Page 9 of The True Garza

I peer around his broad shoulders to Mr. Suspenders. “And I assume you’re True Garza?”

Mr. Suspenders shakes his head. No smiles. “Guy.”

Hmm. Looks like someone’s not a fan of me.

“True is running late,” Sacha supplies. “He has been out of the country, and there was a delay with his flight.”

“Okay.” I move to sit in one of the chairs. “So do we have to wait for him to start, or…?”

“True is my superior, but Guy has authority to sit in his stead, so, yes, if you would rather, we can start without him.”

“Yeah, man,” I say, knocking my knuckles impatiently on the conference table, “run me the deets.”

Sacha frowns and looks at Guy.

“Details,” Guy explains.

“Oh,” Sacha laughs and rubs the back of his neck. He doesn’t seem too comfortable with his environment, which probably means he’s new.

As he takes a seat on the other side of the table and slides me a red folder, I ask, “How new are you here?”

“To America, not very new. To Red Cage, a few months,” he answers easily. “If I seem a bit out of place, it is because I am. I have never worked in a place this…organized and…er—”

“Intimidating?”

He laughs again. “Ah, yes, that is the word.”

“Hmm. Well, I hear the men here are ‘cocky sons of bitches.’ If that’s true, maybe just become one of them and you’ll fit right in.”

“Better than beingworthlesssons of bitches,” Guy fires back. I detect a bit of an Italian accent—adulterated, but still there.

And, yeah, he’s definitely an LX-BI hater.

I grin at him, because what he doesn’t know is that Iloveme a good antagonist. It turns me on. Hate sex is the best sex. “Deets.”

Sacha jerks his head to the massive flat-screen at the front of the room that displays profile shots of two men with their information below. “Jamal Grigoryan, left. And his second-in-command, Raffi Safaryan, right.”

“Armenians,” I muse.

“Correct. Jamal supplanted the head that was taken down two years ago,” Sacha goes on. “But he’s aware that he’s possibly being watched by the FBI, so he has been playing it smart. They don’t buy girls from just anyone anymore, especially gangs. With how things are now, if someone shows up with a random girl they snatched, looking to sell or trade, they will be shown to the door. The cops will even be called by way of convincing them they’re ‘clean.’ They are being stealthier now. Playing a longer, safer game.”

Guy points a remote at the flat screen, and the profile images are replaced with an image of a nightclub. Sheer Nights. “This is their club, recently opened. The new place of operation. It’s marketed as an upscale hotspot and targeted toward a younger crowd. New adults and teenagers with fake IDs, pretending to be older. Go into this club on any given night, and you’ll find several well-dressed, handsome ‘millionaires.’ They target specific girls, sweep them off their feet, impress them with their flashy cars and penthouses. Convince them that they’re ‘the one,’ and ask them to move in with them. Once they do that, the men play mental manipulation games to isolate them from their friends and family so the girls won’t have people checking in on them often. Then, it’s vacation time….”

“And then the so-called millionaires return from ‘vacation’ alone,” I finish quietly.

“Correct. By the time the girls’ friends or families realize they’re missing, it’s too late.”

“Wow, that’s…” I rub my forehead. “How long does one of those schemes usually take?”

“One to two months. You would be surprised how very few questions women ask when they think a millionaire is in love with them,” Sacha says. “Some are moving in after a week.”

I frown. “If they’re being so careful and crafty, how do you know all this?”

Guy answers, “We have a fake private-security company set up, targeted at the seedy underbelly of LA. We’ve always used it as a spy operation. Jamal has been using our fake service for their security at Sheer Nights. When Sacha came on board, Raffi took an immediate liking to him for some reason. The more Sacha gained his trust, the more Raffi revealed to him about the business.”

“Foreigners like foreigners,” Sacha explains with a shrug and a crooked smile. “Plus, this accent gets me through a lot of doors.”

I’d wager it’s that beautiful face of his rather than his accent. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”