Page 111 of Vicious Sentiments

I’m scrambling to keep up as they spit numbers at each other. Apparently the warehouse held the whole stash there. Millions of dollars worth of guns in El Cuco. I have no idea who the Tortellis’ are, but Cape and Julian bicker back and forth about them. Cape swears up and down that he didn’t come in contact with them when he went down there to get Julian, but Julian also swears that none of his guys would mess with them.

Margo is pacing the kitchen when we enter.

“Let’s go over what happened when you looked for Jules,” she says to Cape.

Julian pulls out a barstool for me, and I hop up sheepishly. I was hoping I could duck away and change, so it didn’t look so obvious what had happened, but maybe everyone will be so focused on the crisis to notice me.

Julian pulls out his phone and scrolls through what looks to be numerous texts from Denny as Cape sighs.

“Let me at least get some coffee first,” he drawls.

I sit for an hour and I finally hear all the details of what happened to Julian. I’ve tucked my knees against my chest with wide eyes, in shock by all the carnage.

The man who was driving Julian to the airport was killed when their car was ran off the road and Julian was pulled out and tied up.

He estimates that the people who took him were driving for an hour before he managed to get one of them at a disadvantage in the backseat. At which point he kicked—actually kicked—out the back window and jumped from the moving car. Which explains the glass in his back.

Where they were taking him, he has no idea, but they were in the middle of nowhere with nothing but trees and muck. He ran into the wild while they fired at him, and that’s how he was shot, but they didn’t catch him. I can’t imagine him being shot and still having to run as the blood bleeds through his fingers.

He was lost and alone in the wild for fucking four days, growing weaker and finding it even more difficult to find his way out.

Thank god Cape found him.

But the more they talk, it’s revealed that the men who tried to take Julian had gotten in bed with the Tortellis, selling half their businesses to them. And one of those was a building that Cape burned down in his efforts to find Julian.Set fire to a whole building.My mind can’t comprehend it but something about imagining Cape lighting a match and walking away gives me goosebumps.

“How the fuck was I supposed to know?” Cape slams his fist on the counter.

“You couldn’t have known,” Julian says but his face is hard, and I can tell his mind is spinning.

“Well, they aren’t going to stop there.” Margo shakes her head. “You know what they are like. That’s why we avoid them atall costs.”

“I know. I know.” Cape runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck! I shouldn’t have gone down there. I’ve been out of it for too long. This is the same mistake I made—”

“I would have died if you didn’t find me,” Julian says, not letting Cape finish his sentence. “We’ll deal with whatever comes.”

“Yeah? How many people were in the warehouse when it blew up?”

Margo chews her cheek but eventually answers. “Three.”

“Then that’s three lives, on me.”

“No, it’s not. It’s on the Tortellis,” Julian says.

I take a deep breath, trying to resist the urge to reach out and hug Cape. I know that if Julian had let him finish he would have compared this to whatever he did that got Madison killed. But no matter how similar, a selfish part of me doesn’t care about the repercussions. He got Julian home safe, and I don’t care what it took. I wish he wasn’t being so hard on himself.

“Can we fix it?” I speak for the first time since we entered the kitchen. “Can we make amends? They are in trade too, right?”

Margo tilts her head at me. “Oh, Peach. I wish we could but that’s not how these people work.”

Julian’s jaw tics. “They don’t trade the same thing as we do.”

“What…” I don’t like the way he’s become tense. “What do they trade?”

“You don’t want—”

“People,” Cape says over Julian. “Women.”

My stomach turns. They traffic women? As in sex trade?

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