Page 49 of Lies like Rubies, Part Two (Savage Jewels)

Shots fired, and I slammed my back against thecorrugated wall, gesturing for the men to cover the girls who cowered in their cages, filthy and unwashed. Movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention as someone crept up the stairs beside me. I turned and aimed, hitting his kneecap. He fell to the ground with a strangled scream.

In minutes, the operation was finished. Relief swept through me, pushing aside the adrenaline of the raid and leaving me exhausted. After over a week of searching, we’d finally done some good.

José’s men hogtied the four men we’d found and dropped hoods over their heads. Once they’d settled our captives, they fetched blankets and began checking on the girls, one by one. Some of them had been locked up for almost two weeks, others, only a day.

Most of the girls sobbed bitter tears and accepted our promises to drop them off at the nearest hospital for care. One though, wrenched her arm away from the man that shepherded her to the vehicles. The spitfire stood over the men we’d bound and left lying on the ground and kicked them viciously in the stomach, the back, anywhere she could get her tiny heel.

“Fuckers!” she screamed until she sobbed and collapsed beside them. “Rot in hell.”

I crouched beside her. “Can you answer some questions about these men for me?”

She looked at me, her face contorted with hate and misery. “Gladly.”

“Were there any other men here?”

She nodded and rattled off descriptions of half a dozen men. I stopped her, pulled out my phone to record her, and started her up again, listening carefully. One sounded like Sergio, and Gio Costa fit the description of another.

“Thank you,” I told her and held my hand out to help her out.

“Catch these fuckers and make sure they don’t hurt anyone else,” she said, refusing my help and standing on her own.

“I will,” I vowed.

Once the warehouse was clear of people, José and his remaining men began the arduous process of searching it for evidence that would prove the Costas were financing the trafficking and any hints of where Sergio might be hiding.

“Boss!” he shouted. Dante and I jogged over. He’d found a laptop and a mobile hotspot.

“Good work,” I said, running my fingers over the desk where it sat. I opened the drawers to find them stuffed with stacks of disorganized papers in a dozen languages—invoices, receipts, and lists of names. Sergio was an amateur at best, but quality girls were expensive to hide, expensive to ship, and expensive to control. This couldn’t possibly be the extent of the operation.

Dante swore angrily when answers didn’t come readily from flipping through the papers. His temper had always been short, but since Sofia returned, he’d been on a hair trigger with everyone but her.

“Pack it up,” I said, then turned my attention to the four men still lying on the ground, trussed up like turkeys.

One of the men was beginning to come back to consciousness. I crouched beside him, yanked off his hood, and raised his head up by his hair.

“Do you know who I am?”

He spit at me, and I dropped his head on the floor, letting his nose bounce hard. He screamed in pain, and I lifted his head by his hair a second time.

“Do you know who I am?”

The man did his best to shake his head.

“My name is Lorenzo Morelli,” I said. “And the man at my side is Dante Oscuro.”

My captive tensed but said nothing else. He knew exactly who the fuck we were.

“Where did you get these girls?”

When he didn’t answer, I dropped his head again and stood, brushing my hands off on my trousers.

By that time, José and his team had packed up all the information and equipment he thought relevant.

“Burn it,” Dante snapped.

I looked back at him, shocked at his eagerness to abandon this opportunity for information. “You don’t want to question them?”

He raised an eyebrow, as if surprised by my temerity. “This one doesn’t appear interested in talking. Do you think the rest will be?”

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