Page 91 of Reckless Seduction
“Are we sure it’s going to work? He has a lot of powerful people backing him. Including this mysterious financier andwhoever is running the flesh trade through the city. I’m starting to wonder if they’re one and the same.”
My brother shrugs. “We always assumed it was Ward who ran the trafficking ring because he ran the stables. None of us bothered to think that there was someone higher up.”
“If we had, shit might have gone down better.”
“Yeah.” Kiernan sighs. He’d been depressed since his confrontation with Bailey at the auction. He said some hurtful shit, and it’s weighing on him. Kiernan hadn’t meant a word, but our girl doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know any of this because we’d been the ones to turn her over to Crowe in the first place. The look of hope she wore when she saw Kiernan’s face in the crowd of lustful men and women ready to buy her flesh nearly broke me. She believed we came to save her, even after everything that happened.
Her screams still haunt my sleep.
“All right.” My father strides into the room with three tankards of beer in his hands. “Let’s get this all sorted out.”
Kiernan and I exchange a look.
Why does he want to help? Bailey’s father is his enemy. He’d been more upset with the fact that Toph Eriksen is her true father than when he thought it was Crowe. Then again, it hasn’t been Crowe pulling the trigger on our men, filling the streets with their blood.
“Don’t start with the twin ESP shit,” he scolds, setting the tankards down on the table in the middle of the room. “Look.” He runs a hand through his graying hair. “With everything that is going on with Ava, I’ve come to realize some things. You can’t choose who you love. I also know that I would do anything for my family. Eriksen hasn’t been killing our men because he enjoys it, or even because he wants to.” Hopefully. “He is no doubt doing it because it is the only way to keep Bailey safe. I realize that we could have rescued her earlier, and if maybe Ihadn’t been so stubborn and distracted, she might not be in the predicament she is in now.”
Isn’t that the truth.
All hell broke loose at the gala just after Kiernan handed over Bailey to Crowe. A sniper took a shot at our sister from one of the balconies concealed by heavy curtains that are only used during performances.
We’d been so caught up in the aftermath of the gala that we completely missed every red flag regarding Crowe and his involvement with the information we’d found on Bailey.
For days now, I’ve been going over the audio from Kiernan’s comm device dozens of times. Trying to pick up anything I can, but all I hear are her screams and the sound of her heart breaking. It took several times before I could get through the audio without the urge to vomit.
“I’ve been going over things.” My father tilts his chin toward the board we’ve set up with all the new information we have. “We didn’t know all the players before, and now we do. Bailey said something at the gala that has me wondering a bit.”
“What was that?” I ask.
“Bailey mentioned that she recognized the tattoo on one of her father’s guards,” he says. I remember that. I could hear her over the comm line. She mentioned it idly, but I could hear it in her voice that it bothered her. “I managed to locate the one she was talking about. Wasn’t hard since he was the only one with a fucking tattoo on his neck. Then I found this.”
He pins a photo of Lina wearing a black leather jacket with a logo on the back to the board.
An Iron Horsemen logo.
“Up until twenty-three years ago, Eriksen was never seeking any kind of expansion,” my father continues. “We’ve never had an issue with one another. Then, out of nowhere, he starts killing our men in the streets.”
“We know that is most likely because Crowe was directing him to.” Kiernan points out what we already know. “Using Bailey as a tool to get him to do his dirty work.”
“Except that Crowe would never have wanted the Iron Horsemen to expand.”
I trade a look with my brother.
“You know…” I bite my lower lip. “That Horsemen we roughed up a few nights before the gala, he was adamant that Eriksen isn’t expanding and that there is no way in hell they’d even try.”
“Look here.” Kiernan points to the board we set the map up on. “Every red dot is a hit that we believed was done by the Iron Horsemen.”
“They’re all concentrated in the lower district.” My father steps up to the map, surveying what we’ve laid out so far. “Near the shipping ports.”
“Why would Eriksen need the shipping ports?” Kiernan asks. “He does all his shipments by ground. The only things done by sea are drugs and humans.”
“And we know that Eriksen doesn’t ship drugs by sea, either.”
“So why would he be trying to run us out of the port?”
“He wouldn’t,” my father notes. He turns his attention to another board. I’ve strung up every picture Mark, Ava’s hacker friend, could pull off their network from that night. “This is everyone who was there?”
I nod. “There are only a few people we can’t identify.”
