Page 77 of Lethal Torture

I hired Luke Macarthur to find out who the leak was in my operation. Instead, it feels like he’s taken over every part of it. Worse, it feels like everyone in my business likes it that way.

But none of them—with the exception, to some extent, of Anatoly and Nadja—really understand what it took for me to get from the cage in my father’s back room to the head of a billion-dollar corporation. None of them did the dark work that earned me my reputation.

No matter how competent my staff are, how familiar with the shadows, none of them have embraced that darkness, become one with it, in the way I’ve had to. It’s the price I’ve paid to stay on the inside of the sick world of trafficking I’m determined to destroy.

Luke Macarthur thinks he can just walk in and run that part of my world. Just slip into the darkness with the same kind of lethal stealth he slipped into my life.

But I know that the darkness isn’t a security job to be managed. It’s a way of being, an edge that never takes a break. It’s ugly and it’s relentless, and if Luke is so fucking determined to be a part of it, then he can damned well prove himself the same way anyone in our world does: with blood, violence, and savagery.

And this has nothing to do with your little face-off in his apartment the other night, Zinaida, does it?

But so what if it does? I play games with men. They don’t play them with me.

Luke seems to think he can just jump in the ring and start throwing punches.

Well, I’m taking the fucking gloves off.

“We’re not reconsidering,” I tell Sal, taking up position beside her on the roof of a container. “There’s at least two dozen women in that container. Possibly more. Do you want to be the one greeting them when they turn up at Sophie’s House in a few years, branded like cattle, beaten within an inch of their lives, and addicted beyond sanity?”

“Of course not.” Sally shakes her head. “But I want us all to be around long enough to save more than one shipment of girls.” She holds my eyes. “We could do with Luke’s skills on jobs like these. You said he’d be here. Where is he?”

“We did this long before Luke Macarthur ever showed up,” I say tightly, ignoring her question. “It’s what we do.” I give her a hard look. “You knew the dangers when you took it on.”

It’s a low blow, and I know it.

Sally looks away first, but I don’t miss the tension in her face. Thankfully, however, she stops talking, and we settle in to wait.

Not for long.

Just after midnight, three white vans enter the yard. Through a liberal coating of mud, I can vaguely make out what looks like a bull’s head logo on the side, but the name isn’t clear.

I count a dozen men in total. Most take up positions around the perimeter of the container, guns up. Two others cut the padlock on the container and pull up the lever to open it.

Even from fifty meters away, the stench of human waste, unwashed bodies, and fear hits me in a foul miasma as the door swings open.

At least it’s not the stench of decay.

Those nights are by far the worst. The nights when the containers are opened too late to save the people inside.

And those terrible moments are exactly what drive me to do this, no matter how dangerous it is.

I grip the steel edge of the roof as dim figures stumble out of the container, most too weak to stand without support. As expected, they’re all women, some of them extremely young.

“We could take out the transport crew,” Sally breathes in my ear. I can feel the fury churning inside her, see it in the white knuckles gripping her scope as she zooms in on the men below. “Most of them would be dead before they even knew we were here.”

“No.” I mouth the word into her ear. “We wait until they’re gone, or we’ll expose Niamh’s source.”

I don’t like it any more than she does. But my relationship with Niamh works on trust, and I’m not going to blow it tonight.

Even if it turns my stomach to watch as the weak figures are brutally pushed into the waiting vans.

One of the captive women calls something out that I don’t hear. A guard knocks her brutally on the head with the butt of his gun, but he’s too late—the women in the other container, the one I’m waiting to open, clearly heard her, because they start yelling out and banging on the walls. The sound echoes around the yard, worse than a ringing alarm.

“Shut up!” One of the guards kicks the closed container. “You stay quiet, or we’ll leave you to die in there.”

The noise subsides immediately, testament to the helpless terror of the victims behind the locked door.

“We need to get the fuck out of here,” the guard growls at the other men. They start slamming the van doors shut on the women they’ve taken from the first container.