Page 13 of Romeo Pagani

My cell beeped with another message, and I quickly swiped down on it to read.

Lorenzo

Backup is two minutes away if needed. Get the lay of the land. Find out as much as you can, but most importantly, get him on your side. Be his best goddamn friend.

I nodded as if he’d spoken the words out loud to me, then deleted the message. I knew better than to leave something like that on my cell. Luckily, I also knew to go into my deleted messages and erase it from there too. It was always my first go to when I had someone that I needed information from, normally having them tied to a chair or from the ceiling on a hook. People always forgot about the fail-safes put into place by the technology companies. Nothing was ever truly deleted, but I could get ninety percent there.

I glanced at my side mirror, spotting people walking up the road. Two men in dark suits, looking every bit the businessmen who worked inside the city. They were professionals, ones who most people probably trusted because they portrayed themselves as good men, but if they were coming here, then they were far from that.

Evil was never wrapped up in an ugly package. True monsters were always pretty on the outside, enticing their victims into their trap. You only had to look at some of the most famous serial killers to know that it was the ones you never suspected that wreaked the most havoc.

And this—what Gio was doing here—was a prime example.

It was time I went in there, time for me to put on the facade that Gio needed to believe me. I was going undercover, and if I was honest, I didn’t like it. It made me feel like I was on the wrong side. I didn’t want to dig into other people’s business, but when it came to my family, there was nothing I wouldn’t do for them. They came first, always.

Pushing open the door, a gust of cold wind bit at me. I shivered, glad that all I had to do was cross the street, then pace ten meters and I was at the door. Two men stood outside, checking ID and then allowing the other men in, and as soon as I approached them, I opened my mouth, about to tell them who I was, but they simply moved aside and let me in without a word.

They knew I was coming. They also knew who I was and what I looked like.

Every fiber in me wanted to pause, turn, and march back to my car.

Fuck. Was this an ambush? Was Gio setting me up to take me out so that he had one last person to worry about?

It didn’t matter what it was, because there was no way I was turning away from this. If it was an ambush, then I’d deal with it, but just in case it wasn’t, I was going to stick to the plan.

I stepped through the double doors and into a tiny entryway where another man stood, basked in a red glow. The vibe completely changed, soft music playing through invisible speakers, luring me in.

“Cell phones in here.” He handed me a Ziplock bag. “Write your name on it and then I’ll put it in a safe for you to collect when you leave,” he told me, so matter of fact and without a single blink of his eyes.

I wanted to tell him that there was no way in hell I was handing my cell over. But I was here to do a job. I had to put my best foot forward, and refusing would only gain suspicion, so I placed my cell in the bag and handed it back to him. I didn’t leave until I saw it inside the safe though.

He handed me a slip of paper with a four-digit code, then opened the next door for me.

Walking through, I held my breath, not sure what I was about to witness, but at first glance, it wasn’t too bad. A large room with tables, chairs, and booths was softly lit. It looked like any other bar with two people standing serving drinks toward the left. But the more I ventured in, the more I realized this wasn’t what it seemed.

A woman was crawling on the floor, completely naked, tears streaming down her face as a man followed her, slapping a cane off her back and ass. Pain was pain, but in this environment, it was also humiliation.

I ground my teeth together, trying to keep my cool. I tortured men for a living, but I almost always drew the line when it came to women. Maybe it was because I’d watched my own mother suffer at what I suspected was my father’s hands. I’d never seen anything or heard anything, but I knew that my father would never had allowed that. He was clever in his torture.

I tried to take stock of everything and everyone, but it didn’t matter where I looked, there were more women being taken advantage of and used and abused. This wasn’t what they wanted it to appear to be, it was so much worse. And I could only imagine how bad it truly was. This was my impression after only a couple of minutes, but behind the scenes was sure to be so much worse.

I had no idea what I’d been stepping into. I knew that he was trafficking people—mainly women—but this…this was a whole other identity. Or maybe it was part of it.

He was selling women…but what for? I shook my head, feeling stupid for even asking myself that question. Sex sells. Always. And this…this was more kink than I’d ever seen in one place.

“Mr. Pagani?” a man called from behind me. I’d known he was there, sensing him getting closer, but I wasn’t going to let him know that. I also wasn’t going to show that I knew he was there either. I needed to be neutral, and most of all, to keep my guard way the fuck up. I was in the enemy’s territory and in the blink of an eye things could take a turn for the very fuckin’ worst. “If you’d come with me, Mr. Pozzi is waiting for you.”

The man skirted around me so he was in front, and I followed him, weaving in and out of tables and toward a back corner. I made sure to analyze every woman that I passed.

To an outsider, I probably looked like I was enjoying looking at the women while they received or gave sexual acts, but in reality, I was searching for something…

A scar.

“This is what she looks like.” Mr. Blue handed over a photo of his niece. It was of them both standing outside of what looked like a college, and it only made me that much more aware of the fact that she was only seventeen. Fuck.

Her shoulder-length brown hair looked shiny as fuck with a small wave in it, and her makeup-free face shone nearly as bright as her smile.

“Are there any other identifying features?” Lorenzo asked. He was sitting behind his desk, his hands laid flat on the wooden surface. It had been two days since The Enterprise meeting, and tonight I’d be meeting Gio. I had no idea what I was going to walk into, but we needed to know everything about Mr. Blue’s niece just in case.

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