Page 20 of Tarnished Reign

“Do you think there is anyway Adriana could be with them willingly? Is she lying?” He bites his lip. “Like maybe, she thought being Dorian’s girlfriend would be good for her or something and agreed to it?”

“No.” I shake my head. I saw the fear in her eyes. “Her story checks out in every other way.”

“There’s more,” he says.

“Go on.”

“It seems the whirlwind marriage between her father and the stepmom might have been because the stepmom is pregnant. There were two visits to an ob-gyn.”

I sigh. “Okay. This just gets more fucked.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s why she did this. It’s still terrible, but if she’s having a baby, and they were threatening her, maybe Hana saw no other way out. We don’t know how or why she had so much debt yet. It seems it started legitimately from what we have found so far, credit cards and the rest, but then increased and my bet is she began to take on debt from loan sharks and then the family.”

“Why would Dorian buy Adriana when she’s now part of his family?” I’m thinking out loud now. “I mean, he’s purchased his own … what is she? Second cousin? By law if not blood.” Jesus, that’s so incredibly screwed up.

He shrugs. “They aren’t blood related, and if he’s going to sell her—which was the plan—then...”

My stomach dips at the thought of her being sold to someone like cattle. “Where did this come from?”

He laughs. “A kid who was helping Dorian connect with these guys who run auctions. Shit himself, literally, when I worked him over. Dorian was going to sell her on to the auction.”

It makes sense, ties in with what his men were saying when we were interrogating them when we first boarded the yacht, and explains why he was willing to pay a million dollars for her.

“Can girls fetch millions at auction?” I ask Yuri. I genuinely don’t know. It’s not a world we run in.

“Seems so. If they’re virgins, from a good home, and taken against their will too, it all adds to the premium.”

He scrubs a hand over his face. He’s been working with Dorian’s phone and tablet and looking through messages and emails. “I read through some of the messages in regards to these auctions.” He shakes his head. “Fucking messed up shit, man. Like really screwy. Anything you want can be bought there. I mean anything. I’m not even going to tell you the shit I read because if I do, then it’s gonna live rent free in your head the way it is in mine, and no one needs that.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Kids?”

“Yes. Animals. Old men and women. Fucked. Up. Shit. The men who run it will pay a lot of money for twenty something virgins. Particularly ones who look like they fell down from heaven and straight onto a lingerie runway.”

He’s not wrong in his description of Adriana.

She’s innocence and sin. Beauty and decadence. Dark hair and light skin. She’s all contrasts and juxtaposition, and it makes her fascinating. I could look at her for hours and hours.

Yuri clears his throat.

“There’s more?”

“The men who run this will not take kindly to one of their prize items going missing. From what I’ve seen, they make Ari and Dorian look like the amateurs they are. I don’t know who they are; I only got onto their dark website because of the info on Dorian’s phone. Their identities are well hidden.” He scratches his cheek. “Boss, I know it goes against everything we stand for, but we weren’t the ones to sell her.” Yuri glances her way, then back to me. “Are you sure you don’t just want me to deliver her to them? ’Cause, I’ve gotta tell you, she’s going to bring a shit ton of trouble down on our heads.”

“I’m sorry,” I say mildly. “I thought I heard you saying that I should sell an innocent woman there for a moment. But I had a blow to the head a few years ago, and it must be messing with my fucking mind because no way did you say that, right?”

“She is going to bring us trouble. You, your father, and the whole organization. We don’t do that sort of shit, but this isn’t that. This is us getting caught up in events already set in motion. I will do whatever you say, and you know that, Dimitri. You’re my brother in this. I just wanted you to know that she’s a loaded bomb. She could blow us all up.”

I look over at Adriana again. “The auction is when?”

“Three weeks from now.”

“I have time to think.”

“Yes, but come the due date, they’re going to want what they paid for. This isn’t a crime group. It’s so much bigger, if some of the names that were in the private group Dorian messaged are real.”

“How much bigger?”

“Government level in some nations, royalty level in others. It’s fucked up shit, and some of the people involved could summon an entire national army if they so wished. The worst of it is we can only find so much out. They are well firewalled.”

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