Page 31 of Arrogant Bastard

Her breath shudders out, and her gaze swings from the screen to mine and back again. “How can that be? I…I shot him. He’s dead. He has to be.”

I drag my hand across my face, refusing to let the unsettling news disturb me. “It’s okay, baby. We’ll deal with this.”

“How? In the last twelve hours I’ve found out that two of our former team members have been hunted down, tortured, and killed. And now I find out the man who was behind it all, the man I thought I killed is still alive?” Her voice is shaking. Her whole body is shaking.

I reach for her. “Faith—”

She jerks away from me but doesn’t rip into me for using her given name. “I thought I cut off the head of the monster. But nothing we did in Cairo worked, did it? God, it was all for nothing?” There’s a new, peculiar note in her voice, way beyond the horror of discovering that Paul Galveston, one of the major players in the sex trafficking ring and one of the three men we were sent to Cairo to hunt down, is still alive.

I frown and watch her face grow paler. “No, it wasn’t for nothing. We crippled their operation.”

“Crippled isn’t the same as dead. It isn’t the same as definitively taking them out so they don’t get a chance to peddle children again!” She turns her back, hiding her expression from me. “God, I’ve been hiding for four years while they’ve just carried on buying and selling children?”

“You can’t blame yourself for this.”

She whirls around to face me. “Did you know he was alive? Is that why you’ve been trying to keep me here?”

I rise from the chair and cup her chin. “If I knew he was alive, I would’ve hunted him down and ended him for what he did to you.” The naked rage in my voice is abundantly clear. The moments after I found her covered in blood and the race to save her life after what Galveston did were the worst of my life.

She swallows, and her gaze moves back to the screen. “What about the others?”

Raj Phillips and Moses Black. Owners of Phillips Black, Inc. Millionaire shipping and export magnates by day, sex traffickers by night. Along with Galveston, the two men were the unholy trinity that comprised the US-based arm of a global sex trafficking ring.

Paul Galveston, the half-Egyptian son of senior senator Bernie Galveston of Arkansas, used his father’s connections to smuggle girls from Morocco, Egypt, and Eastern Europe into the US via his private air charter business, with support from the shipping arm of Phillips Black. Legitimate contracts secured to send aid shipments via Europe to Africa were clandestinely used to ship sex slaves back to the US. That was bad enough to begin with.

What we discovered when we arrived in Cairo—that all three men, and whoever happened to be in the mood for it, freely availed themselves of their underage victims—gave Faith nightmares for a solid week.

And then things took a turn for the worse. “As far as I know, Raj is still on the run. But Black is dead. You have my word on that.” I didn’t miss my first shot. Or the three that followed.

Her lips thin in a grim line. “Galveston has to know he’s on the watch list, but he’s not even attempting to hide.”

“His father is a powerful man. He still believes he’s untouchable.”

Her jaw clenches. “What if he’s never stopped his activities? Can you find out?”

“Yes. Do you want me to?”

A wave of pain flashes across her face, and she shuts her eyes for a moment. “I want to say no, let the agency take care of it. But I can’t. Killian…those kids…”

I walk over to her and slide my hands up her chilled arms to cup her jaw. “You don’t have to deal with it. I can put us on a plane in the next hour, and make us disappear. Just say the word.”

Her gaze returns to the screen. I watch steely resolution, and something else I can’t quite define, settle on her face. “He needs to pay for what he took…for what he’s done.” Green eyes meet mine. “I want you to find out what he’s up to.”

The selfish bastard inside me that wants to keep her safe and all to myself groans at her decision. But the part that wants the Widow, his sexy, dynamic partner, back is elated.

I ignore the two emotions warring within me as I nod. “Okay, I’ll work on it.”

“What can I do?”

I caress her cheeks with my thumbs. “Nothing for now. You need to catch up on your sleep. Go rest. I’ll come and get you if anything comes up.”

She steps away, picks up the bottle of water, and heads for the door. With her hand on the handle, she pauses and looks over her shoulder. “Killian?”

“Hmm?”

“I’ll need to brush up on my shooting skills. The next time I have him in my sights, I don’t want to miss.”

“If you want to brush up, I can make it happen. But you won’t be getting anywhere near Galveston. Tell me you get that.”

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