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I’dneverseen Mr. Blue like this. He was losing his shit, and…well, damn, I think we all were to be honest. He’d mentioned the Pozzis, but no one had brought it up since we stepped in here. It was the elephant in the room, one that was screaming at me to mention.
So I took a step forward, feeling his fury like it was a living, breathing thing. He was desperate, on edge, and men like that made decisions they could never come back from. I had to tread carefully, but so did he.
“How do you know it’s the Pozzis?” I asked, trying to get the conversation moving. If he kept talking about his niece, then I wasn’t sure we’d ever get to the bottom of it all.
Mr. Blue pulled at his hair yet again, his gaze batting back and forth between all of us. He’d done a hell of a lot for us, helping us out in situations we knew we wouldn’t have gotten to without him. But he was accusing one of The Enterprise families, and that was a fatal move without the evidence to back it up.
“I investigated them. I found out who took Bailey.” He cut himself off and threw a laptop on Lorenzo’s desk. “It’s all on there. Who took her, where they passed her to, but I lost the trail somewhere along the way and I can’t find it again. I can’t figure out where they have her.” He pulled in a breath, talking entirely too fast, but luckily, we all kept up with him. “You’re my last resort, Lorenzo. I need your help. I need to know where my niece is.”
Lorenzo stared at him, not looking away for a single second. “You said they’ve been trafficking and it was them behind Navy. You have proof of this?”
Mr. Blue pointed at his laptop. “It’s all on there.” He backed up a step, a tear rolling down his cheek. Well, fuck, this was taking a turn that had me uncomfortable and shuffling on the spot. “Please,pleasehelp me find her. I’ve protected her so much. I’ve tried to do everything I can for her, but now…now this.” He hiccupped a sob, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a grown man cry like that. Mr. Blue was always the epitome of calm and collected. He never veered from what he would say and how he would say it.
But this…this had broken him.
“We’ll look into it,” Lorenzo told him, sitting down at his desk. He was dismissing him, and to some, those three words he’d spoken wouldn’t hold much weight, but every man in this room knew it meant Lorenzo wouldn’t stop until he got to the bottom of this.
“I’ll walk you out,” Mateo said, coming up beside Mr. Blue. With one last look at each of us, a fear reflected in his gaze that I’d never seen before, Mr. Blue exited the room.
It wasn’t until Mateo was back in the room, confirming that he was off the premises, that Lorenzo spoke again.
“Get the laptop to Remy,” he ordered, passing the machine to Dante. “We need to know every single thing that Mr. Blue found and more. We have an Enterprise meeting in five days, I want a briefing two hours before. Tell Remy to be ready.” Lorenzo was all business, knowing that Mr. Blue wouldn’t have come here acting like that for no reason. He never jumped to conclusions, only ever made decisions based on facts.
“On it,” Dante grunted, taking the laptop. “If the Pozzi family were behind Navy and Dario being taken…” He trailed off, not saying the words we could all tack on the end. It would be Dante’s revenge. But something swirled inside me at the thought.
It didn’t feel like his revenge…it felt like…mine.
CHAPTER 3
BAILEY
I’d lost track of the amount of time I’d been here. With no way to know if it was day or night, it felt like I’d been trapped for an entire lifetime. It could have been weeks or months. I had no idea. Not until the cage next to me was opened and a new woman was thrown in there.
Her clothes were clean, her hair brushed along with makeup on her face, which could only mean she’d come in from the outside. She was new. My stomach rolled. They brought in newbies all the time, but they were never put by me, so I couldn’t ever figure out what was happening out there, but now…
She pushed to the back of her cage, her eyes wide and frantic. I remembered that suffering so well. Remembered how scared I was. But since I’d been put in this cage, I hadn’t been out, and now it was my little safe haven.
“Do you know what date it is?” I asked, trying to distract her and myself at the same time.
She snapped her head around, her stare meeting my face. I didn’t miss the way she looked me up and down. I had no idea what I looked like from her perspective, but I knew it couldn’t have been good. I was her future, and from the sadness in her eyes, she knew it.
“November twenty-eight,” she replied, her voice small.
I blinked rapidly, doing the math in my head. I’d been gone for three months. No. It couldn’t have been that long, could it? It had been so long, and yet, no one had come to save me. My eyes watered, tears leaking down my cheeks as fast as a waterfall. It was the first time I’d let them. The first time I’d allowed myself to justfeel.
My uncle hadn’t come to find me. He hadn’t saved me. The only person who would have even noticed I was gone hadn’t done anything.
My breaths were almost too much for my aching body to handle. The small bits of food and water we got each day wasn’t enough to sustain us, but at least it was something, I supposed. But it meant I’d lost weight, so much so that I could see my ribs under my skin. I’d never been able to see them before.
I was hungry all the damn time, and thirsty…it took all of my strength not to down the water every day, but I managed to sip on it and make it last as long as I could.
“Where am I?” the woman asked. “I need to get out. I can’t be here.”
She was frantic, and there was nothing that I could say that would bring her out of it, so I turned my back to her, silently telling her to leave me alone. I wasn’t trying to be mean, I was just…trying to survive.
For what felt like hours I sat there listening to her, but at some point, her crying and moaning stopped, and when I looked back at her, she was asleep.
I wished I could sleep like that.
