Page 143 of His Hell Girl

I don't even have to look to know what she's talking about, since I have them already memorized.

"Then I thought thatmaybethey were looking to sell them, since they would be a hot commodity to any private or national army," she continues and my lips twitch, pride swelling in my chest as I see where she's going.

She's my match. In absolutely every way.

"But why would they riskso muchmoney in something that's not remotely close to a finished product," she asks, her tone serious.

"Are you saying I'm an unfinished product, hell girl?" I fire back, enjoying the way she becomes flustered.

"Vlad!" she exclaims, fuming at me.

"Go on, go on." I lift my hands up to pacify her.

"What I'm trying to say," she takes a deep breath, turning to the board, "is that I don't think Project Humanitas is where they are funneling the moneyinoroutof," she explains. "Maybe some of it ends up there, since Miles is clearly a fanatic, but how many people do you think would buy the super soldier bullshit? My father certainly didn't and by all accounts he would havebeen thrilled at the prospect of having killing machines at his beck and call."

"Indeed," I reply, my eyes sparkling with excitement. "Then where do you think the cash flow is coming from?"

She purses her lips, her brows drawing together.

"Human trafficking of some sort. But it must be at an insane scale. Think about it. Children missing. Peoplewithoutthe mutation are missing. There must be some type of underground ring andeveryoneis involved. The question is, though, what could be so important that all these people were so keen on investing? It's clear everything ties to Miles somehow, but besides his weird, rather personal, plans about the super soldiers, there's no other information on what he could be up to."

"You're right," I agree, my voice full of pride. "My guess is that once Miles realized he couldn't get the investment he needed for his project, he resorted to something else to draw people in. At the same time, he funneled some of that money into his own research. You're right that not everyone would buy into the super soldier crap he had going, even though the results do seem appealing. The research, though, isn't reliable enough for him to be able to push it to the more skeptical people," I add, coming to stand next to her in front of the board.

"And I think that's where Meester comes into play." I point to his photo at the top of the board, tracing his connection to Miles with my fingers. "Ever since my father took him under his wing, he's been extolling the virtues of human trafficking as a source of fast cash. At the time, my father had his own, rather profitable business with drugs, and he wasn't a man prone to change what was already working for him."

"So Meester started his own thing?"

"Yes. You saw the situation atPapillion. There's a demand foreverything. There are just not enough people who can fulfillthese demands. Animals, humans, rarities, every one of those is valuable to the right buyer. And Meester certainly capitalized on that."

"And the fights," she notes.

"Yes. His main business is the fighting. He buys slaves from all over the world and trains them to be the next best thing."

"Do you think that might be it? Illegal fighting? But wouldn't that profit from strong, genetically superior fighters?"

"I've thought about that too, and I've managed to pull some data from his past fights. But because everything is so underground, I couldn't find much. The info I do have points toward regular fighters. So if he does have some of those super soldiers Miles might have created, he hasn't shown them to the public yet."

"Then it can't be illegal fighting that everyone is so interested in, right?"

I shake my head.

"No. It's too niche and unpredictable for this many people to be involved in it. I've had a word with Enzo too, since a lot of the stuff that goes on in that sphere is linked to his name. He's been digging into it and he promised to send me an updated file with buyers and suppliers."

"You think Jimenez might have been involved in this?" she asks, frowning.

I'd given her a full rundown of Enzo's businesses and everything that had happened in the past few years when Enzo had struck a deal with Jimenez to sell out his family. But with Jimenez's untimely death he'd become the sole executor of half his fortune.

And since Jimenez was a known sex trafficker in the region, it might make sense that he'd be involved in this shit.

Except he isn't.

I should know since I've been listening in to all of Enzo's conversations for the better part of the year, giving me a good enough idea of what Jimenez left behind and how Enzo's been using those resources.

"Nope," I answer without hesitation. "You could say I'm intimately familiar with the workings of Jimenez's empire since he was the first one I tried to infiltrate in my search for Katya. I know almost every facet of his business and I can assure you he couldn't have been involved. Mostly because he couldn't break into New York until very recently. This." I point toward the board of connections, "Is much older and probably stretches back more than a decade."

"I see." She nods, digesting the information.

"But now, when you figure Sacre Coeur into the equation, I think it's something a bit different," I add, narrowing my eyes.

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