“Don’t go to work today,” I whisper into her ear.
“I have to,” she answers, giving me a little kiss.
I frown when she slips out of the bed, looking for her clothes.
She reaches for one of my dress shirts to cover up her naked perfection. We got back late last night, and we ended up in here in my room.
I like her being in here.
We haven’t been able to leave the fantasy just yet. We’re still those two people who met at the coffee shop.
“Come back to bed, baby,” I beckon. I just want to enjoy today with her. Tomorrow is the damn fundraiser, and I know I’ll be on edge all day about it. I’ve decided to take her.
It’ll be different. She’ll be going as my date. It was nice watching her get excited about it.
She bends over to pick something off the ground, and I see her perfect ass. The instant I see it, I lose it. She’s not going to work today.
I get off the bed and grab her. She squeals and starts giggling when I pick her up and set her back on the bed “I want you riding my cock and those tits bouncing in my face,” I tell her, flipping her over so she can straddle me.
“Okay,” she says with saucy seduction and settles down on my cock.
I get lost in the woman all over again.
I’m lost in her, and I don’t want to be found or find any kind of way back to the place I was before she came into my life.
***
It’s one phone call that takes me away from her late in the night.
It’s Salvatore.
He found something.
Half an hour later sees me walking across the rooftop of one of the warehouses at the docks.
My three brothers are here. Salvatore, Gabe, and Nick.
They stand by the edge of the roof looking like shadows against the night.
Their faces are stern and crude.
Salvatore said he picked up some suspicious activities here and saw Dmitri with a bunch of guys looking like they were up to some illegal shit. We’re always up to some illegal shit, but this is different.
It’s dirty, and it’s not dirt I know of, but I’m about to fucking find out.
I approach them, and they give me curt nods.
“Anything happen yet?” I ask.
Salvatore shakes his head.
“No. They’re waiting for something, though, and that boat there is theirs.” He motions down below.
I see Dmitri talking to a guy. In the amber light from the streetlights and the moonlight, I make out his dark olive skin. He looks Mediterranean.
“Here, get a closer look,” Nick says, handing me a pair of binoculars.
I take them and get a closer look alright. I don’t see anything much to jump out at me, but what I see is truth. I’m looking at Dmitri, and that mask of playing the nice businessman isn’t there anymore.
He stands differently, feet apart and shoulders back. He’s smoking, and the look on his face feels like the real him. The real devil. It’s cunning and manipulative, that’s what it is. Criminalistic and animalistic.
It was the look he was trying to hide.
That fucker. What the fuck are they up to?
“They’ve been waiting for something or someone,” Salvatore adds.
“That guy,” Gabe begins and points at the guy. “There’s something about him. He was talking to another earlier. A guy called Andreas, who’s part of the cartel, wanted by the fucking feds for drug trafficking.”
I lower the binoculars and look to Gabe. “You’re shitting me.”
Gabe shakes his head. “I saw them in a bar. That’s what started this.”
“Give me more details,” I demand.
“I went to check something out at the bar. First, your boy Dmitri was there. When I saw him, I decided to lay low. He didn’t look like he was there for a drink, so I didn’t want him to get fazed by seeing me. He went out back, and I followed. That’s when I saw him link up with Andreas and this guy here.” Gabe inclines his head. “I don’t know that guy, but if he knows Andreas, then he can’t be anybody good.”
Shit. This was it. The thing my instincts were warning me about.
We haven’t seen much yet, but it’s something.
Gibbs hasn’t been able to find anything. It suggests one of two things: that there’s nothing to find, or that whatever there is, is well hidden. So hidden it’s clean and passes through our checks.
“Maybe this is about drugs. Maybe they want to smuggle drugs. Maybe it’s not the fucking diamonds, or only the diamonds,” I state.
“Whatever the shit is, I don’t think we should have anything to do with it,” Salvatore says.
“I need something to work with.” I take out my phone and zoom in on the guy talking to Dmitri.
We couldn’t find shit on Dmitri. Maybe this guy is the fucker who will give me an answer. I take a few pictures of him and message them to Gibbs telling him to look into it.
He messages his acknowledgement straightaway.
I look from Gabe to Salvatore while Nick crouches down and stares on ahead to the road.
“There’s a truck coming,” Nick says, and we follow his gaze.
An industrial truck comes down the road with a fish logo on the side of it.
The truck stops right by Dmitri and the man, and what I see next gives me everything. My answer to them and to Pa.
My fucking heart freezes in my chest when the back of the truck opens and young girls start pouring out of it, all naked and chained together on one long chain.
There’s at least a hundred of them. They have chains around their wrists and ankles, then a chain lining from one to the next.
Fucking hell… what am I actually seeing? They’re all young girls of no more than sixteen. In fact, some of them don’t even look as old as that.
Dmitri shows his true colors as he takes charge and orders them onto the boat.
My brothers and I watch them pile on.
I have no fucking words. None at all. The man who was talking to Dmitri hands him a briefcase, and the two shake hands. He’s the last to get on the boat.
Dmitri lights up again, and a wicked smile spreads across his face.
I see him.
I see who and what he is now.
What he’s up to—sex trafficking.
It seems like dirty was just the start of my suspicions.