Silence fell.The truth lined up in a brutal, simple row.Neve killed the wrong man.Which meant Viktor Sokolov had her.
I turned from the window.
“Then Viktor is our next stop.”
Gianni met my eyes.My jaw clenched.
“That man sent his brother to drag girls off the street.He stepped into my territory.And now he’s got something I’m invested in.”
Neve Trimboli wasn’t a loose end.She was a fuse.And Viktor Sokolov had just lit it.
“Find the auction.I want his world in my hands before he even knows I’m in it.”
Gianni nodded once.
And somewhere in Tuscany, a Russian kingpin was about to learn what happened when you tried to take something from a Cavalho.
24
Neve
Adoor opened.Harsh light spilled out.
Hands shoved me forward.
I stumbled, barefoot, half-blind from smoke and panic, and hit the room like a dropped object.My shoulder clipped the wall.Pain shot down my arm.Someone laughed behind me—short, ugly—and the door hammered shut with a final, metal-on-metal sound.
The lock turned.
Thick.Absolute.
I swallowed hard and forced myself upright.
The room had a low ceiling and the air was stale.Even the scent of disinfectant couldn’t cover up the terror soaked into the walls.There were no windows.Just a strip light buzzing overhead, which made made skin look sickly and bruises look worse.
I wasn’t alone.
There were women on the floor.Against the walls.On thin, stained mattresses that looked like they were hand me downs from hell.Some of the girls stared at nothing.Some stared at me.One girl was sitting with her knees hugged to her chest, rocking back and forth, chanting something I couldn’t decipher.
My heart thudded.My throat tasted like blood and metal.
I moved one step, then another, slow—like the room might punish me for taking space.
A woman with blonde hair cut jagged at her chin lifted her eyes.She looked older than me.Or maybe she just looked… that used.Her face was bruised along one cheekbone, yellowing like it had been there a while.
“Are you new?”she asked.
Her voice was flat, like she’d learned not to waste emotion on useless things.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
The girl next to her—dark-skinned, with shrewd eyes and a split lip—snorted quietly.“They always come in looking like they just swallowed a grenade.”
I forced words through my throat.“Where am I?”
The blonde’s mouth twitched once.“Holding.”
“For what?”I already knew, but hearing it out loud felt like handing a weapon to someone else.