure from the Irish.
Nothing we need to be involved with. She just didn’t have the people to spare for something so personal.
Unfortunately, her niece turned up dead three days after I started poking around. At first, it seemed like a dead case.”
I press my lips together and wince as my skull throbs.
“It looked like some sicko had gotten ahold of her and then killed her in a panic when the heat got too much. I just couldn’t find the guy and I couldn’t shake it.
So a couple of weeks later, I started digging deeper into everything.
The park where she was taken, who she was with at the time, the cops who were initially called to investigate.
Aria didn’t know I was doing this because I didn’t want to give her false hope. It could have been nothing.”
“But it was something, wasn’t it?” Bradley murmurs as I pause to breathe.
“Yeah. I found a lot of little kids, girls mostly, who looked similar to Aria’s niece and were of the same age, were going missing.
And true, kids go missing all the time in New York for a hundred different reasons but the more I looked, the clearer the pattern got.
Always kids taken in groups of three, either three on the same day or three kids over a period of three days.
Always from public places. Always from single parents. ”
“Shit,” Ruslan murmurs. “That’s twisted.”
“And it was something. But we also had so much going on, and this was like a private project, so I passed along everything I knew to the cops and hoped it was enough for them to find out what was happening. But the weeks were passing and no one seemed to be doing anything. The pattern didn’t change, although I noticed a longer period of time where no kids went missing who fit that criteria.
It was almost as if the people behind this got wind of my investigation and tried to change things.
With the wedding and everything, I was also distracted. ”
Bradley and Ruslan exchange a look as if trying to work out what to say, but they both remain quiet.
“Anyway, on the morning of your wedding, I saw Tabitha. She was just standing in these dirty clothes, holding her worn rabbit, crying on a street corner, and no one seemed to notice her. I recognized her from one of the missing persons reports, and I was so shocked to see her standing there that I didn’t realize it was bait until it was too late.
They jumped me and the last thing I remember was her crying face before they knocked me out. ”
“And this was a group of Armenians?” Bradley asks.
I nod. “I woke up in this fucking basement room with these scummy bastards who were all too happy to inform me that every report I handed over to the cops was just used to alert them that I was sniffing around. This Armenian child trafficking ring had infiltrated the States. They’ve been kidnapping and shipping children off to any county willing to pay for child soldiers or worse, and they were comfortable thinking that some other Mafia family would end up taking the fall.
Until they kidnapped Aria’s niece and realized who she was. ”
“Fuck,” Ruslan breathes. “That’s why they killed her?”
I nod. Bradley remains silent but his face grows dark.
“They tortured me. Something that was alright, but then they started bringing Tabitha in and using her to make me talk. They wanted to know why I hadn’t dropped the case, who else I’d told, and where they could lay the blame before they left.
The day they took Tabitha away was the day I was finally able to get the upper hand.
I killed two and ran. I tried searching for her but…
” The words catch in my throat and I shake my head.
“I ran. And I knew the cops couldn’t be trusted so I ran and found a car.
Diego’s car. And the rest is…” Puffing out my cheeks, I sag back in my seat.
“No wonder you didn’t want Diego to go to the cops or the hospital,” Ruslan murmurs. “They’d end up handing you straight back.”
“I feel so guilty.” My heart squeezes again as if my ribs have turned into a cage. “I don’t know what happened to Tabitha. I’ve ruined Diego’s life and God knows if he’s even alive. All of this mess because I couldn’t remember.”
“Don’t.” Bradley finally speaks. “This isn’t your mess, it’s theirs. Had you retained your memories then things would be different, sure, but you did what you could to keep you and Diego safe. I just wish you’d told me you were looking into this.”
“It wasn’t anything serious, at least not compared to what we deal with, and we all have our own projects. You had that thing with Zira, and you…” I turn to Ruslan. “You and Ivy were planning a wedding and I just wanted something nice to go smoothly after all we’ve been through.”
“Sure.” Ruslan snorts. “Because good things always work out well for us. In the end, you vanished with the rings.”
A small smile creeps across my lips, then I lock eyes with Bradley. “You’re right. I should have come to you. I didn’t think it was big. I thought it was just something regularly shitty and the cops would clear it up.”
“That cop who attacked Diego must have been their contact in the department. He didn’t have his badge anymore, but I bet he worked on planting someone in the department who would feed him info,” Bradley murmurs, and the gears clearly turn behind his eyes.
“But this is good that you remember. Val… I’m sorry you went through all of that by yourself. ”
“It’s my own fault. I told no one. I trusted the cops. My own mind forgot. I can’t blame anyone but myself.”
“How about we blame the bastards who did this?” Ruslan replies.
“Agreed,” Frank says, finally speaking up. “We’re here.”
The warehouse given to us by the bounty hunter appears painfully vacant when we climb out of the car and my heart sinks, even as Cassian approaches from a vehicle already parked nearby. Several other carefully parked cars litter the road around us with the security teams Bradley called in.
“Is it true?” Cassian makes a beeline for me. “Raven thinks you’ve remembered something.”
“I’ve remembered everything,” I reply.
He suddenly sweeps me up into a tight hug and squeezes. “Oh, thank God. It was getting scary living without your little quips about my methods or my hair.”
“I can’t fault them anymore,” I reply. “You were helping me remember.”
He sets me down and smiles widely, then glances toward the warehouse while removing his gun from his holster. “And your man is in there?”
Bradley and Ruslan both cough slightly, hiding their smiles by becoming suddenly very interested in their weapons.
“My man?” I raise a brow, but surprisingly, I’m not that offended. “Yeah. He’s supposed to be.”
Cassian turns back to me and flicks the safety back on his gun. “Well, let's go get him for you, then.”