Page 1 of The Fortunate Ones
PROLOGUE
LUCA
“You owe me,”Special Agent Bruce Lawson growled at me. He looked exhausted, and I couldn’t really blame him. I hadn’t made things easy. “You owe me so much, you’ll probably never repay the debt.”
I snorted. “I know. Whatever you need.”
“My wife always wanted to go to Hawaii.”
That was easy. “Done.”
Rain poured down around us, hard enough that even the awning we were under wasn’t protecting us completely, but the special agent barely noticed. “You make it really hard to be annoyed at you, Castellano.”
I laughed. “It’s called charm. It does wonders.”
Lawson sighed heavily. “Just . . . lose my number.”
Grinning, I held out my hand to him. “You’ll miss me.”
Bruce grumbled, taking my hand reluctantly before he turned away, barking orders. The front of the hospital looked more like a circus than a medical center. Despite our efforts, the press had gotten word and were beginning to swarm. Local police were being used to keep the media out and as an extra buffer. The situation was volatile, and these poor kids were still in danger. Among the masses were uniformed and plain-clothesspecial agents, plus my own private security. Most of them were inside, but anyone could easily slip through the mayhem out here, and I felt better knowing my men were also involved. As much as I would’ve loved for this to be quieter, it was kind of impossible when a “raid” led to thirty arrests, five dead, and nine kids rescued from being trafficked.
I turned away and headed inside before any of the cameras got a good look at my face. As a Castellano, I wasn’t a stranger to media attention, but it was a complication I’d rather avoid.
Security eyed me as I walked past their desk and to the elevators. They didn’t like that I’d basically taken over the hospital, but oh well. Sometimes it paid to have money and influence.
Six months. That was how long we’d hit wall after wall when it had come to these assholes. And there were still more loose ends than I would’ve liked.
We now had official custody of Matty and were working on adopting him. It wasn’t easy considering his lineage. Even in a jail cell for fraud, Matty’s grandfather, Lewis Covington, who Matty had been raised to believe was his father, was suing us and making it fucking difficult. Then there was his father’s side of the family . . . but we weren’t getting into that now.
Matty’s custody was only one of the many hurdles we had been facing this past half a year. We had been hoping that the feds would handle finding Matty’s biological father, Bradley Fieldburg, who had orchestrated a deal to sell his son, and Vladimir Andreev, the bastard who had bought him, but so far they had come up empty. Diego had been consistently keeping a finger on the pulse of the situation, but we had stayed on the sidelines. It seemed more important to make Matty feel safe and settled and focus our time on the growing relationship between the six of us rather than chasing ghosts.
Lately, though, we’d realized we were going to have to make a move soon. Even with all the information I’d dumped in the FBI’s lap, they hadn’t made enough progress for me. Matty still needed a bodyguard to go everywhere with him. He couldn’t attend a regular school, and even though we’d gotten him onto a hockey team, every game and practice was a fucking process that made the kid uncomfortable. I wanted these assholes off the street.
Our first big break came in the most unexpected way. Ari, the freelance hacker we had used in the past, before Diego had become part of our family, had called, asking for a favor.
I hadn’t known anything about Ari’s personal life, as he kept it all very secretive. I hadn’t even known his real name until a couple of days ago, so it had been a shock when he’d asked for help for a brother I hadn’t known he had.
Turned out, his brother, Dominic, had run into some trouble, and Ari had been worried it would be more than they could handle, so he’d reached out. I was glad he had. Not only had they needed the backup, but it had turned out their issue directly coincided with the trafficking ring that had taken Matty. While this was a local branch, one much lower down in the pecking order than Vladimir Andreev and the other fucks that had sold Matty, there was still a connection there. Since there had been nothing for the last six months, it had been a fucking relief. We might not have been closer to finding Matty’s father, Andreev, or any of the others, but at least Diego had a direction to look, and help now, in the form of Ari. With one of the docks they used to ship their merchandise currently being raided by every alphabet agency in the States, more information was bound to come out soon.
The elevator dinged, and I stepped off and headed to the pediatric unit, where eight of the nine kids that had been rescued were being held. Most people had to be buzzed in for the kids’safety, but I had a pass that let me bypass the security in the hallway. Even here, there were police roaming, as well as my own team. No offense against the cops, but I didn’t trust anyone I hadn’t personally vetted.
Five of the kids had parents or family members who loved them and were on their way or already here. That left only four that needed emergency placements. It wouldn’t be easy, and the agents and social workers had to be scrambling. They had to find somewhere secure enough to protect these kids, who could still be in very real danger. If they had seen faces or heard names, it was possible that someone could go after them. Then there was the fact that they were traumatized, and throwing them in a regular foster care situation could have bad consequences. I had an idea to help them, but it would take some time and work to get it all together.
Brooks’s voice carried out from one of the rooms to the right. He sounded like he was trying to be quiet but kept forgetting. Smiling, I headed in that direction. One of the nurses stood up like she was going to stop me, but the person next to her grabbed her arm and shook her head, whispering something. Good, one less thing to worry about. One of my guys was stationed at the door. He tilted his head in greeting as I entered.
Brooks was sitting on the floor of the hospital room with two of the youngest kids, two-year-old twins, in his lap. He had gotten toys from somewhere, dinosaur figurines, and had some kind of elaborate game going on with them, complete with roaring sounds. I didn’t know too much about dinos, but I highly doubted any of them were accurate.
Brooks looked up as I walked in and shot me a lopsided grin. “Hey, sir. Loki and Ajax are teaching me everything they know about dinos. This one is a velociraptor, and this is a triceratops. Right, boys?”
“Rawr!!!” The one on the right bounced hard. The one on the left didn’t respond, just fixated on his toy.
Brooks shrugged. “Loki hasn’t spoken yet, and Bailey said he didn’t talk at all while they were being held.”
I squatted down in front of the trio and smiled at the boys. They were identical, with blond hair that was practically white and round eyes that were bigger than their faces.
“Loki and Ajax?” I asked, wondering if those really were their names or if Brooks had made them up.
“Their cousin was one of the older kids. That’s what he said. I guess whoever named them got their mythologies mixed up. Or just didn’t care.”
