Page 182 of Caught in the Crossfire

Penny reached over and grabbed my hand. I held it. “I’m part of the Italian mafia in New York.”

I expected the girls to have some reaction to that, but they didn’t even flinch.

“My father brought trafficking into the city,” I admitted. The words left a sour taste in my mouth. “He worked with the Albanians and allowed them to grow roots and operate without resistance. He’s dead now, and the Albanians went after me because of him.”

I told them how Wynn and I had been attacked. It had been the plan to fix my father’s mistakes, but the Albanians coming after me made it personal and immediate. Once we got off the ship, I’d been almost frantic to kill them all. I’d believed that getting them out of my city would somehow help me deal with all that pain, but I’d been so wrong. Even after all the progress we’d made against them, it just got worse the more I buried it.

“I don’t even know the names of the girls we left behind on that ship,” I whispered as my throat constricted.

“Her name was Selene,” Penny said, squeezing my hand. “The girl with the red hair.”

My eyes went wide. “Selene?”

“And the other girl was Ofelia.”

Selene and Ofelia. Their names were branded on my heart. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I made them a memorial, if you want to see it.” Penny’s eyes watered. “By the medical ward. There’s a garden there. I thought they’d like it.”

A tear escaped and trickled down my cheek. “Yes, please. I’d like to see it before I leave.”

“I’ll take you.”

I grabbed a tissue from the box in the center of the table and wiped my face. I looked around at each of the girls and saw the same pain I felt reflected in their understanding eyes. We’d remember Selene and Ofelia together.

“I wanted to talk to you about what you’d seen and experienced,” I said after a few more moments. “I was kind of hopingthat you’d know something that could help us.” I looked at Wynn. “Me and my men want to fix this so it can never happen again. Not on our watch.”

“You will stop them, yes?” Ludmila asked. “I will help.”

Ximena leaned forward. “Fuck those assholes. Take them down.”

Claire grinned. “There’s enough of us here to get you everything you need.”

Relief warmed my chest, even as I knew we were all about to face our scars head on. “Thank you.”

“What do you want to know?”

I inhaled a deep breath. “Why don’t we start with telling me your stories? How did they take you? How did you get here?”

We spoke for hours.Willow had to leave about an hour in because of tasks she needed to deal with around the compound, but the rest of us only paused for water or the bathroom.

Penny was a college student from the Midwest, and she’d been visiting the East Coast for spring break. She’d been drunk, partying with people she didn’t know, when she’d been jumped. The next thing she knew, she was chained up and being forced to work at a brothel. After a period, they moved her and some other girls from the brothel to an auction. She, along with the women we’d met on the ship, hadn’t been sold, so they were being transported to a different country. That’s when we found each other.

Claire had gotten addicted to drugs in her teens and lived on the streets of New York City. She’d tried to earn money through sex work, but had been wrapped up in working for an abusive pimp that she later found out was Albanian. The pimp brought her to Philadelphia and forced her to work on the streets there with a group of other women. We’d found her in that abandonedwarehouse, which was where they’d kept their victims locked up when they weren’t working.

Ximena was indigenous American, and she was from Arizona. Someone had “scouted” her for modeling, given her their card, and told her to show up at a specific time and place in Scottsdale. When she did, she’d been immediately taken. After getting her addicted to drugs, she’d been forced to work with “high-end” customers all across the country at exclusive sex clubs disguised as nightclubs. One night, she OD’d, and a bartender from one nightclub where she was forced to work dropped her at a hospital in Philadelphia. She’d heard about Willow’s haven through the grapevine, and came herself.

Ludmila was from Ukraine. She’d been tricked into debt bondage after taking a loan she couldn’t repay. She was then transported around eastern Europe while she was promised she was working off her debt as a housekeeper. Somehow she caught the eye of Orik Vokshi in Tirana, and she was brought to work in the Head’s house. She’d been forced to work as a housekeeper and then locked up at night for the men to abuse both physically and sexually. When Orik Vokshi came to the States, he forged papers for her and brought her with him via airplane. Not a single person questioned her identity or her papers. She suspected the Albanians paid the customs agents off. One night about six months ago, Orik Vokshi was suddenly called back to Tirana on business, and he left her at his States home with a skeleton staff. She gave them all food poisoning and fled. She ran into a woman who used to stay here, and that woman told Ludmila to come.

“Do you know why Orik Vokshi got called away?” I asked.

She pursed her lips. “I do not, but in Tirana the upper men were always talking about the Italians. There was conflict. I assumed it had something to do with that.”

“Did he travel under a false name?” Wynn asked her. If he had,it would have been even harder for Max or Ciel to keep track of him, even with all their facial recognition software.

“Of course he did, but I overheard him talking once about how he had no problems traveling once he had been introduced to the transit authority in New York City.” Ludmila shook her head. “He would always meet up with the director. I assume to exchange bribes.”

I folded my arms across my chest. We fucking knew it. The politicians had to be involved to keep this flying under the radar, not just for traveling but also for access to the tunnel systems. More dirty people, just like my father. No wonder it had been so difficult to root them all out and eliminate them.