Page 4 of Their Domme

But mostly… Nicholette got me, that was what I missed most. Alexei got me, and Rhodes did most of the time, but everyone else... Hell, I needed a break just thinking about it.

“Sacha and Vas have been going through all the people associated with the trafficking ring that they can find,” I said slowly, reining my wandering thoughts back to the job at hand. “Or the ones we find.”

Alexei inclined his head slightly. “As has Rhodes, but none of these names are familiar.”

“The F?rstner Family had a change of leadership recently. Emmerich is taking over. He could be making his mark,” I suggested, making Alexei hum in thought.

“Maybe. You think he would share information with us?”

“Doubt it since he has put off face-to-face meetings with Rhodes since coming back to the East Coast. All his recent deals have been done with representatives coming in his stead,” I replied with amusement. “Rhodes has been very irritated because he can only rock the boat so much with the man now that he’s the head of the Germans. It’s obvious he’s prioritizing fixing his own house before worrying about anyone else, even if that someone else is Nicholette. Too many repercussions if he pisses them off or pushes too far. Fucking politics.”

Alexei had opened his mouth to say something else when an alarm beeped on my computer. Opening up the security footage, I saw Sacha and the others driving up. “They better have brought food. I’m fucking starving.”

“Just try to not start shit with Vas tonight,” he muttered as he stood up.

“That sounds like a boring as fuck night,” I joked, laughing when he shook his head. I followed him out of the office. Quietly, we walked down the hallway and got downstairs just as Rhodes strode out to the first floor to meet us. My uncle’s long hair was slicked back as usual, though I had noticed more lines to his face than there had been a month ago.

The ground level was a large open space that used to be the factory floor. Now it featured groupings of sofas, coffee tables, and pool tables, and in the back was where some of the members did work on their bikes. It was a nice space overall, thanks to its many uses, from club meetings to orgies to a torture room.

While I was looking around at our place, the brothers walked in with Bodhi and Oli behind them, both men carrying pizza boxes.

“What did the ice queen say?” Rhodes asked, not bothering with a greeting or small talk of any kind.

Bodhi and Oli laughed a bit at the nickname, putting the pizza boxes down on top of one of the coffee tables. The rest of the club had been cleared out by Rhodes as soon as Sacha had texted us.

“One of her contacts was investigating the ring when he disappeared,” Sacha informed us firmly. “She gave us his information and all the information he had gathered before going silent.”

“I have news as well,” Alexei said as we walked over to join them, him settling on the end of the couch as I sat in the middle, grabbing three slices of pizza. “Higher ups in the ring have been going missing, but no one knows who is responsible. Brian only said two names, but neither of them are ones we’ve questioned.”

“Who?” Vas asked him as Sacha grabbed a seat. Bodhi sat next to me, with Oli sitting on the arm of the sofa beside his boyfriend. Rhodes pulled up another chair, his steely gaze studying all of us intently.

“Karen Ellenburg and Tim Johnson. He didn’t give any other information though.”

“I’ll look up the names after I eat this slice,” Oli said when Sacha glanced in his direction.

“I’ll search for Karen, and you take Tim?” I offered, and the younger man gave me a thumbs up as I took a bite of my food.

“What about Maeve’s informant?”

“A guy named Gabriel. We figured we’d look at it all here together. Make things easier,” Sacha said easily, drinking the coffee in his hand in favor of ignoring the pizza on the table. “He worked for her for a while, then he opened his own boutique in the city. Olive and Grove.”

Oli choked hard enough that Bodhi reached up and smacked his back a few times until his boyfriend could breathe. “Did you say Olive and Grove?!”

“You know it?” Rhodes asked. Oliver nodded, but the movement was immediately followed up by a shake of his head.

“Tell us,” Sacha ordered.

“Never been there. But after our apartment was broken into and all of Nic’s stuff was destroyed, she went there to get clothes. I remember seeing the name on some of the bags.”

All the men around me stilled. I took the last bite of pizza and stood up, wiping my hands on my jeans. “You all look at the shop. I’m going to check into the bitch’s name.” Without looking back, I walked upstairs and back to my office, snagging my pack of smokes off the desk. I lit up a smoke before unlocking the computer. I’d start with the easy legal shit like Google. Karen Ellenburg was an older suburban grandmother. There were tons of pictures of her with grandkids, nine adults that looked like her kids, and other posterworthy family photos. A fucking lie if I ever saw one.

“Where is your dirty laundry?” I muttered, blowing smoke out one side of my mouth while I kept scrolling.

Sixty-eight years old, mother of nine, and grandmother to twenty-seven grandkids. She was the president of a local homeowners association, a widow, and she’d just sold her florist business a few weeks ago. Karen had gone missing two days ago, and the family was beside themselves. A fifty-thousand-dollar reward had been allocated for leads, but nothing had come to fruition yet. The police had nothing—no leads, information, or even ideas for suspects. From what I saw in the news articles, their best guess was that she’d walked away.

Nothing fucking useful.

Taking another drag of my cigarette, I savored the nicotine filling me as I pulled up another website and typed in her name.Still nothing.No police record. Nothing about her would even hint at being part of something as horrific as a trafficking ring.

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