Page 130 of Theirs to Desire (Club M: Boxed Set)

NOLAN

G reg Dratch looks like hell. I frisk him, and as I pat him down, odors of booze and cigarette smoke waft off him and nearly make me choke. Caleb’s right—the guy’s living rough.

“Who sent you?” he stammers.

I backhand him. “Let me clarify the rules of engagement,” I say as he picks himself off the floor, eyes Caleb’s gun, and straightens himself carefully. “You don’t ask the questions. We do.”

“Or what? You’re going to shoot me?” He sneers at me. “Go ahead then.”

“Shoot you? Oh no.” I gesture to the bed. Dratch gingerly takes a seat at the edge. “That would be too quick and too easy for a piece of shit like you. No, Gregory. You don’t talk, and I’m going to load you on a plane to Norilsk.” I bare my teeth in a smile. “Anton Nekrasov’s private plane.”

His face turns the color of curdled milk. Mention of Nekrasov tends to have that effect.

“Or you talk. In return for your cooperation, I’ll call the cops. They’ll run your prints. You have a half-dozen open warrants. You’ll serve time. A decent lawyer will be able to limit it to five years, maybe ten.”

The barrel of Caleb’s gun doesn’t waver. “You’ll probably walk out of prison alive,” he says. “Unfortunately. If you go to Siberia, on the other hand…” His voice trails off.

Caleb doesn’t need to complete his sentence. I could shoot Dratch in the balls and let him bleed slowly and painfully to death, and it would be a kindness compared to sending him to Anton’s fortress on the outskirts of Norilsk.

Dratch swallows visibly. “What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with the Kitai Bratva. Why’d you disappear from San Diego?”

“I stole money from Vladimir Sirkovich.” His voice is barely audible. “Almost half a million dollars. I had to run before he found out.”

“And the girl?”

Shock flits across his face. Didn’t expect us to know about Bianca, did you?

“Tell us about the girl, Greg,” Caleb says. His voice is quiet and calm, and it sets the hair at the back of my neck on end. Make no mistake. Caleb hides it well, but I know my friend, and he is furious.

“Bianca Thompson.” He doesn’t meet our eyes. “She was nothing. Trailer trash. No mother, no father. Only a pain in the ass sister.”

This fucking asshole. “Where did you run?”

“Vegas.”

“Why take the girl with you?”

Dratch shrugs his shoulders. “She was a hot piece of ass,” he says. “She was young. I thought she’d earn her keep in Vegas.” His expression turns disgusted. “But she wouldn’t spread her legs, the fucking bitch. She kept crying. The clients got nervous.”

Bianca was fifteen . He raped a child. He took her from the only home she knew, groomed her, and used her. Then he decided to prostitute her for extra money.

Hitting Dratch once wasn’t enough. Beating him bloody won’t be sufficient. This guy deserves everything Anton Nekrasov would do to him, and more.

Caleb moves in a blur and sinks his fist in Dratch’s gut. I ignore the criminal’s hoarse grunt of pain. “Why’d she stay with you?” I ask, relentless. “Why didn’t she go back home?”

“To what?” Dratch gasps out. “Her sister was dead, killed by the Bratva. She had nothing to return to.”

He doesn’t know that Kiera is alive. That’s a blessing, at any rate.

“That’s not the whole truth, is it?” Caleb’s mind is a steel trap. “Bianca didn’t have to stay with you. Whatever illusions she’d had about you, she must have lost when you tried to whore her out. So, why’d she stay?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbles.

I exchange a look with Caleb. “Fine,” I say dismissively, reaching in my back pocket for my phone. “We’ll do it the hard way. Nekrasov it is.” I scroll through my contacts and dial Anton’s number. Twice in the same month. The Russian will be thrilled.

He answers on the first ring. “ Da? ”

“I’ve got a present for you, Anton,” I tell the other man cheerfully.

Truth is, if Nekrasov truly wanted Dratch dead, he’d be dead, and there’s not a damn thing in the world to prevent that.

Nekrasov has an ungodly long reach. It’s best not to get on his bad side.

“A two-bit thug who stole from the Kitai Bratva.”

Exactly on schedule, Dratch shakes his head frantically.

“Hang on a second,” I tell Nekrasov before turning to the defeated man slumped at the edge of the cheap motel bed. “Yes?”

“I lied to Bianca,” he says. “I told her she’d been implicated in the theft of the money, and that the Bratva was hunting her.”

“Anton, I’ll call you back.” I hang up on him. Caleb shakes his head wryly. We’ll be owing the Russian a favor for this, but that’s a different problem for a different day. She thought you were protecting her.”

He nods.

I wish we hadn’t promised him safety, because this guy deserves Siberia. Resisting the urge to beat his face into a pulp, I go back to the questioning. I have eight missing years and a lot of gaps. “Then what?”

“She was a liability,” he says, avoiding our gazes. “I was running out of money.” His jaw tightens. “I sold her after a year.”

Ice drenches my spine. “To whom?”

“Some billionaire with a secluded ranch in the middle of the Utah desert,” he says. “She had it good, all things considered, but she ran away after six months. I had to refund the guy his money. It took me another five months to find her.”

That’s two of the eight years filled in.

We wait for him to continue. “She was sixteen,” he says sullenly.

“Pretty. I had too much invested in her to let her go, so I paid for fake ID and took her to Bangkok. The Sicilians were interested. Alessandro Messina bought her for his son, Luca.” He shakes his head.

“Two years later, she ran away again. Luca fancied himself in love with her. The kid was idealistic. He wouldn’t search for her. So, I did.”

“Why?”

He keeps his gaze fixed on the floor. “Half a million dollars doesn’t last forever. Especially in Vegas. Alessandro Messina wanted his money back, but I didn’t have it.”

In other words, the piece of shit gambled away his stolen fortune.

“This time, it took me longer to find her. Eventually, I did. She didn’t want to come with me.

I had beat sense into her. I called in some favors and took her to Colombia.

” He frowns. “I was running out of options. The Sicilians were looking for me. The Bratva was looking for me. I needed money, fast, and Bianca was my meal ticket. But then Luis Martinez took an interest in the girl.”

Bianca had been young. She’d never led a stable life. She’d been raped by the men in her world. Sold, used. She could have given up, but she’d fought back as best as she could.

She’d tried so desperately to escape her past. I can relate to that.

I clench my hands into fists. “You sold a teenager to a fifty-year-old criminal.”

“I didn’t want to. I didn’t want Martinez after me when she ran away. I worked for him; I know the guy. He’s crazy; he’ll slice me up.”

Not a thought for Bianca. Greg Dratch’s only capable of thinking about himself. Kiera, who is a pretty astute judge of character, had seen it right from the start, but Bianca, who had been young and impressionable, hadn’t.

Her only crime was to trust the wrong person. Poor child.

“I tried to reason to Martinez,” Dratch continues. “I warned him about her. Told him she’d run away from her previous two owners. He said he could control her.”

“How?”

He shrugs. “You know how I stay alive? I don’t ask too many questions. He had something on her, that’s all I know. Whatever it was, it’s worked. She’s been with him more than two years.”

I can guess what that is. Dratch thinks Kiera is dead, but Bianca knows her sister is alive.

Intuition tells me this is the lever. I’m willing to bet that Martinez told her that Kiera was still alive, and if she tried to leave, he’d hunt Kiera down and hurt her.

That’s why she pushed Caleb’s operative away.

That’s why she’s never tried to contact her sister. She’s trying to protect her.

It’s a theory, nothing more. But it’s enough for us to act.

Caleb and I exchange a glance. He nods slightly and pulls out his phone. He dials a number. “It’s done,” he says into the receiver.

Less than three minutes later, we hear sirens in the distance, growing closer. The cops are here. “You should be profoundly thankful I don’t renege on a deal,” Caleb says grimly. “Rot in prison, Dratch.”

I give the thug one last look, and then follow Caleb out of there. Once we’re underway, I turn to Caleb. “We need to get Bianca out before we go after Martinez.”

“Agreed. Let’s put together a team.”

First Bianca. Then Martinez.

And then what?

Retirement, I think.

Caleb got out of fieldwork. Alexander fell in love and retired. They’re both still making a difference. They’re just not putting their lives on the line anymore.

Once, I would have equated retirement with a death sentence. But the wound that has propelled me forward my entire life has healed. I see something to live for. Nights with Kiera. Lazy summer barbecues.

Laughter. Love. Happiness.

After so many years of feeling unworthy, I’m finally ready.

But before that, we need to get Kiera’s sister to safety.