Chapter 18
Eighteen
VIOLET\
An hour later, I’m wearing a pair of Mateo’s sweats, which are surprisingly big on me, and I’m sitting at a dining room table along with his brothers and Diego.
These five men are intimidating as fuck.
All big, muscled, tattooed, with an edge in their eyes that says One wrong move, and I’ll end you.
I don’t think it’s necessarily personal. I think they just always have that look on their face.
Nibbling my sore lip, my eyes move from one to the next. Mateo formally introduced them when they arrived. Julian was the one with the gorgeous blond woman at the club. Rome was with the beautiful pregnant girl, and Carson . . . well, Carson is terrifying.
And they’re all sexy as hell.
It’s not fair to the rest of the men in the world.
To settle my nerves and buy myself time, I turn to Diego. “You were bleeding earlier.”
“Doc fixed me up,” he replies and offers me a kind smile. “Thanks for asking.”
I nod and bite my lip again. Mateo moves my chair to the side and squats in front of me, braces my face in his hands, and brushes his thumbs over my cheeks.
“No one is going to hurt you,” he says softly. “You’re so fucking strong. Just be the savage girl I know you are and tell us what’s going on. Let me help you, Violet.”
No one’s ever offered to help me. Not even the police. I’m so tired of doing it on my own, and maybe now, I don’t have to.
I nod, and he moves back to his seat, and I let out a shaky breath.
“I guess I’ll start at the beginning.”
“That’s a good place to start,” Julian agrees.
“My parents died almost nine years ago, in an accident. I had just turned eighteen, and I became the guardian of my younger sister. She’s not quite two years younger.
We’d just started a kickboxing class together, and after our parents died, we kept going because we didn’t have family, and that group of people became our community.
Anyway, about a year later, I was studying to be a tattoo artist, and there was an exhibition with the kickboxing club.
Rose wanted to go, but I had to study. She got mad, and decided to go without me. ”
I rub my hands over my face and ignore the ache from my injuries.
“Late into the night, I realized she hadn’t come home, so I tried to call her, but her phone had been turned off.”
My eyes meet Mateo’s, but I can see that he already knows.
“She never came home. That was seven years ago. The police were no help. They told me she probably ran away, or might have gotten herself killed.”
“Fuck,” Rome grumbles.
“For five years, I stayed in the same apartment, in case she came home.” Christ, I’m going to cry. “She never did, but then one day, I got a letter.”
I grab my belt bag and unzip it, pull out the pistol, and the air in the room changes.
Glancing up, I see that Diego has a gun in his hand, the three brothers have narrowed their eyes, and Mateo’s grinning at me.
“It’s in my way. I’m not going to shoot anyone.”
I set the gun far away from me, then unzip the interior pocket of the bag and pull out Rosie’s letter.
It’s been folded and refolded so many times that it might fall apart any second, but I open it and read it to them.
“There wasn’t a return address, but it was postmarked from Vegas, so I let the apartment go, and within two weeks, I was living here with a new job. The only thing I had to go on was the fights she mentions in the letter.”
I turn to Mateo and see that the smile is gone from his handsome face.
“But no one would tell me if there were underground fights here. So, for the first year I lived here, all I did was walk every fucking inch of this city, looking for her. Then, one day at work, a client told me that he was going to be fighting, and he must not have cared who was listening because he gave me all of the info I needed to find your fights.”
Mateo’s eyes narrow, and I don’t know if he’s mad or if he’s just absorbing what I’m saying. My eyes move to the others, and they’re just so serious and scary that I have to stand and pace, not even caring about my hurt ankle.
“You guys are intimidating, you know that?”
“What happened next, Violet?” Rome asks.
“I went to the fights as often as I could. But I never really watched the fight, I watched the crowd, looking for my sister. If that man made her go, I figured I’d see her there. But I’ve been going for months and haven’t seen her at all.”
“How did you know about the warehouse tonight?” Carson asks.
“Um.” I wince and take a deep breath. Jesus, I’m showing them my whole hand, and that makes me so nervous. “Well, I get on the dark web often to look for her name, to try to see if I can get any information—”
“You get on the dark web,” Mateo repeats, and his jaw clenches.
“Yeah, I had a client once who traded his knowledge for my art. It was mutually beneficial. Anyway, the other day, I found it. It said they were moving girls, needed security, and gave the date, time, and location.”
“What the fuck,” Carson mutters.
“And you thought it was a good idea to go there,” Mateo says, “without backup, by yourself, and do what, Violet?”
“See if Rosie was there. Because there isn’t anything I won’t do for her. She’s my sister. I failed her before, and I need to know where she is.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before? We could have had a conversation, and I would have helped you.” Mateo’s hands are in fists on the table.
“I didn’t know you. When I saw you that first night at the fight, I overheard people talking about you owning the whole thing, and I didn’t know if you worked with Damien, or if he worked for you, or anything.”
“So you came to my house, let me fuck you, drugged me and then ransacked my place?”
I wince again and my lip aches. “Boy, that sounds bad. First of all, yes. I did those things. But I didn’t plan that. I just wanted to talk to you, but then the chemistry was there, and . . . fuck.”
I pace the room and push my hands through my still-damp hair.
“I didn’t know. I’ve been so fucking confused because I like you. I enjoy the hell out of you, and everything in me wanted to trust you, but I didn’t know, and if I was wrong about you and you did work with him, and I got in your way, you could have killed me.”
Mateo’s jaw works.
“When I saw that you owned a sex club, I thought maybe they make the girls work there and maybe I’d find Rosie there.”
Now Rome’s face goes stony.
“Fuck no,” he says.
“Obviously. You have a really great club, by the way. But I didn’t know for sure at the time.
To be honest, when I walked in there, I hoped with everything in me that she worked there.
Especially after the bartender assured me that consent is so important.
I thought it would at least be a safe place for her, but she wasn’t there. ”
“So, you thought that I could be capable of enslaving women, make them work in the sex trade in a club—”
“I didn’t say that. I hoped it wasn’t you so bad because how could I be so attracted to you and have so much fun with you, and also worry that you’re a monster?”
“I get it,” Julian cuts in. “I would have done the same if any of my brothers was in your sister’s place. You do what you have to do for family.”
“I almost told you about it at the gym yesterday,” I say softly and feel emotions rise up in me because I hurt everywhere, I’m exhausted, and I’m so sick and tired of being scared all the time. “God, I wanted to, but—”
“Come here,” Mateo says, and tugs me into his lap, hugging me close, his hand brushing through my hair in that way he does that feels so good. “I’m fine. I’m just fucking glad you’re talking because you and your secrets have been driving me up the fucking wall.”
“Same.” I laugh and hug him back. “But you have to understand, I’ve been doing this alone for seven years. I don’t trust anyone. The cops failed me spectacularly.”
“They were likely on the asshole’s payroll,” Rome says. “They didn’t help you because they were told to make the whole case disappear.”
I stare at him and just feel so damn sad.
“Well, damn.”
“I’m sorry about your sister.” Mateo kisses my temple. “We’ll help you find her.”
“I’ll start digging tonight,” Julian says. “I have more access to the dark web than you do.”
“I’ll reach out to my contacts too,” Carson agrees.
“And what about this Damien guy? Does he live in Vegas? Could she still be here?”
The five of them share a look, and the pit that’s resided in my stomach for seven years, the one that had just started to loosen, tightens right back up again.
“We’ve been looking for him for a long time,” Mateo says. “He’s a piece of shit, definitely deals in trafficking, and for personal reasons, we want him long dead. But as far as we know, he doesn’t live in Vegas.”
“The girl in the van said that Rosie wasn’t here anymore. I don’t know if she meant that she’s dead or what. If he’s moved her, I have to find out where so I can move too.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”