Page 4 of Stone

We’d been stalking a trafficking ring for a few months, but every time we got close, they were gone—along with the girls—by the time we arrived. With every miss, I got closer to the edge of my rage and sanity. One of the few things that kept me from losing my mind was thinking about what I was gonna do to those fuckers when we finally found them.

“Where did the information come from?” Viper asked. Likely thinking as I was, that our informants had been less than reliable in the past.

“Wouldn’t tell me,” Fox grunted. “But he was adamant that it was accurate. Never seen him so determined to have me believe him.”

“Inside man?” Mav suggested.

Fox shrugged and scrubbed his hands over his face. “No fucking clue. But if we don’t take these assholes down this time, heads are gonna roll. I will bring in every informant, every person who ever gave us even the slightest inkling that they knew something or might have been involved. By the time we’re done with them, they’ll be spilling every fucking secret they have.”

Viper nodded in agreement. “Details?”

“New York. In the port district.” Fox handed him a slip of paper, and he glanced at it, frowning deeply when he saw the date, time, and address.

“That’s over a thirteen-hour drive,” I grumbled.

Fox grunted, “Gives me time to touch base with Nic.”

Nic DeLuca was the head of the New York Mafia and a client of the Iron Rogues. But he was also a close friend of Fox’s. “His organization has been after the same group, so I asked him to do more digging into the accuracy of the tip. And no one will know you two.”

I tuned out whatever the three of them said next, but my attention was snagged when something flew through the air, and Viper caught it.

Jealousy burned in my gut when he held up a property vest. He was headed home to give it to his woman.

There was a similar vest hanging in my closet. Only this one said, “Property of Stone.” Fox had given it to me shortly after the first time he refused to tell me where my girl was.

“It’s gonna happen,” he’d told me. “Now you’ll be ready when it does.”

It tookover a week to resolve the situation in New York. We’d teamed up with the DeLucas and managed to bust the operation in time to save the latest shipment of girls.

Before we left, we had dinner with Nic, his wife Anna, and their cute kids. Afterward, Nic asked me to join him in his home office.

He walked around his large, mahogany desk and sat down. “Have a seat,” he offered, gesturing to the leather wingback chairs in front of him.

I watched him tap on a laptop as I sat.

After a minute, he wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to me.

“The head of the family in Chicago”—and by family, he meant the Mafia—“is a good friend. Kye explained your situation to me, and I reached out to Francesco to see if he could be of any help.”

I glanced at the paper and saw the name Francesco Bianchi and a phone number.

“He offered to assist in any way he could. He was already familiar with the organization that you’re trying to take down. They knew about the drugs and prostitution rings but not that the girls were being bought and sold. Like me, Francesco does not tolerate human trafficking. As you’ve discovered, they are not easy to infiltrate, and taking them down one by one is a long-drawn-out process. He has some ideas on how to move forward that I think could be very valuable.”

Nic gestured to the paper. “He’s expecting your call.”

“Mine?” I raised a brow, and Nic cocked his head as she studied me. “Kye said you were in charge of the operation to nail thesefigli di puttana.Was I misinformed?”

“No,” I replied. I was gonna fucking owe my prez big for giving this to me. Especially when I’d been such a bastard lately.

“Thanks,” I said with an appreciative nod as I stood. We shook hands, and he inclined his head. “Buona fortuna,” he said, wishing us luck.

2

BRITTA

The past two years had been pretty good to me. My mom and I were safe in the small town where we’d settled. Money wasn’t as tight as it’d been growing up since she was working in a bar owned by the Hounds of Hellfire, a club with which the Iron Rogues apparently had a loose connection. I’d been so far ahead in schoolwork when transferring that I was able to graduate a semester early last month. And my mom had stayed away from men, which had done wonders for our relationship.

The only thing missing from my life was Stone.

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