Page 54 of Merciless Obsession (The Bloodline #2)

EZRA

“ F uck!” I exclaimed, stretching my arms above me before running my hands down my face.

This week had been a clusterfuck. Court had been brutal and neither of my clients were making my job easier.

Felix’s trial was looking more promising for us.

I had managed to discredit a few of their witnesses and it helped that Wise contributed to charities often through fundraisers he held once a month at his casinos.

Now if Felix would just tone down the cocky attitude, then the jury might be sold more.

“Did you manage to track down the bartender from that bar?” I asked my investigator, searching through the files on my desk.

The night before the night in question, Orlando and his girlfriend were at a bar where the fight the two of them got into later on first started.

Apparently, the girlfriend was the aggressor and it wasn’t the first time the pair had been to that specific bar and had an altercation.

“I did,” Henry, my investigator, said. “He knew them well too. Says the only reason they haven’t been banned is because the owner and Orlando are friends.

He also said the victim couldn’t handle her liquor and whenever she got drunk she always turned paranoid and started screaming about Orlando cheating or looking at other girls. ”

“The landlord of her apartment building said he got complaints from neighbors about their frequent fights too, right?” The victim, Jennifer, lived in a high-end high rise in the middle of downtown.

They had a doorman, valet parking, and a ton of amenities accessible to tenants.

From what the landlord said, the other tenants complained about paying too much money for rent for the constant fighting and arguing.

Jennifer was on the verge of getting evicted if she didn’t get her act together.

“I’m not gon’ lie, man, this Orlando kid seems like a typical, entitled brat. He thinks the law doesn’t apply to him because of who his dad is. But that girlfriend, she was a hot mess in herself. They had no reason being together.”

“I agree. Orlando’s used to Daddy cleaning up his messes. Too bad murder is a hard one to cover up when you’re so high profile.” I scanned through the crime scene photos from the night in question.

It was a clean kill for both Jennifer and the man found with her, a bullet between the eyes.

She was nearly naked, only in her panties, and the guy was naked.

It was clear what was about to go down between them.

Drugs were found on the table. What was hurting our client was the fact that he was the one found with the bodies and had blood on him.

He said it was because he rushed to his girlfriend when he noticed her.

It didn’t help that Orlando was required to take anger management class before either.

A plus for us though was that there was no murder weapon found so far.

Orlando did have access to guns, but they weren’t identified as the weapon used.

This case had been taking up so much time I almost forgot my birthday was next week.

It, along with everything going on with The Bloodline, had kept me occupied.

I hadn’t even been able to breathe in Ziora’s direction this week.

I had been falling asleep at the office, thankfully I kept clothes here.

All I’d been doing was going home, showering, and coming back to the office.

“Mr. Tavarez, there’s a call for you on line one,” my secretary said through the PA system.

I clicked the button to respond. “Take a message.”

“Alright, and when it comes to—” I started but was interrupted again by my secretary.

“Sir, it’s Sergeant Colon. Says it’s urgent.”

“Shit. I need to take this.” I pressed the button again. “Send him through.”

The phone on my desk beeped and lit up, letting me know there was a call waiting.

“Give me a minute,” I told Henry.

He nodded and stood to leave. “Close the door behind you!” I called out before picking up the phone.

“Why didn’t you call my cell?” I mentioned as soon as I answered.

“I did, but it kept going to voicemail.” My brows furrowed.

I went into my top desk drawer and pulled it out, forgetting I’d put it on DND so I could work in peace this morning before court later this afternoon.

“Did you find anything with the samples?”

“I did. There were three different traces found. One from Winston Porter.” I expected that.

Sergeant Colon was a cop on my payroll. I kept him paid and he helped me with off the record things.

He was looking into the semen samples found in Tiffany.

“The second one came from Nelson Ortiz. He has a few assault charges and was recently released after serving four years for grand theft. He’s currently out on probation.

And the final sample we couldn’t identify. ”

“Couldn’t be identified?” I ran my hand down my mouth. If the last sample wasn’t in the system that meant he hadn’t been convicted of a crime.

Grabbing a sticky note, I wrote the second name down then tapped my pen on my desk.

“Got it. Thanks. You’ll have the money in your account by the end of the day.

” I hung up the phone and grabbed my cell phone to send a text to Emmet.

It was time to look into this Nelson guy.

He would be next on The Bloodline’s hitlist. Next, I pulled out the cloned phone.

Ziora thought I would get rid of it because I revealed it to her, but that wasn’t happening.

She was currently at home. Outside of kickboxing and the grocery store, she hadn’t left.

I planned on peeping in on her soon. It had been a while since we played.

Not to mention, the Mayor’s Ball was this weekend and little did she know she would be in attendance on my arm.

____

“The plan is to set up a fake order for a girl as if we’re Winston and stake out the area until someone shows up. Hopefully they’ll lead us somewhere useful,” Nazai announced.

I was exhausted. After spending all day at the office then in court, I came right to the farmhouse. I was running on fumes at this point.

“Do we believe they’ll fall for it?” River asked.

“They have no reason not to. No one but us knows Winston was killed. We have his car and phone. From his previous texts we’ll be able to message as if we’re him.”

“We checked the storage unit Winston had and it was odd. There was a bunch of old junk inside but it was organized. It was kind of set up like an apartment honestly, like someone was staying there temporarily. It had a mini fridge, futon, and some perishable items,” Lucas said.

“Did you get anything from the workers?”

“No.”

“I looked into it,” Emmet interrupted. “Winston paid it up for a year with a prepaid credit card so that’s a dead end.”

“Do we believe the girls could be kept there?” Nazai asked.

“It’s possible. There were a few random articles of clothing too,” River said.

“I checked the files Ziora sent over on Winston. He purchased plane tickets frequently.”

“Do we know where?”

I pulled my phone out and went to Ziora’s contact. It took a few minutes for her to answer, and when she did she seemed annoyed, as if I was interrupting her.

“Bumblebee, when you looked into Winston, did you happen to check where all the plane tickets he bought were for?”

“Plane tickets?” she mumbled. Tapping sounded in the background.

“Emmet looked over the files you sent him and saw he bought plane tickets frequently.”

“Are you guys having a meeting without me?” she questioned. “I thought we were working together on this. Why wasn’t I notified?”

I smirked. “Focus, Bumblebee. The tickets.”

She muttered something and the sound of tapping came through the phone again.

“The tickets were to Puerto Rico. Looks like he has a kid down there that lives with his mother. He visited them frequently. You would have known all this if I was invited to the meeting. Now, bye.” She hung up before I could reply.

“Someone’s in trouble,” Lucas joked and I chuckled.

“I’ll make it up to her. It’s more fun when she’s mad at me anyway.” I stared at the contact picture of Ziora, her lying in bed, wrapped in the covers, from the side.

“So Winston must have been leaving the girls in the unit while he was out of town. It makes sense, no one would think you have someone hidden behind those gates.”

“But if that’s the case, why do you think the girls never made any noise to notify someone?” Lucas mentioned.

“They were terrified of Winston. He had programmed them to stay quiet and compliant, even when he wasn’t around,” I said.

“After seeing how Tiffany was when we recovered her, I’m not shocked.

He tortured them, him along with other men raped them, and treated and chained them up like dogs.

Which brings me to what I learned today.

My contact at the police department identified the two semen samples found in Tiffany.

Winston’s, a man named Nelson Ortiz, and an unidentified person. ”

Emmet clicked a couple things on his laptop then the screen in front of the table lit up.

“I checked the Nelson guy out when you messaged me his name. He works at a factory as part of his parole requirement. He’s listed as living with his elderly grandmother and he has a gambling problem. Mainly online poker and bingo.”

“So to sum it up, the guy’s a loser.”

“Loser or not, he needs to be handled. Not before we learn who that third sample belonged to though,” Nazai expressed. His eyes peered into the picture of Nelson. “Let’s handle this then get back to the main agenda.”

I lifted my eyes to the screen. Nelson looked like the kind of kid who was bullied a lot. The type who would follow anyone just to say he had a friend. Even in the picture you could see the resentment radiating from his eyes.