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Stepping out of the changing room, I hand them back to her. “I’ll take them all.” The cost of them is nothing compared to the cost to me staying.
“Oh, okay. You forgot to check out the blazers.” She offers me two. “These are all we have in your size. We’ll get some more in next week.”
“I’ll take them both.” I need to get the hell out of here, right now.
CHAPTER4
Aleksander
I’m surprised I wake up on my own. I check my phone, only ten minutes before my alarm. There are no waiting texts or emails on the girl. What the fuck?
Milos calls me almost fifteen minutes later. “You up yet?”
“Yeah, getting dressed now.”
“Get your ass up here.”
Ten minutes later, I’m walking into his office. Nikita is already sipping vodka. He nods to the sideboard. “Breakfast.”
“You stepped between David and the woman? What the fuck, Aleksander?”
He’s pissed because he’s concerned. I shake my head as I take a bite out of the breakfast sandwich. “She’s harmless. She about pissed herself when he stuck the gun in her face.”
“There are more than a dozen men and women dead by people they judged to be harmless. Whether she pissed herself or not isn’t the issue. I know your ass doesn’t wear the bulletproof suits I got you.” Milos is up and pacing.
“I do.” I defend myself. “After that close call at the end of last year I’ve been wearing them every day. In the winter the too hot thing is a plus. And I’ll keep wearing the suits from here on out,” I promise him. And now that I’ve made the promise, I’ll keep it.
The bulletproof suits weren’t something we discovered existed until Milos was shot a few years ago. When Valdez found out he hooked us up with someone who made them, and Milos threw out his old suits and ordered us to do the same and replace them with bulletproof.
He is visibly relieved.
“The suits won’t stop a head shot,” Peter scolds as he walks into Milos’s office. “You shouldn’t have gotten between her and David. He’s there to protect you.”
Instantly Milos is tense. “From now on, you’re getting Boris, David and Michael.”
Christ, how the hell am I supposed to move with that many people on me? I don’t bother arguing because it would give Milos an out. If I want him to have the security to keep him safe, then it means I’ll need to as well. “And you?”
Peter answers for him. “He’ll have two more in addition to me and Danil. We’re flying blind. Valdez called this morning. There are no hits on her. He was able to get more shots from her on cameras around the city, but only outside this building.”
“No fucking way.” Nikita exhales. Voicing all our thoughts.
“Exactly, that makes her even more dangerous. She said she’s going to make you pay. My guess is she means the trafficking, since Nikita was a teenager when Milos put an end to it and she’s going to you and Milos.”
My eyes meet with Milos’s. He shakes his head. “She has to have been sold through Father. He destroyed all the records when I told him we were getting out. Did he ever discuss a sale like her to you?”
“No, he never spoke of any sales to me. He saw my distaste when he mentioned once that an incoming shipment of cargo were too young to bleed. Since I knew that meant younger than sixteen, I couldn’t keep the disgust off my face. He never spoke of it again.” I run my hand over my face. “She was early to mid-twenties. Did they set her free or did she escape? Is there any way to do a search on girls around her age who disappeared or were saved from trafficking?”
Peter considers the question. “I’ll talk to Valdez. However, the scope of the search could be too much for even him. There’s no way of knowing if she was sold to an organization or a person. Then there’s the question of was she saved on a federal or local level?”
“Fucking hell.” Milos mutters. “She’s free to roam without any way to tell when she’s coming.”
Grimly, Peter nods. “Which is why you’re both getting more security until we can identify her or grab her ourselves.”
Nikita is up refilling his glass of vodka. “Great, a woman out to make us pay for something we haven’t done in more than a decade.”
“Girl.” I correct him. “She’s a girl trapped in time. As far as she’s concerned, we deserve to pay for what happened to her. If Father sold a child that young, he sure as fuck did. The only problem is, he’s dead and we’re not.”
* * *
