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“I talked to them today.”
I wipe my face and brave a look up at him.
He nods, looking blank-faced. “I know someone there. Max knows someone,” he clarifies. “He helped set up a talk.”
I swallow back a sob. “What did they say?”
“I’m not in trouble.”
“You’re not?”
For a second, he looks exasperated…or maybe hurt. Then he just looks solemn. “What do you think I was doing? Selling people?” His voice tells me that’s ridiculous. That he’s offended that I’d wonder. I watch as he inhales deeply, blows the breath out. Then he reaches in the pocket of his dark denim coat.
He unfolds a piece of paper, holds it out. I take it. Then I frown down at it, trying to understand.
“Paperwork for a 401c3?” My stomach flips. “The Rose Garden.” I look up at him. “What is this?”
I can see him biting on the inside of his cheek. He inhales slowly. “It’s this…thing I do.”
“What kind of thing?”
He takes another deep breath, and then he’s holding my gaze. “It’s a rescue for human trafficking victims. Almost like a rehab. They work with florists and gift shops once they’re…ready. We have contacts in that industry. Some of them stay with the organization, helping other ones recover. We also have some contacts with area colleges. So they get help with tuition.”
I blink back tears.
“The big catch here,” he says slowly, “is that…I’m in the process. I’m the buyer. I get them from Aren.”
I can feel my mouth drop open. “You buy them? From Aren, like Aren who runs the Armenians?”
He nods, flexing his jaw.
“But why? There are arms of the government that do this.”
“Yeah, and sometimes that works. But lots of times, it turns out they don’t get enough of them, and it’s too slow, or there might be one sting but there are dozens—thousands—more people that slip through the cracks. And who gives a shit, because whose job is it really? Whose job is it to cut through red tape and get shit done?”
My heart quickens, even as my voice is steady. “Yes, but if you buy them, aren’t you showing the real bad guys that there’s demand on the back end?”
He exhales, rubbing his hair like he does when he’s upset. “No. Because Aren was doing this before me. For fucking years, Elise, for something like nine years. He would get these women—kids, too!—almost always out of South America at first. Then more from Europe and Africa sometimes. And he would sell them right here in Manhattan.”
“Whose job is it to stop that stuff, the US Marshals? Or the AG? Both? I think it’s both.”
He shakes his head. “You think they’re fucking with the Armenian mob? This isn’t some pervert businessman looking for a woman to play housekeeper. This is a big business, making millions for Aren every year. I found out that every month, he was selling ten or twelve people out of this fucking warehouse, and…I don’t know why.” His voice roughens. “More than anything I’ve ever been around—any kind of fucked-up shit—it made me crazy. So I told him I would buy them all. That I had contacts in other parts of the country. You know, like I’d resell them. Dirty business doesn’t want to do business with someone straight.
“He wanted my contacts, but I wouldn’t—because they didn’t exist. For almost a year, he kept asking me who they were, who I would turn around and sell these ‘assets’ to. He didn’t really want to sell to me, and at the start of the idea, I didn’t have the money anyway. But I was working on that. So finally he agreed he would sell exclusively to me. Said it would cut down on the hassle of dealing with the other buyers, who were almost always individuals; some of them really were wealthy businessmen thinking this is just like a mail-order bride.
“He agreed he’d sell them all to me, and Roberto told me he knew. He knew what I was planning, and he gave it to me. Like a gift, because he knows how I am.” He rubs the back of his neck, looking awkward for a moment. “Anyway.” He blows his breath out. “He let me…have this.”
I’m so floored, I feel dizzy. “How many people have you saved?”
“Don’t be looking at it that way, rosa. Not unless you want to know how many truckloads of H, or how much Fent or Oxy passed through me to pay for all of them. Every time we slice those dirty ropes off of their wrists and ankles, it’s a price tag of somewhere between fifteen and fifty thousand dollars. And we do it every month. We do it every month, for the last five and a half years, except this last one, which I fucking hate. But Aren and I went bad.
“He got in trouble with the FBI, I guess, and tried to sell me out to get his ass off the hook. All the while, trying to convince me he thought I was turning on him, so when the FBI came up with footage of me—gotten from his traitor ass—I would think they had been on us the whole time. And that he was also fucked. Anyway”—I watch as Luca rubs his temples—“that backfired. Turns out the FBI’s not so eager to move on someone playing hero. Not even if it’s a well-known bad guy like myself.”
