Page 2 of East

Bianca Montrose. My former boss’s younger sister who led the effort to topple the tyrant who, even in death, casts a long shadow.

And I have no doubt this is Rouge’s doing. It has her perfumed stink all over it.

Bianca might have some insight. It was just under a year ago that she and her boyfriend first uncovered Rouge’s horrific activities. Anyone she trusts, I trust. She might be able to get me some reinforcements that will help us tackle whatever lies in wait behind this trapdoor.

I look up at Scarlet and Leo. “I need to make a quick phone call.”

Leo lifts an eyebrow. “Do you even have service down here?”

I check my phone. “One bar. That’s enough to get a call through.”

“Are you sure?” Scarlet asks. “Is there anyone we can even trust anymore?”

“Bianca Montrose took down her own sister over this. If we can’t trust her, we’re fucked.” I dial the number. It rings once, twice, three times…

“Hello?”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Bianca, thank God you answered.”

“Aus, is everything okay?”

I pause. “Not really.”

She doesn’t respond immediately. Her speech sounds a little slurred, like she’s been drinking.

Crap. I have the worst possible timing ever. I just remembered that today Maddox Hathaway, the son of our former mayor and a long-suffering victim of Rouge, is getting married. It’s been in all the papers. He spent a month imprisoned in some seedy motel out by O’Hare with the woman who is now his wife, Alissa Maravilla, before Bianca and her boyfriend, Harrison O’Rourke, freed them and took down the entire operation that had been killing people for decades.

Until now, I thought they were successful.

At the very least they plugged up a bleeding wound.

But there’s an entire festering corpse to deal with.

I feel sorry for her. I should tell her this was a butt dial, that it can wait until tomorrow.

But I can’t.

Wedding or no wedding, I need help right away.

Three people have died in as many weeks, and an innocent woman might go down for them all. The odds—and the evidence—are stacked against her.

“What’s going on?” Bianca asks.

I draw in a slow breath. “I’ve stumbled upon something. Something I think is left over from your sister’s time running Jade.”

She gulps loud enough for me to hear it over the phone. “What is it?”

Another slow breath in. Once I bring Bianca into this, I can’t un-bring her out of it.

But I’m running out of time and options.

“Suffice it to say that organ harvesting wasn’t the only thing your sister was into. I need you to come over right now.”

1

THEA

Three weeks earlier…