Page 32 of Soulmate of the Mafia King
Allie squeezed my hand back. “Do you really think we’re gonna get to go home?”
Stan had shed precious light on those details too, saying that he was taking us to the airport. I’d interfaced with the whole fucking team in tactical black, and none of them said much. But when I wasn’t talking to them, I was talking to the other women. I hadn’t learned much yet, but a few things were obvious. We were from all over. Europe, North America, Asia, even a few from the Middle East, though none from Egypt, much less Cairo.
Cairo. God. My brother had had a poster of the city on his wall when we were younger. He’d always sworn he was going to become an Egyptologist. He would shit when I told him I was here. He might shit just hearing my voice again.
I shook my head. I had to focus. Whenever I didn’t, I thought about the blood spilling over my hands, the fact I’d hurt the first man trying to help me in a fucking year.
“I don’t know,” I told Allie. “Eventually, probably, but I doubt they’re gonna schedule thirty different flights.”
She frowned. Stan’s grip tightened on the wheel. I wasn’t going to fucking lie. I trusted these guys enough to believe they weren’t just packing us off to the next highest bidder—mostly because we’d all been checked out by doctors as soon as their leader had disappeared for emergency surgery. We’d been given new, modest clothes to wear—but I didn’t know what that meant for us. They’d already separated us into two vans for the trip, something I’d fought tooth and nail over. I’d worked with a few charities who helped women who’d been trafficked before going under, and I knew what the resource pools looked like.
A few more women started crying. I twisted in my seat to see who. One had a mane of red hair and worse injuries than I’d seen on most of the others. She clung to a brunette I was pretty sure didn’t speak English, but I didn’t know what she spoke.
“We’re safe,” I murmured, hopefully quiet enough that Stan couldn’t hear me. “I’m going to make sure of that, okay? No matter what else happens.”
Allie turned to look at them too. “You can trust Cora.”
My heart skipped a beat. She sounded so much like the woman in the alley that night, the only other life I’d ever taken.
I’d been on the beat when the call came in. A domestic spilled out onto the street. Mother and kid versus the baby daddy. I thought I was hot shit, so I radioed in and peeled off for the scene. My partner and I—fuck, I couldn’t even remember his name anymore—had made jokes the whole way. When we showed up, the mom was nearly on the other side of the street, in a crowd of onlookers, but the dad had the kid by the shoulders. He was wearing a wifebeater. In the hand not holding the kid, the baby daddy had a knife. Somehow, I got out of the car, got the mom on my side, and started negotiating with the kid to just walk over, real calm. The guy was shouting, but my partner was trying to handle him. My only job was to get the kid out.
“It’s okay,”his mom said behind me.“You can trust the nice policewoman.”
The kid stepped away. The guy swung out with the knife. And I fired.
Everybody agreed it was a clean shot. The kid got away with nothing worse than a nick on the shoulder. And the memory of his dad dying behind him for the rest of his life. My stomach churned. I still had dreams about killing a man who was about to murder his own son. If I ended the life of some vigilante who saved trafficked women….
We pulled up to an airstrip in the middle of nowhere. Everything started moving quickly. I spent half my time grabbing women who’d started wandering—or running off —and pulling them back. I realized from snippets of conversation wewere all headed to Philadelphia. At least it wouldn’t be a long drive back home to Upstate New York.
Two more vehicles pulled up. A few women screamed. Grace appeared at my side, her fists clenched in a promise she’d fight whoever she needed to fight in order to get us out of here.
“It’s okay,” Stan yelled over the chaos. “They’re with us. Just a few more for the flight.”
Grace didn’t back down. Neither did I. Half a dozen men in suits and a redhead in casual clothes climbed out. Grace stiffened.
“Met her inside,” she said in her strange, rough voice.
The redhead rushed over to us. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. My name is Paige, and we’re all headed back to my shelter in the States. I’ll get you all home from there.”
I studied her for a long moment. She didn’t have the military bearing of a lot of the tactical men, but I could see slivers of scars peeking out from under her clothes, and she looked certain. She looked ballsy.
“Zahur is dead,” she said. “I killed him myself.”
From behind me, women swarmed forward to hug her. Screams and laughter split the air. Predictably, Grace and I hung back. Maybe this Paige was the leader of the operation.
Because I couldn’t ignore the fact that the man I’d stabbed was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER 27
PAIGE
Istood in the middle of a sea of women, nearly as many as we’d found in the basement of the Mansion. All of them were overwhelmed with emotion, dirty, sobbing, bleeding, and laughing with delight.
“What did it feel like?” someone asked.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” another yelled.
“Why did you wait so long?” a third demanded.
