Page 35 of Heart of Stone (Dark Billionaires)

“I thought the bedroom I’d been given was ridiculous. This takes the cake,” Saf grinned. “Is Warren staying in here with you?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

Saf’s eyebrow bounced up playfully. “An en-suite too?”

“Have you seen the gardens yet?” Kate pointed to the window.

All excitement left Saffron the moment she did. “Is that a koi pond?” she asked quietly.

“I think so.”

With a sad smile, Saffron sat in the armchair next to the window. “My mum loved koi. She always said that when she finally paid off her debt to Graves, she’d get us a house. Just a small one, but it would be ours. Evie and I could decorate our own rooms however we wanted, and in the garden we’d have a little koi pond.”

Kate sat in the armchair opposite. “It sounds lovely.”

Saf shook her head sadly. “It was a fantasy. My mother must have known that she was never going to be able to work off her debt to Graves. It was nothing more than a story to help Evie and I sleep at night.”

“How long ago did she die?”

Saffron looked out of the window once more. “Ten months, three weeks, and four days.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know how my mother did it. And Evie… She’s 13. She’s only a baby.” She wiped her tears away with the heel of her palm. “She must be so frightened on her own.”

“We’ll get her out, Saf. Don’t worry. Warren has an entire team of people working to find Graves—and Evie. I’ve told them every detail about my father’s club.” Brax had even had her go through the security footage, although it had been of little help. She knew the names of the employees and suppliers, but not their faces.

The only time she’d visited her father’s club had been back when Aaron was alive.

Paul Charlton had been a shitty father, but at least he’d kept her somewhat separate from the business. She’d always wondered why, and now she knew.

It was because he was a shitty human being full stop.

Anger flared in her, as it so often did these days. The faces of the women—thegirls—in the photographs were never far behind. Kate wondered how it started. At what point did her father choose to dip his toes into the ocean of human trafficking?

What had Saffron said? Graves turned the trafficked women into addicts. Was that what he’d done to her father too? Get him hooked on a drug he’d never be able to afford, and then offer him an out: funnel trafficked women into the club.

“I know,” Saffron replied. “I’ve been questioned by them so many times I want to scream. I can’t stop thinking that, without me there, he might have put her to work already.”

There were no platitudes Kate could offer her there. “If he does, Graves will be punished accordingly.”

Saffron rolled her eyes. “It won’t take away what he might have done to her though, will it?”

No, it wouldn’t.

A heavy knock at the door made Kate flinch. “Ms Charlton?”

“Brax?” Kate jumped to her feet, still slightly scared of the enormous man ducking into the room. “Is everything okay?”

“It is, but I’d like to run something by you. Follow me,” he growled, setting off down the corridor, not bothering to see whether she’d obeyed him.

With a side glance at Saffron, Kate hurried after him, narrowly avoiding running into Linda, the plump housekeeper. Braxton’s heavy footsteps led her into a section of the house that she had an inkling might be above the garage, judging from the views from the windows.

When Braxton opened the door at the end of the corridor, Kate’s jaw dropped.

Inside was a wall of computer monitors showing every corner of the house, from Linda talking to Warren in the enormous living room to the koi swimming in the pond to Rhys leaning over the kitchen island, watching something on his phone. There were even cameras showing the grounds, right down to the meadow she’d been strangled in.

“Can you see everywhere on these?” she asked, simultaneously amazed and unnerved.

“Other than the bedrooms that are in use,” Braxton answered, pointing to a chair in the corner. “Sit.”

She sat, unable to tear her eyes away from the numerous screens, fiddling absentmindedly with her mother’s locket as it sat on the new chain around her neck.

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