Page 68 of Scorned Beauty

“That’s what I don’t get,” Bianca said. “Harriet has a soft spot for Billy no matter how many times he’s fucked up.”

“How did she react when you were all looking for Sloane?”

“She knows,” Bianca said.

“What?”

“She doesn’t know where Sloane went, but apparently Sloane had been planning it for a while.”

“Sloane had planned to leave?”

“Yes. But the day after everything went down, the administrator of the facility told Harriet that her stay was paid up for a year.” Bianca exhaled a sigh. “She’s sad, Dom. Harriet thinks Sloane found out about Billy and was mad at her and left.”

Confused, I said, “I’m not following.”

“Duh, you think we do? Use your sneaky boss connections and dig.”

Lucy whipped out her phone. “I know a guy…”

“No,” I snapped. “You’ve done enough.”

My sister was on thin ice with the way she skated into shit without covering her tracks. She needed to stay far away from the political crap right now or risk another contract on her head she expected me to fix.

My phone rang, flashingTrevor.

“You have something?”

“Yeah.”

The old colonialhouse was on the outskirts of Manhattan, so it was to our advantage that agents from the New York field office and local cops were able to piece together the journey of a truck used by one of Grigori’s men. The plates turned up as one of the pay-here-buy-here lots that required GPS tracking to be installed and it led to this house before it was eventually ditched in the Bronx and ended up in one of our chop shops.

The house was in poor condition and clearly hadn’t been maintained well. Fresh tire tracks indicated recent use, but hope deflated when the property appeared abandoned.

When the lead agent declared it clear, he approached me with a somber expression. “There’s something you need to see.”

“Is she dead?” The words scraped my throat like sandpaper.

“No, but there’s a basement,” he said. His eyes grew shifty before they fixed on the K-9 vehicle. “We’re going to let the scent hounds do their job. We can call you?—”

“No,” I said firmly. “Show me now.”

The agent led me into the house. I forgot that Trevor was beside me until he said in my ear, “The owner of this property is a dead end. I think Grigori's been using shell companies to hide the movement of his trafficking rings from his boss.”

His boss meaning Ivan. If anything, the former pakhan accepted the blame for letting someone like Grigori loose, and that was why he stepped down to let Kirill take over. Sandro didn’t have to remind me he once offered to take out Grigori because he was concerned for Sloane, but I had my own agenda then. I’d assigned Sloane to a corner designating her as the woman I had sex with. She didn’t influence my policies as a boss.Except Sloane refused to remain in the corner and she forced me to choose before I was ready.

I chose wrong, and I fucked up.

It was late spring in New York, and the basement was cool and humid. When we reached the bottom of the steps, a single light bulb illuminated the area.

A ragged inhale blew past my mouth and I couldn’t prevent the burning in my eyes.

Bile, like churning acid, backed up my throat as the stench of copper assailed my nostrils. People had died in this basement. They were tortured first. And I tortured myself with thoughts of Sloane as a captive. Was she locked up? Chained? Did they starve her? Was she cold?

There were cages, but also a chain attached to the wall. They treated people like animals in this space. Impotent rage engulfed me when I spotted the dried blood on the floor, smeared almost two feet wide. Whoever was hooked to that wall couldn’t have survived.

A darker, more concentrated patch of blood was a few feet away.

I shuddered another exhale as my mind filled in the blanks of what happened here. I wondered what nightmare Sloane endured, all because I fucking refused to help her find Billy.