by Elise Faber
I should have been able to lock down my emotions.
From the moment I’d been old enough to finally understand my family was cruel and involved in absolutely abhorrent things, from the moment I’d stopped blindly abiding them, from trying to be like them—of course that had come far too late and was something I would never forgive myself—I’d worked to shut off all my feelings. It was the only way to survive as I’d worked to distance myself from them, from the things they did, and to buy me time to find an escape route.
They’d seen, though, understood they were part of something that had disgusted me, and they’d tried all methods of manipulation and gaslighting to bring me to their side.
And when it became clear I would never abide by what they were doing, they’d—
“Holy shit,” Olive breathed, thankfully pulling me from my memories. “Is that their shipping pattern?”
I sucked in a silent breath, slowly released it, then nodded. “Yes,” I said, highlighting the columns. “These are the shipments we’ve been able to confirm from the last six months”—most of which KTS had arrived too fucking late to help the men, women, and children from being trafficked—“and I believe these are their scheduled drops for the next three months.” I pointed to a row. “This is an example of a planned pickup.” I gestured to another. “This, I think, is for a merchandise drop-off.”
Merchandise being people.
“Holy hell,” Olive said. “Why are they all in Italy?”
“And they’re definitely not for fucking lettuce,” Dan muttered. “How did you—?”
His eyes, an azure that reminded me of the deep blue water of the Mediterranean. I’d grown up overlooking that sea, first walking on the sandy shores and later keeping hold of the barest sliver of my sanity by staring out the crack in the stone wall I’d managed to carve out.
My fingertips ached, remembering how I’d bloodied my nails, scratching against that wall, hour after hour.
I’d grown up in the arms of the Italian mob, had been honed in the blood and violence of turf wars and money laundering and drug smuggling.
It had taken me years to find my way out, years more to find KTS.
But I’d been working with the agency for almost a decade, doing good things, finding a way to erase my blood-stained past. All it took was one source, one flash drive, one set of files, and I felt like I was dumped right back there.
In that cell.
In that darkness.
Just a sliver of the sea keeping me sane.
“They’re working with the Mikhailova,” I said. “It’s why we haven’t been able to shut the Russian ring down before. They’re not running it out of Russia. They’re running it out of Italy.”
Ryker, Laila’s husband and their most experienced agent, frowned. “Where are you getting your information?”
I couldn’t deny I felt a slice of relief that Ryker didn’t know my past. Laila was the only one who knew a little of how I’d grown up—or well, not the specific how when it came to cells and darkness and torture, but Laila knew that I had grown up in the fold of the mob. I had trusted her with that information before I’d allowed her to bring me to KTS, and she’d helped me build my cover as Ava Mills when I’d committed to the agency.
But my friend hadn’t told Ryker.
Even though they were married.
And that made the brittleness that had filled my bones dissipate slightly. How much to tell the team would be my decision.
But there wasn’t any doubt in this situation.
I would tell them everything I knew, anything that might be helpful. Because I’d left any loyalty to the Toscalos behind the moment I’d escaped that cell and gone to ground.
“My information is from someone directly linked to the Toscalo family,” I murmured.
“Who?” Dan asked.
Even with the determination to share, my pulse picked up, my throat went tight. I’d hidden this truth because I didn’t want anyone to think I was like them, to look at me differently because of my past.
But fuck if I was a coward.
I hadn’t survived and gone on to fight for those who couldn’t by pussying out when things got tough. Lifting my chin, sucking in a breath, I met Dan’s gaze.
“Me.”
Silence.
For a long time.
Then Olive spoke. “What do you mean you?”
“I mean,” I said, having to force the words out because it had been so fucking long, and it was so fucking painful to think it, let alone to give voice to it. “I mean, I am Evelina Toscalo, daughter of Frankie Toscalo, and the woman who was supposed to have been the heir to the Toscalo family.” I glanced at Ryker. “That’s how I knew the code. Before I left, my cousin showed it to me. He’d put it together to hide income—though it took me a bit to remember how to make the puzzle pieces come together.”
This time, there wasn’t silence in response to my revelation.
This time, there was a flurry of noise.
From Ryker and Olive and Dan, all talking over each other, all throwing questions my way.
“Yo!” Laila called sharply.
I sucked in a breath, thankful for the interruption to the peppering of statements.
“Ava will explain,” she said. “But you got to let the woman talk.”
Ryker lifted a brow at his wife. “You knew.”
Laila slanted a glance his way. “I know lots of things. I also know that when you ran your own team, you didn’t always share every bit of information with your significant other.”
Meaning her.
The slightly chastising tone shut Ryker up—because it was true—and relaxed me enough that I could begin to answer some of the questions slung my way.
“Yes, my real name is Evelina Toscalo,” I said to Ryker. “But I haven’t been her for a long time. No,” I directed at Olive, “Evelina isn’t dead. Clearly. It was just safer for me to make everyone think that. And yes, I spent eighteen years in the mob,” I told Dan. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t good at faking I was on their side back then. Eventually, they came to recognize I wasn’t ever going to be their good little heiress, and so they . . .” No. My eyes slid to the side, and I forced the memories of darkness and pain away. Only then did I meet Laila’s gaze. “The reason I knew about this code at all, is because of Sergio. He’s the real heir now, even though that information isn’t commonly known. He bragged to me a few times about a shell game he’d created”—one that had effectively made him, and not my younger brother, my father’s successor—“and when I saw the files, I remembered some of the code.” I glanced down at my hands. “My computer and the algorithm I wrote did the rest.”
After a moment of silence, I looked up, saw the wide eyes greeting me.
“All this being said, I can’t be certain they’re even still using the same code more than a decade later. Nor even that Sergio is still the heir,” I admitted, sinking into my chair and leaning back into the plush leather. “The truth is, none of this may be right, and it could all be about fucking lettuce.”
Olive snorted.
“I know,” I said. “I know it’s not about lettuce. I just . . . I don’t want you all to think I magically cracked this when it may not be right any longer.”
“Right,” Laila said. “Well, there’s only one way for us to know for sure.”
My brows drew together. “How?”
“We’re taking a trip to Italy and getting some lettuce.”
Nine
Southern Italy
15:09hrs local time
Dan
White sand.
Crystal clear water.
Human trafficking.
One of those things didn’t belong with the others.
Or the multitude of tourists crowding the beaches wouldn’t think so, anyway. They were captivated by the natural beauty, the warm weather, the soothing waves. They also had absolutely no understanding of the dark underworld that shadowed the island.
Namely, that
the tourism industry in this part of the country was ruled by the Toscalo family.
Visitors didn’t understand the friendly male who delivered their drink beachside was a migrant, paid pennies on the dollar, and drawn into service because he was unable to get papers to work legally. They didn’t know that the poverty seen just inland was because organized crime made it difficult to make a legitimate living.
They just saw the pretty beaches, the friendly locals, and opened up their wallets.
But I wasn’t here to take down the entire Italian mob—though it would be a nice side project. Rather, the rest of the team and I were here to investigate Ava’s assessments about the data, and if they proved right, we might be able to interrupt a shipment.
Of people.
Fuck, that made me sick.
It made me want to hunt the fuckers down who thought it was somehow okay to trade in people—in children and women and men who were vulnerable—and obliterate each and every one of them.
I might be able to take down a decent chunk of them before I went down, but the killing done by my hands wouldn’t do anything.
Yes, it would make me feel better.
Yes, maybe some vengeance would be enacted.
But the crimes wouldn’t stop, and neither would the exploitation, the trafficking, the illegal drugs.
So, instead of loading up with weapons and going on some I will find you-Taken movie vendetta, I sat in the fucking lounge chair and accepted the drink from the man who was a pawn of the Toscalo family with a “Thank you,” a smile, and slipping a large enough tip into his hand that maybe someday, if he got enough of them, the man might be able to eventually get out.
Then I sat there and sipped the whiskey and waited.
For my “girlfriend.”
Before Laila and Ryker had gotten hitched and Ryker was running his own team, I probably would have been paired with our team leader or stashed at the bar like Laila was, watching my back. But now that things between her and Ryker were legal and Ryker had gotten his possessive angry eyes down pat, I knew it was better for my physical well-being to not be playing Laila’s doting boyfriend.
Plus, Laila didn’t speak fluent Italian. Not like—
“Hi, baby.”
I stilled, trying not to let my jaw drop open and failing miserably.
Because . . .
Ava.
She had peeled off after we’d arrived at the hotel to “freshen up and change into my swimsuit”—though that hadn’t been all she was doing. She’d also been setting cameras and placing microphones that Olive, Laila, and Ryker would monitor.
Because if Ava was right, the exchange would be happening somewhere on this hotel’s property in one day’s time.
In a crowded, tourist-filled building, during one of the busiest weekends in the summer.
The Toscalo family had balls, that was for damn sure.
Kind of like the woman standing in front of me wearing a positively tiny string bikini. Breasts. Hips. Thighs. Miles of creamy skin. A large hat shaded her face, and fuck, she was a wet dream come to life. I nearly begged her to spin around so I could see that luscious ass.
I didn’t.
Because Luna was probably around somewhere, and I didn’t feel like getting shot again.
Ava lifted a brow, and a moment too late I scrambled up, remembering to play the role of boyfriend. “Baby?” I asked softly, leaning in to kiss her cheek and gesturing for her to take the lounge chair.
“Would you prefer Boner?” she returned chipperly.
I ignored the name and countered, “Where’s your weapon?” I knew she wouldn’t be without one.
One brown brow came up as she lowered herself onto the chair. “Where do you think it is?”
I grinned, tore my gaze from her body, and sat down on the sand next to her. “Are we only going to talk to each other in questions from now on?”
Scanning the horizon, she asked, “How do you feel about questions?”
I snorted.
“Knife in my purse,” she said, breaking the question streak. “Plastic pistol hidden in the flowers of the hat. Stiletto in the frame of my glasses. You?”
“Blades in both flip-flops. Handgun in my backpack.”
“Good.” She shifted in the chair. “Everything in my quadrant is in place. Bags made it safely to our room. Laila and Ryker are next door. As planned, Olive is on the floor below, so we have access to the stairwell.”
“Have you seen any of your family?”
That was part of the reason she’d been the one to place the cameras. She could move like the wind, melt into shadows, and she knew who to look out for.
“Yes,” she said. “Three cousins. What about you?”
I nodded at a cabana tucked beneath several palm trees. It was draped in a white gauzy material, but even from fifty feet away, we could see the group of men inside. “No Toscalos. But some of the Mikhailova clan are inside. Three bratok”—soliders—“meeting with their brigadier. I didn’t get a clear look at his face, but it appears to be Alexander Ivankov. The bratok are definitely his, and familiar faces—Konstantin, Boris, and Sergei.”
“Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest,” she muttered.
“Yeah, too bad Ivankov isn’t any of those.”
“No, unfortunately he is too fucking smart for his own good.” Swarmy and somehow always able to squirm out of any charges we managed to pin on him.
“But at least he has a dumb name,” I said lightly.
Her gaze slanted to mine. “True, Iceberg isn’t great,” she said referring to the alphabet-based portion of the code we were working based on the information that she’d presented earlier. The correlation between the known associates in both groups and their alphabetic name had been the simplest part, once they knew what to look for. “But it isn’t Boner,” she teased.
“Shut it, Mud.”
The man who’d brought me the drink earlier, came up before she could reply and took Ava’s order.
I didn’t speak Italian, but I knew enough to recognize the order.
It made me smile.
“A peach daiquiri?”
She turned to me, her eyes narrowed, even as flashes of memories from two years ago flared bright in my mind. The tart-sweet of peach juice on her lips, her tongue.
“You got a problem with that?”
“No.” I leaned closer, near enough to smell the coconut of her sunscreen, the soft floral scent of her shampoo. “It’s just a little . . .”
“If you finish that sentence with girly, I’ll reacquaint you with Luna.”
“I love Luna,” I said as the man returned with the slushie peach drink and handed it to her. I noticed that she slipped the server a folded-up bill, exactly as I had earlier.
She took a sip and sighed in pleasure.
Which made my cock twitch. Cute. So glad my teenage boy could make an appearance while on a mission with a woman I wanted almost more than my next breath.
“Sure, you do,” Ava said. “So long as you aren’t looking down her barrel.”
I snorted. “That’s true.”
She pulled out her cell, pretended to be texting, but I could see she was taking several pictures of the trio. “What if this isn’t what we think?”
“You’re right with the code, Ava.” I leaned against the lounge chair, dug my bare feet into the warm sand. “You’re the best agent I know. Hands down. And even if there’s more to this, or it’s not exactly what it seems, all we have to do is look at that cabana and have confirmation that serious shit has gone down.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “And if he is Iceberg, he showed up a lot in the files.”
I nodded. “Along with Romaine, who you’ve pegged as Romeo,” I said, sympathy spreading through me. I wasn’t surprised she’d survived growing up in a lion’s den. Ava was the strongest woman I knew, and considering I was surrounded by strong women on a daily basis, that was no joke. “Your younger brother. Are you—”
“He’s not my brother.�
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A sharp rebuttal that should have brought a chill to the hot Mediterranean climate, it was filled with so much frost, but though I met her eyes, I didn’t say anything to deny it, didn’t argue with her about DNA and family. I was close to my sister, considered her one of my best friends when I was Stateside and could actually see her, but I knew I was one of the lucky ones. Genes, unfortunately, didn’t create love, nor loyalty, nor kindness.
And I didn’t need to be able to understand the finer points of DNA nor every bit of what happened to Ava growing up, to understand that family often carried complications right alongside it.
The shadows were right there in her eyes.
An innocent girl growing up in the mob.
Fuck, how had she survived?
Except . . . I knew how she survived. It was clear as day in the same intensity and spirit that had brought me to the training mat often enough, the same focus that had made her the best shot in the agency, even with her needing to wear glasses.
Speaking of which, if we were sitting on our asses, just watching our targets laugh and drink, I might as well change the subject to something that wouldn’t weigh so heavily on her.
“Why didn’t you ever do Lasik?”
Brown eyes, surrounded by thin black frames, came to mine. “I wasn’t a candidate for it,” she said. “My eyesight isn’t all that bad. I’m fine up close, but at a distance, one eye struggles. My right optic nerve was damaged.”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t damaged during an op.”
“No.” A beat. “And it turns out, I wasn’t receptive to the lesson my father wanted to teach me.”
I read between the lines and felt like the biggest asshole on the planet because I hadn’t changed the subject at all. Instead, I’d ended up drawing her focus right back to her blood relatives, right into the childhood she’d given the briefest overview of back at headquarters. I’d read between the lines the week before, too, understanding that during the briefing, there was a lot more she hadn’t said than she had.
