Page 64 of Tarnished Reign

I flinch, thinking of the elderly lady who cooks for them. “You can’t shoot all your staff, Virgil. Let them go, and we’ll find out who did it and make them pay. It’s better that way. If you shoot them all, then we will lose the cooperation of the police department. There are far too many nonaffiliated people working for you to get away with killing them all.”

He blows out a long breath and nods.

“Okay. Ari said he had an in and you decided to take Mila; what the fuck for? What was the plan?” I drag Dorian to standing again, and when he starts to cry, I slap him, hard. “Focus.”

He gasps and sniffs, and then clears his throat. “We wanted to teach you a lesson. For before. Show you that we were also a force to be reckoned with. I was worried about it, but because Ari had already seen Adriana, and I knew when he told me about her that we could fulfill an order for the auction, it gave us leverage with a powerful group. Ari said if we had them on side, we had more power against the Bratva, and we should strike now. Adriana and the power she gave us with the auctioneers meant we thought we could take Mila and send you a warning.”

I consider what he’s saying. They thought Adriana would get them an in with the auctioneers, and that emboldened them to take Mila. What a chain of events they unknowingly set in motion.

“Ari’s theory was they’d help us, to some degree, if we had something they wanted. They are a strong organization, and they were going to send weapons as well as money and some extra men to help us bring the girl to them. The weapons were on their way, but their ship got delayed.”

“Delayed?” I ask. That doesn’t sound like some top-level group.

“Yeah, some international snafu. You know, that shit that was on the news.”

The only thing I can think of is the embargo of shipping containers that was on the nightly news a short while back.

“So their base is in the Middle East somewhere?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Okay. So where are these men and the arms now?”

“Still en route. It’s why it all went to shit. They should have been here ages ago.”

Fucking amateurs. They should have waited until they had the extra men and weaponry before they enacted the raid on us and took Mila and then Adriana. I make a note to let Damen know this information. His father-in-law, Stamatis Kantos, runs the weapons game in Europe, and I doubt they’d want ships heading to the Med with arms and men. It suits them to have the information, and it suits me if these auctioneers, whoever the fuck they are, take a hit.

“Do you know a man called The Prince?” I focus back on Dorian.

His sweaty face pales. I’ve shown him the oubliette, and yet his face paled at the mention of this man. That’s not good.

“Shit. He’s fucking insane. They say he’s a madman and very powerfully connected. No one has seen him in person, but there are tons of stories about him.”

“Like?” I ask.

“Loads, but one example is that he was so angry one day when an order he placed didn’t get fulfilled that he took the men who failed him, kneecapped them, gut shot them, covered them in honey, and tied them to posts and let the rats and flies feast on them.”

“Creative,” I drawl.

“That’s even better than your oubliette,” Virgil deadpans.

“What was the order that was fucked up?”

“A mummy.” Dorian shrugs.

“What?”

“He wanted a mummy. Supposedly, they say her hair holds special power, and he wanted her, but the men delivering her fucked up, and she got destroyed.”

“I mean, they are fragile,” Virgil says as if he’s a forensic archeologist.

This sicko wanted a mummified body because he believes their hair holds special powers and now he wants my Littleblue too?

“He wants Adriana,” I say to Dorian. “Have you ever spoken with him?”

“I didn’t know that. I was just told she was going to auction. Whatever they do with her once they take delivery of her is up to them. As for The Prince, I’ve had a couple of very limited conversations with him.”

“Where?”

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