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“Found it in a hidden compartment in my granddad's study.”
He stands pacing the room, his face burning red with rage. “FUCK,” he yells. “All this time and he was the one responsible? You know what this means now, right? That bastard needs to pay for this, Saint.”
“I know.”
Caleb crashes back into the chair with his spine ramrod straight and hands balled into fists, resting on the armrest, knuckles white from the force of his grip. “I’m going to slit his goddamn traitorous throat.”
“I know.”
“You know? Then why the fuck didn’t you let me take out the witness? Your dad would have been released and dead by now.”
“Because we said we would change things together, remember? You and me. That can’t happen if we’re murdering innocent people.”
“So that’s why you let the witness go?”
I nod. “Think about what the video shows.”
“It shows that your bastard of a father set everything up with Ian fucking Maloti,” he yells, slamming his fist into the nearest table.
“I know. What I can’t get my head around is to what end? Why take out the other families when their own could have been gunned down?”
“Money, Saint. That’s all it’s ever been about. They saw a golden opportunity to get rid of anyone standing in their way in one sweep under the guise of a celebration, knowing their defenses would be down. Do you know how many bosses they took out in that one hit? Four, Saint. Fucking four!” He begins to count on his fingers. “The Rossi family, dead. The Greco family is dead. The Collazo family is dead, and the Murphy’s are all dead. See a pattern here? They’re all fucking dead Saint! Four rival families were wiped out. And guess who’s left to pick up the spoils?“ He fists his hair in rage. “Do you know what happens to us if this gets out? If that CCTV footage of one of our men letting the gunmen into that castle that night gets out? We’re fucking dead men.”
I wage a battle on whether to tell him the rest. After several beats of silence, I speak.
“There’s more.”
“Jesus,” he yells, voice heavy with frustration and anger.
“I found voice recordings.”
“Voice recordings?” he repeats.
“Yeah. My granddad suspected Ian and my dad were working together behind his back. Some of those recordings go way back. I think my dad found out, and that’s why he had my grandfather killed that night along with all the rest.”
“Why was he surveilling him in the first place?”
“Think about it. What was my dad doing that he didn’t want my grandfather finding out about?”
The answer dawns on his face. “The sex trafficking ring?”
“A lucrative business for some, but not my grandfather. Francis was old school. He fucking hated even the mention of it. Trafficking women and young people disgusted him. He barely tolerated titty bars, for fucks sake. He told me himself if he didn’t need them to clean the money, he’d burn them all to the ground.”
“Yeah, but to have his own father taken out because of it…”
“I think my grandfather was just another piece on the board that was in his way.”
His brow lowers as he thinks about what I just said.
“This is so fucked up, Saint. Like beyond fucked up.”
“I know. It was hard for me to even wrap my head around. Then I obtained a copy of the list.”
“What list?”
“Every few months there’s an auction. They had ten women and five teenagers on that list that were going to be auctioned off to the highest bidders. Next to the list was a profile on each of the victims, displaying their photograph, their ages, hair color, height, shoe size, virginity status, and the dates they were to be kidnapped.”
“Jesus Christ.”
