Bram frowned. “What do you know about that?”
“I know it’s hard to believe,” I said, “but I read something other than picture books now. I read the news, I read articles online. I know the statistics.”
“It’s true,” Vigo said.” Women are way more likely to be murdered by a partner or former partner than a stranger. And random violence against women is basically always committed by men.”
“Exactly.” I dipped one of my onion rings in ketchup and forced myself not to go orgasmic again. Bram might literally die. “Which is why men need women to attract other women. They need women to tell other women it’s okay, that there’s nothing to afraid of, that all of…thisis perfectly normal.”
“What’s ‘this?’” Bram asked.
“Whatever the men are doing to groom women, to get the women to do what they want, to sell them. Men need other women for that.”
“You think PrincessA is someone else at Imperium Fratrum?” Jagger asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just saying that just because the name in the phone is PrincessA doesn’t mean it’s not still about Imperium Fratrum.”
“I wonder if there’s a Princess B,” Vigo said.
I couldn’t even begin to contemplate that one. We didn’t even know the identity of the first princess.
We ate in silence for a few minutes and I let my mind spin on the identity of the woman called PrincessA, trying to work backwards from what we knew about Imperium Fratrum and the sex-trafficking ring: Aventine, Dimitri, the Cantwells (both dead), the school for kidnapped girls, Ethan Todd and Dimitri.
Dimitri.
Dimitri.
Dimitri.
His presence ran through the sex-trafficking ring like blood, from its beginnings at Aventine to his mentorship of Ethan Todd.
“Maybe we’re making this too complicated,” I said.
“How so, mouse?”
Bram side-eyed Vigo when he used the nickname, but no way was I explaining that to my big brother.
“What if PrincessA has something to do with Dimitri?” I asked. “We know a Russian hired Travis Dorsey to kill my parents and we know the money Anna transferred from Kensington was funneled to Dimitri via the Rooks. We even have that old picture of Dimitri outside the Kensington Trust building.”
“What picture?” Bram asked.
I wanted to wait until we were all out of danger to talk to him about the personal stuff we’d found in the storage unit, and I hadn’t had time to talk to him about everything else.
“I’ll tell you about that later,” I said.
“So… what?” Poe asked. “You think PrincessA may still be connected to Kaprolov?”
“It makes as much sense as anything else,” I said.
“What if he calls his wife princess?” Hawk asked.
I looked at him. “Or… his daughter?”
31
CASSIE
Aloha was alonein the metal box inside the old factory building. He saw us without an appointment, likely because Bram was with us, and we explained the code name found in the phone he’d decoded from the paper mill.
“I told you, I got everything I could off that thing.” It was cool in the room, probably necessary because of all the computer equipment, but Aloha’s Barbarians jacket was still hanging on the back of his chair, his meaty physique on full display in anIncubusT-shirt. “Can’t do shit about those encrypted texts.”
