Page 87 of Burn With Me

Paris frowns. “I was under the assumption that Emilia wasn’t very involved in her businesses and that it was her sister that ran things.”

I turn away from them and move back to the papers scattered across the room. “I’ve done my own investigating,” I tell them, “and you’re correct, Emilia isn’t directly involved in the businesses—but she has a position on the board of directors and as Emilia’s husband, my father now has the contacts that she had with overseas materials providers.”

“Couldn’t he have gotten those contacts without her?” Paris asks as I lean over and pick up a specific batch of documentation.

I turn and nod. “Yes, but the Feds would have been all over him if he’d reached out himself. Now, he can make it look like his innocent wife is the one setting up these meetings. He’s using her as a cover, not necessarily for the connections. He’s trying to smuggle goods into the country using these material providers. Barrels of gasoline can be emptied and changed out. Oil companies from the Middle East—I have a list of the ones he’s been keeping an eye on for the last few years.”

Shep takes a step forward and holds out his hand. I give him the papers and watch as his eyes scan the information printed there. It’s not enough to prove my theories, but it’s enough to warrant following up. “Damien is patient,” I continue. “He knows that the Feds are watching him, and he most likely knows that they’ve contacted Emilia’s son, Marcus.”

“So your plan to is to find this evidence at the party?” Paris confirms.

“Some of the executives will be there,” I say. “If my suspicions are correct, he’s going to try and set up a private meeting with them during the party. If I can get into that meeting or get near it and set up some recording devices, then the Feds will have at least enough evidence to investigate him openly instead of this cloak-and-dagger bullshit they’ve been pulling … or I can use what I find to lead them to the actual materials.”

“What this paperwork doesn’t tell you, though, is what he’s trying to import,” Shep states. “What exactly is it that he’s trying to do? What kind of goods is he involved in?”

I suck in a breath and blow it out. “Tax evasion. Corporate fraud. Money Laundering. These are the things he’s been involved with thus far. But this is bigger, this is more dangerous.”

Paris frowns. “Isaac?” Drugs. Guns. Those would be bad but better than what I know he’s planning. “What is he importing?”

It’s been so fucking long—looking into his background. The companies he’s had his eyes on. The countries he’s been obsessively trying to involve. I don’t want to admit it. That my own father has stepped so far into the dark that there’s no coming back. Murder and killing would have been kinder. It would have been more humane.

“People,” I finally say.

“People?” Paris and Shep repeat the word, their confusion a testament to their goodness. Their humanity, but it gets worse. So much fucking worse.

“Yes,” I say, “but not just people—girls. Young girls. Women.” I have no doubt that his plans for these women are anything but innocent. There’s only one reason a man like my father would bring undocumented young immigrant women over from impoverished, third-world, or even misogynistic countries. Human trafficking.

“Shit.” Shep’s sentiment is my own. So I choose not to say a damn word.

“This is big, Isaac,” Paris says. “This is bigger than anything he’s done so far. This will catapult him to a new level.”

“It’ll make him wealthy beyond belief, and that’s all he cares about,” I say.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Shep argues. “Why now? He’s been fine with everything else. He’s been clean, and the Feds are struggling to catch him. Why would he risk his safety for more money?”

“There’s a void in the underground market,” I say. It started a few months ago. Barely perceptible—certainly invisible to the common man or woman—but it’s quickly growing, and the upper echelon is taking notice. They’re realizing it because they are the customers and their product is gone. “An organization has undergone a change. I don’t know who’s behind it, but the products and services they provided have been put on an extended hold and there’s a shift happening.”

“What organization? One that specialized in trafficking?” Shep asks.

I nod. “It’s all there.” I gesture to the other papers. “I couldn’t find a whole lot of physical or paper evidence, but from what I understand there’s a load of people that are supposedly dead popping up here and there.”

“Dead?” Paris moves across the room and starts looking at the other papers, stopping to pick up a stack. “Dead people coming back to life?”

“More like they’ve faked their death,” I tell them, “in order to perform some of these services. Their connections are what tell me it has to be an actual organization. They sell everything from people to hitman services. Over the course of the last few months, though, the people have disappeared and they haven’t popped back up.”

“They could be laying low,” Paris says as he absently flips through documents.

“I’m sure that’s true for some of them, but not for so many,” I reply. “No, my guess is that someone else has taken over, and with an organization like that—it can only mean it was done in a bloody fashion.”

“And because of that, there’s a gap in the underworld’s illegal goods exchange,” Paris guesses, looking up. “Your father is trying to fill that role before whatever organization was originally running it returns.”

It’s a guess, but an educated one. Knowing what I know about my father and his greed, his damn near obsessive need to be bigger, more threatening, more powerful, to have more—this is his golden goose. His next step and nothing will stop him from taking what he wants. Certainly not his wife’s daughter.

“What do you need?” Shep’s words have me looking up. Clear golden-brown eyes meet mine.

“I need Aurora to be safe,” I confess. “I can’t do shit until I know that she’s going to be okay. She’s in my fucking head all the time, and she’s so damn stubborn. She scares the life out of me. She’s going to draw his attention and if she’s too much of a threat, you know what he’ll do to her.”

Shep nods. “He’ll kill her.”

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