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Luca waved a hand around. “You’re married to her, so it’s the same thing.”
“You do realize her father has more money than I do, right? Why don’t you blackmail him?”
Luca leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “It’s not him I’m interested in working with. It was always you.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call chopping up my ex-wife and sending me her body parts working together, but you do you.”
Luca’s smile widened. “Funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
He grabbed another piece of cheese, this time placing it on top of a cracker. “You’re a straight shooter, I get it. We’re both businessmen, so here’s the deal. You owe me a considerable sum of money. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you don’t have it to just pay me back, otherwise you probably would have done it already, am I right?”
After I paid out Harold Coker for his part of the business, I wouldn’t be dead broke, but there wouldn’t be enough to pay out the situation Brooke had created either. I stayed silent, letting Luca continue.
“That’s what I thought. So here’s my proposition. I have a little…exchange program running, and I need more people involved. You can pay out your debt that way.”
I was rapidly losing patience. “Just spit it out, Luca. What do you want?”
“I need women. We’ve got associates outside the U.S. waiting on us to provide them. Bring me five women, and I’ll consider your debt cleared.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, bile churning in my gut. “Call it what it really is, Luca. You’re trafficking women.”
Kian stalked around from behind the pool table. “This is what you’re into? Who the hell does that?”
Luca shrugged. “Take the emotion out of it, and it’s just a business transaction like any other. You’d do well at this, Vaughn. It could be very profitable for you if you want to make it an ongoing arrangement. Rich, young, businessmen like yourself who want to get ahead are exactly who we want to be in bed with. You have the face to pull women in, or the contacts and money to hire people to do it for you if you prefer. We have a very generous remuneration package for a successful transfer. Enough to pay out all your business debts and set yourself up for life.” He chewed his cheese. “This is a good deal for a go-getter like yourself. Don’t get all up in your feelings about it and throw away an opportunity that could change your life.”
My skin crawled just listening to the way he spoke about selling women. Like they were nothing more than cattle. There was no emotion in his voice at all. It was as passionless as pushing paper around a desk. A simple business transaction.
This had to be who Caleb was working for. Kara and the others would have been sold to Luca and smuggled out of America if they hadn’t escaped.
If Caleb had a quota to fill, he wouldn’t stop until it was complete.
I leaned across the table, so Luca and I were eye to eye. “I would rather chop myself into little pieces than traffic women for you. I own one-hundred-percent of my father’s business. Give me some time, and I’ll make the money you’re owed.”
Luca’s eyebrows furrowed together. “Wait. You bought out Harold Coker?”
I bristled. “I did.”
He snorted on a laugh. “Even better. Because Harold and I already have a contract for several women a year, and we paid him in advance. That contract is now yours too.”
I stared at him in horror. “No.”
“I can get it out and show you if you want. You buy the business; you buy the debt.” Without waiting for me to answer, he strode to a filing cabinet in the corner and pulled out a file. He pushed the cheese and bourbons to one side of the coffee table and spread out the paperwork on the other end. “Ted Dutrow, Garrison Elliot, James Lusk…”
I stared in horror at the names on the papers in front of me. I recognized them all as men who did business with my father’s company. Hell, there were photos of them together in Harold’s office. I’d seen them the last time I was there.
Luca carried on like he hadn’t just rocked my world. “Caleb Black… and oh, here it is. Harold Coker.” He pushed the paperwork across the table to me. “Honestly, Vaughn. This is actually great. Here I was, thinking I had to use your wife and her little gambling habit to get you to work for me, but turns out all I had to do was wait for you to buy in.” He stabbed a finger at a date on the bottom of the contract. “You have a shipment due to me by the end of the year, by the way. Might want to get on that.”
Kian stared at me in horror. “What the fuck did you do, Vaughn?”
I had no idea.
All I knew was I didn’t want any of it. Not my father’s business. Not his house. Not a single thing his money had ever paid for. I didn’t believe for a second that he’d known about any of this, but it didn’t matter.
It was all tainted anyway.
“Take the business,” I said quietly. “And the house. Have your lawyers draw something up. It’s all yours. That’s more than enough to pay you out, am I right?”
