“Cam,” he said. “And Irene. I shouldn’t be surprised to see you two again so fast.”
“Don Valentino,” Cam said, inclining his head. I felt like I should curtsy or something, but instead hung back with my hands folded in front of me. Bea gave me a smile, winked, and disappeared, shutting the door softly behind her.
“You said it was urgent,” Don Valentino said, gesturing with the cigar. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Cam walked over and emptied the bag out onto the desk in front of the Don, who stared at the sticks for a second then looked at Cam with a raised eyebrow.
“Maybe you should try telling me instead of tossing a bunch of junk on top of my desk.” He pushed the sticks into a little pile, making a face the whole time.
“Irene stole those from Ronan Healy’s safe house,” Cam said, sitting back into a chair. I joined him, sinking back into the comfortable seat and crossing my legs. All I wanted to do was disappear, but I knew Cam needed me here, and it was safer than being alone in that apartment, at least. Don Valentino was young and handsome, but he put me on edge.
“No kidding,” Don Valentino said, looking impressed. “How’d you manage that?”
“Accident,” I admitted. “I was going for money.”
“Of course you were,” he said with a condescending smile, and I was tempted to punch it off his stupid face. “So what’s on them?”
“Girls,” Cam said. “Profiles of girls they’ve trafficked.”
Don Valentino’s mouth opened for one second before he snapped it shut again. He puffed on the cigar, and a fat plume of gray smoke curled from his lips and drifted into the air between us. It smelled like a forest fire or a dirty chimney. My father used to smoke those things, and I hated the way they stank up the whole house, though at least he didn’t hit me when he had a cigar.
“That’s very interesting,” he said at last, which almost made me roll my eyes. Understatement of the year. Cam acted like those profiles were the greatest find ever, and if he thought so, them Don Valentino must’ve known it too.
I hated those sticks. I hated the way Cam looked at them, like they were ammunition in his little war. Those were girls the Healy family hurt, and maybe I knew some of them, or maybe not, but what really freaked me out, what really set my heart fluttering wildly, was just how close I’d come to becoming one of them.
There was no doubt in my mind that Ronan wanted to groom me for sex work. He’d hinted at it a few times, and I mostly ignored him or laughed it off. He always did that with the girls in his orbit, and I knew that if he ever tried to push it on me, I could just run away. I’d done it before and I’d do it again.
But Ronan was no joke, and maybe I overestimated my ability to escape. I could’ve been one of those profiles, locked on a USB stick, used by an opposing mafia in some war.
Those profiles were people. They were women, trafficked women, stolen women. They weren’t pawns in some game.
“There are names,” Cam was saying as I shifted in my chair. “Dates and locations and more. There’s a lot of information on those sticks, and all we need to do is sift through it and figure out how to use it against them.”
Don Valentino laughed. It was sharp and horrible, and it made my skin crawl. I stood up abruptly, and both men glanced at me, but neither seemed to care much as I hurried to the door.
“Wait in the hall,” Don Valentino called after me. “in case we need you.”
I caught a worried look from Cam, and I knew he wanted to tell me to stay, but I couldn’t make myself sit there and listen to them talk about those girls like they were toys.
Especially since I was almost one of them.
I got out of there. I was breathing hard and fast and kept walking, not paying attention to where I was going. The house was a maze of room after room, and I came to a few dead ends until I stepped through a narrow hallway and into a massive kitchen filled with gleaming shelves and knives and hanging pots and pans. It looked professional, like ten cooks could’ve worked shoulder to shoulder in there and fed an entire army.
I walked through it then began pacing down the center, fanning at my face, trying to calm down. I had to get it together, but I felt stuck and stifled. Years of being on the run left me with this instinct to keep moving, to get away whenever something pushed me from my comfort zone, and all of this was pitching me around wildly. I wasn’t remotely okay, not even close.