She’d learned she was disposable a week later when she was replaced by another beauty with a killer body and no ambition but to land a man by spreading her legs.
We made our way into the musty, over-decorated house. We entered the bedroom to find a group of soldiers emptying drawers and one digging through a safe that looked freshly installed.
“Bring them here,” Lucas said to Kurt, who seemed to have a slight edge of worry on his face.
“Sir, you need to see this.” Kurt handed me a file folder and then positioned an open laptop in my direction.
Inside the folder were more pictures of Isa, but these were shots designed to be part of an investigative profile, similar to the one I’d had made on her. But instead of details on her whereabouts, it had information on her sexual history and physical measurements.
The coldness I’d felt when I’d seen the pictures from earlier in the morning returned.
As I flipped to the last of the documents in the folder, I found a transcript of a phone conversation Jonas had had a little over six months ago with Carson Malkovich, a known member of a Russian family trying to create a stronghold in Germany. A family who specialized in the very thing I’d spent my last assignment stopping. The sale of humans.
They discussed past transactions and payments, but it was the end of the conversation that had me ready to find the bastard, beat him until he begged for death, and then leave him to freeze on the banks of the river.
Jonas: Payment of forty million Euros upon completion of job. She’s a prime piece of ass to populate your next generation.
Malkovich: I don’t want a washed-up woman. I want her in breeding condition.
Jonas: The boy will use her but he won’t hurt her—she’s too much like his whore mother.
Malkovich: What guarantees do I have that this won’t blow up in our faces?
Jonas: I know my organization and my men. Their loyalty will always be to me. You’ll have to trust me.
Malkovich: I trust no one.
Jonas: You still owe me for what happened to my Hannah.
Malkovich: I owe you nothing. My men did what you arranged. It was your responsibility to have your daughter with you.
Jonas: You want the girl or not?
Malkovich: Forty million and the girl. Immediately upon delivery.
Jonas: Excellent. Now to get the boy.
The rage coursing through my body took all my effort not to let loose. My mind was swimming. All these years of not knowing, of wondering, of searching.
I clenched my fists. Jonas had been responsible for Mama and Hannah’s deaths. He’d destroyed an amazing woman and a sweet little girl.
And now he was going to sell my wife to a man who not only had killed my mother and sister but every one of his women after torturing them first.
The room seemed to still as if everyone was waiting for my reaction. I’d spent too many years schooling my responses to give anything away.
Taking a deep breath, I turned to Kurt and took the laptop he held. That was when I noticed the only soldiers in the room were those who’d been with me since I was a teenager. None of the ones from earlier in the morning were here.
If Lucas had removed everyone who was under Jonas, he had to have suspicions about loyalty, especially after what Jonas had said in the transcript.
I glanced at Lucas, who gestured with his chin to the computer. “Take a look at what we found on the surveillance footage from the family airstrip an hour after Jonas left here.”
My gaze shifted to the screen. There was a picture of Jonas boarding a plane.
“That’s not one of our jets.” I studied the luxury aircraft.
“It’s Malkovich’s.”
“Who cleared it to land? Ben?”
Ben was one of my men—he would never betray me.
Lucas’s gaze grew harder than before. “No. Andre found his body half an hour ago. Ben was shot and then his throat was slit.”
That was the signature move for Malkovich’s people.
Fuck. Ben had a wife and kids. He’d moved to the airfield believing it was a safer position than being my security detail.
Jonas had planned all of this. He’d sacrificed a good man.
“Why the fuck didn’t we get a warning the airstrip was in use?”
“Because Jonas ensured we wouldn’t.” Kurt pointed to the screen.
Circled in bold red were the faces of Dax and Samuel Walter. They stood at the base of the stairs of the plane Jonas boarded, and from their demeanor, they weren’t just with Jonas, they were with Malkovich.
How long had they played both sides?
The sense of betrayal was a punch to the gut. They were two high-ranking lieutenants in the organization, who’d been around since Opa had run the family. I’d trusted them. They’d helped me get my head on straight after my mother and sister’s murders. They’d played at loyalty to the family above all things.
Liars. They sacrificed the life of one of our men and put my wife in mortal danger.
Those bastards were going to learn the cost of siding with anyone other than the family.
“Did they come back after dropping Jonas off?” I asked, to no one in particular. This time I couldn’t hide the rage boiling in me.
Lucas answered, “Yes. They’re in the basement. I have them searching the files for information on Jonas’s safe houses.”
“I’m sure they liked that task.”
Dax and Samuel were at the top of the food chain under Jonas, but with me they wouldn’t have that place. They’d have to prove they were worthy of their positions.
That was a moot point now.
“They haven’t quite grasped I’m your second and if I tell them to scrub toilets, they need to shut their mouths and do it.”
“Kurt, you’re in charge. Secure the room. I believe it’s time to have a chat with the Walter brothers.”
Not
