“Noted.” My jaw tightens, eager to do what we can. We devise a plan with both advantages and disadvantages: risks to our lives and risks to our freedom. However, we’ve received training, and no one else is helping these girls. Not the government. Not the courts. France’s justice system moves too slowly, especially in family law. Women and children wait months, sometimes years for protection while restraining orders are ignored and cries for help are met with skepticism. Too many innocent lives are lost, or ruined waiting for a system to prove them right. Our methods might be harsh, but hesitation costs lives.
Joe and I were almost at the receiving end of this bullshit when my mom wanted a way out and our custody was going to be given to my father, our abuser. So, my mom stayed until I took care of it for her, for us.
Then there’s trafficking. Missing girls. Predators who thrive in the gaps no one wants to acknowledge. We operate in those gaps. Some cops hate us, while others look the other way. A few have quietly reached an understanding with Mateo and me because they know what takes us hours would take the system months. It still comes with its challenges and dangers, but necessary.
And Sara still doesn’t understand. My hatred for her might save her from everyone else. Unfortunately, it won’t save her from me, because my hate is turning into something else.
“Also, I found…” I say hesitantly. “Back home, in Joe’s room. I found a case with cash and poker chips.” I let it sit for a minute. “He was into something, and I think I missed it.”
Silence as thick as Mateo’s smoke from his cigar.
Mateo’s jaw tightens. “Joe cared. More than most. He’d do anything for these girls.”
“Sometimes too much,” Damien mutters. He doesn't look at me.
“But could it have anything to do with this?” I try to keep my composure, I swallow, fists curling. “If he was in trouble, I should’ve seen it.”
“We can look into it, Brother, but I don’t know how it would be connected.” Mateo says with care.
“And Sara?” Damien asks finally, as if the name alone might be a bargaining chip. “She saw something and I don’t think she knows how to keep quiet. Are you going to unsee that too, Liam?”
Fucking asshole.
The question is a blade wrapped in silky velvet, slowly cutting me inside out. I told myself I’d keep my distance for her safety, but the thought of her alone in the village makes my stomach roll for reasons I’m uncomfortable to admit to myself, let alone my dead brother.
Damien’s face closes like a trained seal. “She’s a liability.”
“She’s not going to talk,” I say sternly. I have no proof she won’t, but the way Sara looked at me and how her chest rose with my name in her lungs when I shot that guy in the head and I’ve seen how fragile she’s become under this world. I can’t in good conscience leave her to that.
Mateo’s eyes flick to me carefully. “You want her followed? Discreetly?”
“Discreetly.” I nod. “Someone who knows the town and can shadow her without being obvious. Tell them not to touch her, not to interfere. Just…watch.”
Mateo hesitates, already running through options. “I’ll set someone on it and have them report to you directly.”
Damien looks at me with no compassion in his gaze. Only possession and calculation. “For God’s sake, don’t do anything stupid.”
Mateo taps the photo again. “I’ll start on Velastra tonight and have a local tail on your girl by morning.”
“Good, and Mateo… if anything looks like it’s standing too close to her, you call me. No hesitation.”
He gives me a smile with the wickedness I know too well. “You don’t have to tell me why, Liam. I can see it already.” I don’t correct him. Some truths stay in your pocket until they’re ready to sear through the material.
Damien and I return to the penthouse I rented under my alias for over three weeks. I barely keep count of time, it’s an illusion, and the countdown never brings my brother back. I have this feeling in my gut that he was hiding something from me, something that could have gotten him killed. Unless I’m growing paranoid, but that’s enough to make me want to burn the entire town until I find answers.
Revenge is on the tip of my tongue and my loaded gun. Maybe I can hate Sara a little less, but I need to focus on saving these girls and figuring out what he was up to. It’s only a matter oftime before I find out if he earned that money or if he owed that money; if it’s the latter, someone would come looking for me sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, I call one of my guys to grab the briefcase under Joe’s bed, secure it, and start digging into the poker games because I sure as hell have not heard of any official ones in Saint-Tropez. So, it can only be ones that are played under the table.
The cold shower barely relieves the tension under my skin, and I put on sweatpants while pacing like a starving animal in a land devoid of prey.
Grief is a beast; it claws at me every hour, it won’t let go of me. Just like Sara, I can’t tell which is worse.
I tried fucking all my thoughts out of my system the other night with a girl I met at a bar, but I couldn’t even get it up. She left cursing me out, thinking I have an erection problem, but no matter how many bodies I shove between Sara and me, none of them are hers, and that seems to be the curse I’m dealing with. Sorcery.
I run a hand over my face, but the exhaustion remains. I lean on the balcony railing of my second-floor bedroom. I light a cigarette, stare at the reflection of the moon over the ocean.
Joe’s face slices through the smoke. He looks happier than I’ve seen in years, laughing with Sara the first time I met her, curled in a shadowed pool corner, hair dripping in glistening summer, skin shining with water droplets.
