Page 46 of Thorns of Lust
“This is good for us,” Aiden answered cryptically. Luca probably wouldn’t agree but whatever. I’d bet my entire fortune they were protecting the interests of their niece, Penelope DiMauro. None of them were too thrilled about the wedding contract that Marchetti made for one of his sons to wed their daughter.
Luca was the head of the DiMauro family but he wasn’t willing to forgive. Not quite yet. The Callahans came to a reluctant peace with Luca, for their sister’s and niece’s sake. I could only imagine those Christmas dinners once their kids marry.
I took my seat at the round table, Marchetti on my left.
“So what’s the reason for this meeting?” I opened it up. It wasn’t as if getting together would give us any answers on the videos we’d been receiving for the past year before Adrian’s death. “I had to make a detour before my long weekend in Paris.”
I could see by the look on everyone’s face, they wondered too. Although they didn’t dare to voice their opinion.
Tomaso Roman ended up being the one to start. “I need to know where we stand with retrieving information from the Nikolaev woman.”
Jesus, here we go again. I locked eyes on him. He didn’t look well. Worn out. Dark shadows under his eyes. And he only had daughters, which would potentially leave his seat at this table empty. An opportunity for someone else.
“I can’t have my identity slip,” he continued in a hiss. “It’ll leave my daughters vulnerable.”
“So will a lot of other children,” Aiden chimed in. “Your daughters at least have protection with the Omertà. Other illegitimate kids are truly left vulnerable. Most of them don’t even know of their connection to this world.”
I frowned, studying Aiden. Was there more to his vow of Omertà than just protecting Penelope DiMauro’s interests? I didn’t need to dig into him nor hack him to know he was trying to protect someone. By the looks of it, it was someone he cared about a lot.
“I can’t have my daughters connected to this world,” Romero snapped. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Amon stiffening. Barely. It was enough though. “We need that chip, Konstantin. They don’t know about any of this. Reina will stir up a riot if she finds out about the whore houses.”
“Maybe you should end flesh trading all together?” I remarked, leaning back in my seat. Usually, illegitimate daughters were dragged into whore houses by any member of the underworld who participated in human trafficking. They were prized above any other woman and sometimes sold at a premium price. The Belles & Mobsters agreements had nothing on this shit.
No amount of protection could guarantee the safety of illegitimate children. It was the reason I had been concealing my own sister’s identity. I could count on one hand how many people knew about her, including Maxim and myself. Romero’s daughters weren’t illegitimate, but without a male heir, they’d be left vulnerable.
“And that would stop the Yakuza how?” Romero snapped. “If they get that chip, they’ll probably expand the number of whore houses in all our territories. We need that chip.”
“And you shall have it,” I said.
“Are you sure she wasn’t working with her husband?” Leone questioned.
Fuck, how I hated hearing those two words.Her husband.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I gritted.
“Maybe ending her would have been a better course of action,” Romero chimed in again. Panic made Romero more paranoid than usual. “There is nobody else that could be dropping these videos. It’s either her or one of the Nikolaevs. But our sources indicate they actually had a fallout with him when he tried to blackmail Kingston Ashford into exposing us. So it has to be her.”
Kingston Ashford. Our contracted killer when we needed him. Alexei Nikolaev’s brother-in-law.
“That woman–”
I stood up and leaned over, resting my palms against the cold mahogany table and narrowed my eyes on Romero. “You should worry more aboutmethan Tatiana Nikolaev right now.” I let the words sink in before I continued. “I keep all your information out of every single database in the world. Fucking dare bring up Tatiana’s name again, and I’ll ensure your name is blasted on every goddamn site.”
Okay, this wasn’t smart, but fuck it. It was too late the moment I laid eyes on Tatiana again. Maybe she and I were inevitable from the moment we were born.
“I don’t know her well but my brother-in-law knows her and her brothers. Tatiana Nikolaev is part of the underworld,” Aiden Callahan chimed in. “Her family is everything to her. Unlike her late husband, she’d never let that chip fall into anyone’s hands. That is, if she even has it.” He paused, his eyes locked on Romero. “She’d rather die than harm or bring danger to her family.”
I shifted my gaze around the table. Leone’s thoughts seemed to have drifted somewhere else. Agosti didn’t seem to care one way or the other. It was Marchetti who settled the score at the end.
“All the evidence points to the fact that Tatiana Nikolaev would never betray her family,” Marchetti declared vaguely. Fuck if I knew whether it meant he was on my side or not. His eyes turned to me. “Konstantin will bring the chip once he retrieves it. But we have to figure out who’s sending us these videos. Is Maxim able to help?”
“No.”
Maxim was the expert when it came to tracing IP addresses. It was his niche, once upon a time. These days, my brother couldn’t help himself, never mind anyone else.
Fuck, maybe Nico Morrelli could unravel that mystery. He was a genius in his own right. Everyone in this room has tried to decipher the digital signature of the video messages. Unsuccessfully. There had to be someone smarter than that fucker Adrian.
I nodded, then stood up. Marchetti did the same, signaling the meeting was over.
