Luca
When my father escorts Ashton and me down into the basement, I’m expecting a prisoner. Secretly, I’m hoping it’s Massimo.
The compound is a fortress, but the jail downstairs is probably my father’s most prized possession. He prides himself on keeping men just long enough to have his interrogator work their magic.
Then they’re removed from the property.
I’ve never quite known what that entails.
Obviously, they’re dead, but does he incinerate them, bury them, drown their bodies in the lake, or something else far more sinister?
I’ve spent many wakeless nights under Dante’s roof wondering all the ways they erase a man from existence and never seem to get caught.
I suppose I’ll be entrusted with such secrets if my father truly wants me to run his empire.
“Why bring us down here?” Ashton is right behind me. He’s the first with questions, showing his interest.
I’m more curious about how we intend to stop the men threatening my family and where do I find them.
“I wanted someplace we could talk, plan, speak freely.” He leads us past the prison cells, and there’s a door in the back, leading to a room with maps on the walls, a large wooden table in the center. He’s got a map spread across the table.
His men are already down here, talking, waiting for us.
I’ve never been this far back in the basement. The door isn’t a surprise, but the room behind it, I never knew what lay inside.
Dante steps into the room and Halsey, the capo, one of Dante’s support teams, steps aside, giving him space at the center.
Halsey has his own team of men who do his bidding, a hierarchy of sorts, leading all the way up to my father.
The room grows quiet when Dante approaches. Bruno, Alessandro, Nico, and Zeno stand around the table.
Ashton and I stand at the opposite end, beside Moreno.
“Catch us all up to speed, Halsey.” Dante stares at his capo, letting him give the mission assignment since he’s leading the team.
“Massimo will be making a delivery this afternoon.” Halsey points at the map of Breckenridge. It’s a zoomed-in version of the location, but it’s not the same road or cabin where Ashton and I had run into trouble.
I suck in a sharp breath.
Just knowing that I could lay eyes on Massimo, brings my anger simmering to the surface.
“What’s the delivery, exactly?” I need to know that I’m not wrong and he’s trafficking women.
“Go take a look for yourself,” Dante says, pointing to the boxes in the corner of the room, stacked against the wall.
There are two large boxes about knee-high, stacked upon one another.
Ashton remains at the table while I approach the boxes. I open the lid and peer inside at the women’s lingerie, sex toys, and boxes of condoms thrown together haphazardly. “They’re trafficking women?”
“Kidnapping women,” Dante says, “and then holding them hostage, forcing them to—well, you get the picture.”
I’d suspected it all along, and the thought sickens me no less today than it did months ago.
I wanted to be wrong.
My stomach roils with disgust.
“They threatened my family, my wife and son.” Anger roars through my blood. I shove the box to the ground, the contents tipping over, spilling onto the floor.