Page 80 of Blood in the Water

“Let’s go.” I held my hand out to Leona. She grabbed it and slipped onto the bike behind me.

“ID came back—” Ciel chimed in. “Kolya Makarov, Toma Lebedev, and Yuri Sorokin. All made men in the Bratva. Proceed with caution.”

Leona squeezed my waist. “I recognize that name. Makarov.”

I nodded, flipping up the kickstand and revving the engine. The men still shouted drunk questions our way, but with their stumbling, they had barely made it ten feet before devolving into raucous laughter. “That’s the family name of the Bratva head.”

“Kolya Makarov, younger brother of Konstantin Makarov, head of the Bratva,” Ciel chimed in through the headset. Ryuji had grown up around the Makarovs, but I’d never met them, and I didn’t plan to now.

I gunned the motorcycle down the road, back on track to our next destination. Italian territory next.

“I knew a girl once when I was younger. My father introduced us. Zoya Makarova,” Leona said.

“Sister?”

“Zoya Makarova, daughter of Anton Makarov, previous head of the Bratva. Sister to Konstantin and Kolya Makarov,” Ciel confirmed. “If you met the daughter of the previous head while he was still head, it sounds like your fathers had some business together.”

“Hmm. It’s likely. My father had many deals going at once,” she said quietly. “There were always men coming and going from the house.”

I nudged her knee. “Everything alright? What are you thinking?”

“I thought my father hated the Russians,” she said, voice carrying an edge. “As far as I know, our families never got along, even though it had never reached a full-out war. It was just like… distaste. My father looked down on them for some reason. He’d often talk shit at the dinner table with the othercapos. I can’t remember why I’d meet the daughter of the head all those years ago if he didn’t like them.”

I pulled us to the next camera location and kicked the bike stand down. “Business goes south all the time. Maybe whatever happened to cause that rift happened after you met Zoya Makarova.”

Shehmm’das she hopped off the bike. I didn’t need to see her face beneath the helmet to know she was most likely chewing on her lip in thought.

“Let’s just get the rest of these up and start watching. We need to find Cas as soon as possible,” she said as she handed me the next camera to install before taking up her position as the lookout.

I got to work.

With only onecamera left to place, we ran into a major roadblock.

Traffickers.

My hands clenched against the handlebars as two young girls standing on a street corner. Their bodies were suspiciously thin, clearly malnourished. They wore attention-grabbing clothes that were fraying and tattered if you looked a little closer, and they both had red circular patterns of worn skin on their exposed wrists. Restraints.

Two men walked up to them while Leona zipped up her backpack. Each of the girls had the same toneless response to whatever question the scumbags asked:what’s your flavor tonight?

They murmured momentarily, the girls casting quick and nervous glances over their shoulders. Down the small street behind them, a van sat idling. I could barely make out a person’s shape through the windshield in the dim light.

I’d seen enough of it to know. To be sure.

Sex work was all fine and good when it was theworker’sdecision. Not this. Not slavery.

Images from my past threatened to surface, but I clenched my fists and buried them back down. I couldn’t ignore these women. No one ever came to save me and Willow, but I could come to save them.

There had to be a place nearby where they took clients back for more extended services. That was where the women were usually held captive, drugged up, and housed until they were all used up, or the traffickers decided to move on.

I revved my bike’s engine loud enough to make both men turn in our direction before they scurried off in fear. Good. If they had stayed longer, I would have snapped their necks.

“Oh shit,” Leona whispered as she caught me staring. “Is that what I think it is?”

I nodded slowly.

“But this is Vero territory,” she said, words coated in disbelief. “My father used to take me to mass just a few blocks from here. What thefuckare they doing onmystreet corner?”

We had saved these cameras for last, knowing we wanted to spend the least time here possible. And now that we had most of them installed, we justhadto run into traffickers in her own Family’s territory, no less.