Chapter 24 Minka #2
I glance past him to Aubree and search her bright blue eyes.
“You touched the file and told him?”
Archer grabs my jaw, lightning fast and just rough enough to hurt.
“Pretty sure she figured it out the second she walked through our door. She hugged me, since we haven’t seen each other since her wedding.
It’s possible I’ve been wrestling with this pumpkin situation all fuckin’ day, knowing in my gut I was right, but hoping with everything in my heart I was wrong.
You heard what she said a while back; she speaks fluent Malone.
So…” He loosens his grip on my face, but that does nothing for the roll of muscle in his jaw.
The fire in his eyes, and the pulse thundering against his neck.
“We can talk right here, with an audience. Or you can walk with me through our pretty gardens while you tell me, in fine detail, why the hell you put yourself in a situation where carving a pumpkin was necessary.”
So we’re moving past the ‘removed my own stitches’ thing, then?
“I don’t like pumpkin,” Mia whisper-hisses, wrapping her arm over Cato’s shoulders. “It’s not very nice, is it?”
Fury beats in my veins, propelling me forward with surprising speed and allowing me a chance to tear the folder from Archer’s grip before he can think of stopping me. “You’re good with discussing my business in front of our guests now, huh? You’re fine with that?”
“Don’t put this on me,” he growls. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“So you’re seriously going to stand there and ask me why?” I flip the folder open and snag whatever is at the top. Whoever. I turn the page and show him the ugly, rage-inducing, smarmy smile of a man three times my age. “He purchased a human being, Archer.”
“Minka—”
I slap his page down and grab another. “He purchased two of them. The youngest is eight, and the oldest is thirteen. What could he possibly want with a child, if not to harm her? Why two? And why the age difference?”
“You don’t get to—”
“Was the older one for now, and the younger one for molding? For training? Would the thirteen-year-old face atrocities and inhumanity at this man’s hands, but also be expected to raise the other until she was whatever he wanted her to be?”
“The fact that you have questions is a problem! You pumpkin’d a man without collecting all the information!”
“I had the same information you now have.” I slap that guy’s page down and take another. “Sophia and I saved these girls from absolute horrors. We stepped in when the law would not.”
“How do you know the law wouldn’t? You didn’t even give it a chance! You didn’t bring this to me—”
“Anthony was a powerful middle-aged man with friends the law won’t touch and a history proving this was not his first time transporting girls.
He’s been investigated countless times over the last three decades, coming close to prosecution on several occasions, but with cops in his pockets and apparent immunity, he remains a free man.
Lucky us,” I spit out. “He was so free, he could attend your brother’s wedding, and dragged his wife along like some kind of trophy to show off.
She’s twenty-one, by the way. A baby. Worse,” I jam my finger against his chest and sneer as my rage bubbles over.
As it grows and swells. Because I’ve kept this trapped inside my heart for days already. “You knew.”
“I knew what?”
“You knew what he was! You knew what he did. You knew, Archer! Which is why you did everything in your power to keep us away from each other. I’m not wrong,” I snarl. “And Sophia is not wrong. But the world is better off now that he’s gone.”
“Kinda badass,” Felix smirks. “Except for the part where you almost got us all pumpkin’d by Cordoza and his merry men. Oh, and the bit where Archer almost swam with the fish. Didn’t think that far ahead, Doc?”
“Archer stood beside Cordoza while Agosti’s veins emptied.
He couldn’t have had a better alibi if he had stood in Times Square with two dozen federal judges and danced on live television.
” I bring my fiery gaze back to Archer. “You were always safe, and I was always in control of the situation. I steered this exactly where I wanted it to go.”
“You think I care about my safety?” So much for code.
Archer throws his hand toward the sky. “You think I don’t have a hundred different escape routes already set up for us?
I don’t care about me, Minka, and I don’t care about our names or our jobs or whatever other bullshit you think I should give a shit about.
You walked into his hotel room! In the middle of the fuckin’ night.
You had a knife and self-righteous vigilantism spurring you on.
You’re lucky he didn’t snatch that blade and gut you instead. ”
“Oh, please—”
“You think you’re invincible! Like you can team up with your little dancing friend and nothing bad will ever happen.
The fuck am I supposed to do when you go after someone else, but he’s faster than you?
Stronger? Better! So instead of hearing about his death, I get the department shrink sitting me down and gently telling me my wife is swimming in her own blood and never coming home? ”
“So the alternative is to do nothing?!” I tear another face out of the folder. “This guy is seventy years old, Archer! Explain it to me like I’m five, how the hell anyone can justify what he’s doing?”
“No one is justifying this! But you can’t be everyone’s hero.”
“No, but those seventeen girls we saved this week? I can be theirs.”
“Be my hero!” he roars. “Be here for me when you’re seventy years old.
Be safe when my back is turned. Be brave enough to admit you can’t fix the world, but you could end it.
” He takes my hand, latching on with a violence that stops my breath in my throat.
“If you screw up and can’t come back to me, my world ends. How don’t you understand that?”
“If I allow those girls to be transported to the next location, to move toward a lifetime of pain and suffering and unbearable trauma, and I do nothing? That’s when my world ends.
You don’t want that version of me, Archer.
When I become apathetic to the atrocities committed against innocent children, I won’t be me anymore.
By then, you’ve just got a body to sleep next to at night. ”
“Minka—”
“I killed Anthony Agosti.” I stare deep into his eyes, scorching everything we are with the drive I carry in my heart.
“I injected enough morphine into his body to render him unconscious, carried him to his bathtub, slit his wrists, and I made damn sure his autopsy would say exactly what I intended it to say, even if someone else performed it. Then I botched the tox samples right in front of Cordoza’s soldiers—they watched me do it, and had no clue—so when Doctor Raquel delivers those reports to my desk, they’ll say exactly what I want them to say. ”
“You risk too much!”
“I would risk my life a thousand times over if the alternative is to let him hurt those girls.”
“With no care for what that loss would do to me? You think doing nothing is too high a price to pay? I say losing you is a price I’m not willing to consider!
I thought we had a deal?” He grips my shoulder and shakes until my teeth rattle.
“If you were hunting someone, you said you would come to me first. You promised.”
“I couldn’t come to you for this one. Obviously! You were standing right next to Cordoza when it was happening, and he still tried to blame you for it.”
“So!? Cordoza doesn’t factor into my life plans, Minka!
You do. Killing Agosti might’ve been fun, and sure, you’ve saved those seventeen girls.
But you’re so fucking short-sighted on this, it’s terrifying.
These buyers?” He snatches the folder, the pages whipping in the air.
“They’re just gonna shop elsewhere. You put a Band-Aid on a gaping wound when you could’ve done this so fucking differently.
You could’ve done it better if you’d just used your brain. ”
“How?” I push onto my toes until we’re almost nose to nose. Eye to eye. “The supply has been cut off. How is that a bad thing?”
“If you’d shared your information instead of picking up a knife, the cops could’ve followed Agosti and the shipment. Then they could’ve bagged the buyers, too.”
“No, I—”
“Killing him was stupid! It was impulsive. And now, despite having names and faces for these buyers, you don’t have them in cuffs.
You don’t have confessions or proof of delivery.
You don’t have shit! They’re gonna go underground and wait for the dust to settle, and a week from now, they’ll come up again, and they’ll find a new supplier.
Meanwhile, you’ve destroyed what could’ve been a massive operation that nabbed so many more players.
You thought too small, and you fucked it up. ”
“Too small?” My heart hammers against my throat, blocking my airway and leaving a bitter taste on my tongue. “You think we didn’t consider everything?”
“Unless you plan to hunt every one of these men down and slice their arteries too, then you’ve done nothing but piss off a bunch of rich old men who have a thing for little girls. You didn’t stop them, Minka. You inconvenienced them.”
My phone dings in my back pocket, the vibration rolling just under the surface of my skin. Anger beats in my veins like a drum. Hurt follows directly after.
Could he honestly think I would do nothing? After all this time, after all the arguments we’ve had. Does he truly think I’d leave those girls to their fate?
Shaking my head, I reach back and snag my phone, knowing by the sound of the ding exactly who is texting me. Sniffing, I clamp my lips shut and unlock the screen, then navigate to the chat I have with Soph, reading what she sent.
“What?” Archer snarls impatiently. “You got something more important to do than discuss us?”