Page 51 of Escape You

“The usual, drugs, a few dead politicians, and a new venture with a crew from Venezuela. They estimate about one hundred people a month. They’re selling them for labor at sweat shops, and…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “And whore houses. New York is just the entry point. They have deals all over the country. Anyone is fair game.”

“Jesus. Rebecca was right. She just couldn’t prove it was Rossi.”

“How did she know it was him if she had no proof?”

“She met him in Maracaibo, Venezuela. By then she already knew what her boss had in mind, but nothing had come of it because he didn’t have an investor in the States. When Rossi made the trip to Rebecca’s town, she knew the deal was as good as done. That’s when she reached out to my brothers. All shit went downhill from there fast.”

“But you got them all out?”

“I did. I brought Rebecca with me to see if we could piece it all together. She was sure the guy who met with her boss had mentioned he lived in New York. I put her up in my condo and worked on it for weeks.”

“How did you figure out it was Rossi?”

He puffed out a breath. “We ran into him at an Italian restaurant. I wanted Rebecca to leave my place and get some fresh air. Not twenty minutes into our outing, she ran out. When I caught up to her, she told me the guy at the table next to us was her boss’s new associate.”

“But the word of a woman isn’t worth much to the FBI. Is that right?”

“It wasn’t that. I went back to the restaurant and took pictures. I brought them to the agent in charge, and he turned me down. At the time, it didn’t make sense. But now it does. Clifton was protecting Rossi for his own case.”

Rossi was not going to get away with any of this. I thought he was a disgusting human being before. Now that’d I taken a peek at his files, I knew for sure he was a piece of shit. I glanced at Tyler, and my eyes watered. I was so glad my baby didn’t have his blood. My baby was good, like Tyler.

“What are you thinking?”

“In a very fucked-up way, I’m glad you’re ATF and not the devil’s spawn.” I cupped his cheek. “How do we take him down? If I give you the files, your people won’t be able to do a thing against him. I mean, you can’t put someone in jail for something they’re only thinking about doing?”

“No, we can’t.” He exhaled. “Several weeks ago, Rebecca ran away. She’d been fine in my condo, and then all of a sudden she disappeared.”

“Omigod, is she going to be okay?”

“She is. She turned up at my brother’s estate in Atlanta when I was there last month. Long story short, during our Maracaibo escape her boss ended up getting shot and killed. But you know how it is—it didn’t take long for his son Marcel to take over.”

“That’s exactly how it is.”

“He came after Rebecca. From what I heard before, in Maracaibo, he’s obsessed with her. She managed to get away and find my brother Wesley. Anyway, she said that while there, she heard Marcel talk about a shipment. She thinks he’s done a few of those now. Whatever deal Rossi struck with Smith, it already went through.”

“I’ll text Vic. We need to go through those files with a fine-tooth comb and figure where all those people went. I mean, that’s what you’re talking about, right?”

“Yeah.”

We had a good lead to go after Rossi. I trusted Tyler to do the right thing. But not for one second did I think Clifton or the ATF would. They wanted a bigger fish and didn’t care if hundreds of innocent people got hurt in the process.

16

Not Her Fake Husband

Tyler

Mia finished typing her text to Vic and tossed the phone on the nightstand. I wanted to believe that Mia had put her trust in me because she had feelings for me, because whether she liked it or not, we were a family now. But the truth was, she’d done it because of her crew and the baby. But where did that leave us after all this was over, regardless of how it all ended?

Her green gaze settled on my stomach, and her cheeks turned red. At least we had this thing in common. She wanted me as much as I wanted her. She ran her hand along the waistband of my trousers, then up my chest.

I released a breath. “Do we have time for this?” I slid my fingers up her arm, itching to touch more of her smooth skin.

“It’s going to be a while.” Her raspy voice steeled my cock.

“You’re not mad at me anymore?”

Like me, she was lost when it came to us, though we both knew what we wanted. I wanted her, and I wanted our baby, this family. Even if her life and mine were miles apart.

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