Page 62 of Dark Consequences

“You know, you fucked his cousin too,” Michael says when the last Triad member falls.

“Why do you think I joined you on that dare?”

We kick in a door at the very back of the warehouse and come face-to-face with a group of scared young girls and the pair of Triad members pointing guns at them.

One of them swings toward us, and Michael buries a bullet in his forehead before he can squeeze the trigger. His partner turns, and I shoot his knee out before he can do anything. He falls to the ground in a crying heap of blood and tears.

“Wrong move,” Michael tells him as he steps forward and grabs the gun the guard dropped.

“We need this one alive,” I remind my brother. “For information.”

Michael concedes with a groan, like the idea of leaving the bastard alive for a second longer is highly inconvenient.

While Michael ties up the Triad guard, I tend to the frightened girls including the little blonde girl the guard talked about. A few of the younger ones just arrived from China with the promise of a better life, only to be met with the opposite. Two of the older girls work at one of the Russian’s less exclusive sex clubs, which made them easy targets. And it’s not a coincidence either because they weren't alone when they were brought here. So it seems Evie and Enzo’s research was right, too.

Maybe a few would have ended up as prostitutes working the streets and others as slaves working until their fingers bleed from hard work, but all would have been treated like Lily. Thankfully, nothing more terrible will happen to this group.

I call Enzo in, and together, we load the girls into a van. He offers to take them to the closest hospital, where the authorities will meet them. As they drive away, it finally feels like we’ve gotten a step ahead of Xiao, and I intend to have his head before the week’s over.

“Well, well, well,” I drawl when I rejoin Michael and our guest. “Who do we have here?”

“You fucking Italian bastard!” the man spits.

“Well, that’s rude.” Humming low, I take my knife out and spin the blade in my hand. “Do you know who we are?”

“You’re the DiAngelo brothers,” he hisses through clenched teeth.

“That’s right. Then you also know—”

“That you’re a pair of idiots who think you’ve won when you’ve never lost so hard.” The man interrupts through a wet laugh as blood spurts from his mouth.

I glance at Michael, who stands watching the exchange with a blank expression. “That’s funny. Because from where I’m sitting, you’re the one who’s lost.”

“Don’t you think it was too easy that you found this place?”

“What do you mean?”

“Xiao wanted you to find this place. He needed you out of that tower of yours to get back what’s rightfully his.”

Realization dawns on me, cold and freezing as if a bucket of ice water has been tossed over me. My breath catches in my lungs as my heart seizes.

“Lily.”

30

Lily

Waking up is a struggle as each of my senses slowly returns.

The room is bright when I open my eyes, and I blink several times to adjust to the light. My head feels heavy, and my mouth dry. I’m lying on something solid but soft, a bed probably, and every joint in my body aches in protest when I try to sit up.

When I do, all at once, the memories of what happened with Emilia at Raphael’s penthouse come flooding back.

“That bitch,” I moan.

She drugged me.

Emilia was out of her fucking mind, claiming I was in the way of her and Raphael’s nonexistent romance. And the only way to get rid of me was…Xiao.

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