Page 14 of Daddy's Babies: Johnnie's Story

I call Jude to see where he’s at, having gotten Jesse’s grumpy agreement to come back to the office even though he’s already at home with Maddie and Hudson. I’ll have to make it up to him later, but right now, I need all hands on this.

It’s a relief to know that Jude’s still at the office and I head up to the conference room, waiting for the message that the security people are here. My feet slow when I see Julie in the room with Jude. She might be my oldest sister, but I don’t want to pull her into this mess. She’s got Serenity and Anya to take care of, not to mention Serena will kill me if anything happens to her.

“Hey, I didn’t know you were still here. Serena’s probably chomping at the bit for you to get home,” I say, hoping she’ll agree but the look on her face is the one she gives to the new hires on our crews that don’t want to listen to her because she’s a woman.

“Jude said Jesse’s on his way back in, if you’re pulling him away from Maddie and Hudson on a Monday night, something happened, and I’m not just going to walk out and leave you all to deal with it alone,” Julie argues and I run my hand through my hair not wanting her to worry or know just how fucked up it all was, but there’s no arguing with my sister either—I know that.

“Fine, you can stay,” I grumble, pacing the room until I hear footsteps headed our way. Jesse comes into the room with the man that introduces himself as Doug and I shake his hand as he and five others make introductions with Julie and Jude.

“Alright, want to tell us what the hell’s going on, why I’m here instead of at home with Maddie and Hudson right now?” Jesse asks once we’re all settled into seats. He glances over to Doug and adds, “I take it you found out something not so pleasant about Johnnie’s new girl?”

“Not about the girl,” Doug says as I shoot a glare at my brother for the way he put it. “I was still trying to figure out which of the dozens of Robert Dennings was her father when Johnnie sent us more information just before we came in here. That let us figure out who this Brent character was because the number Carly has is for a burner phone.”

My jaw tightens at that news, knowing they likely didn’t have anything on the man yet, which only makes me angrier. “So, you know nothing still?”

“Not exactly. We started an investigation into the man’s company a few years ago, but before we got far on it, the client that hired us to look into them let us know that the person stalking her was found and arrested, and she was wrong. At the time we didn’t think anything about it, but now, with what you said this girl told you, it’s raising some red flags,” Doug said, levelling me with a look I knew was going to raise my hackles more. “Brent Ellis is not a man that advertises what he’s doing. His business from everything that we’ve run across before now, is nothing more than a front for what we figured was illegal activities. Now based on what happened with this girl, we’re pretty certain he’s running a prostitution ring at the least and at worst…he’s trafficking.”

“Fuck,” Jesse groans from next to me as my fingers turn white around Carly’s phone.

“So now comes the hard questions,” Doug warns, looking straight at me as he says it. “You said you kept running into this girl around town. Is it possible that she’s playing you?”

He holds up his hand before I can say a word and adds, “Ellis is a part owner of Club One. Her father works for him. Do you honestly believe she knows nothing about what happens there for her to be there at the exact same time that you were driving by, after randomly seeing you around town, when you and your brothers have been trying to get that place shut down?

“After Jesse had us put up cameras to try and catch them doing something we can use against them,” he tacks on, and I shoot a look at my brother in silent question. Jesse gives me a nod which only makes me angrier because it means this guy really thinks my girl is part of this shitstorm.

“Carly’snota part of this. She’s not playing some fucking game on me. I got home tonight after work, walked into my living room, and found her curled up in a ball on the floor, almostcatatonicbecause that asshole threatened her,” I seethe, not about to let any of them question my girl. “She was fucking terrified because that man threatened that if she didn’t get him a million dollars by Thursday, that not only would he fire her father, turn them out of their house, but kill him, before finding her boyfriend and killing him, and then forcing her to screw whoever he told her to! All of this the weekend after she became mine, afterItook her virginity, sono, she’s not fucking playing me.”

“Shit man,” Jude says as Julie’s hand slides up onto my shoulder, keeping me from flying out of my chair to strangle the ass that even begun to suggest that Carly’s not being honest with me.

“It’s going to be okay,” Julie adds, pulling my attention over to her as her other hand squeezes my arm. I let out a shuddering breath as the worry and fear and fury that’s been racing through my veins for the last hour begins to subside a hint at the concern and strength behind the look on her face.

“I’m just making sure that you want to do this,” Doug says, pulling our attention back over to him. “You barely know this girl and everything my guys are finding proves that Ellis is nothing but a pure bastard and into more illegal shit than you can imagine.”

“I know everything I need to know about Carly. She’s mine. To anyone else, it might seem fast, but that’s just how we are, how our family is. Our dad knew it instantly with our mom, Jackie knew it with Ethan, Julie knew it with Serena, and Jesse knew it with Maddie. It was the same with me once I spoke more than a couple words with Carly. She’s mine and I’m not going to let anyone hurt her again. Not this Brent Ellis and not her fucking father. I don’t give a shit if Ellis kills him—not if he told that bastard that he could do whatever he wanted with Carly is true. Hell, not even after seeing the shit he’s texted her, and I’m not talking just today or this weekend,” I add, pulling up the conversations on it for them to see for themselves.

I shake my head as the little things from this weekend come back to mind. “Carly…she’d prepare herself every time she got ready to say something this weekend that she thought I wouldn’t like. She was ready for me to scream and shout at her over the little shit or inconvenience, let alone the bigger things. She fell apart after she told me what that bastard said to her, I’m not talking just let out her worry, I’m talking full on, near hysterical level relief when all I did was wrap her up tight and hold onto her when she kept apologizing for bringing this mess to me. There was nothing fake about this weekend or today—or any of the times we ran into each other before Friday. She was there because I was meant to find her, meant to make her mine, and take care of her, so that’s what I’m going to do, however the fuck I have to.”

“And if she’s his, that means she’s family, and no one is going to fuck with our family,” Jesse adds shooting Doug a warning look as he pats my shoulder.

“Alright, how do you all want to play this with Ellis then? If you pay him the million, he’s just going to want more. If he thought or knew that Carly was a virgin before this weekend…” Doug trailed off as my jaw nearly broke knowing what that bastard wanted to do with my girl.

“Two weeks ago today, her father texted her, asking her to bring a contract to him at work, he didn’t say it was important and Carly figured she’d just drop it off sometime while she did some shopping and ran errands. Somewhere she lost the folder it was in and that’s when they pushed her to find it, leading her to that club Friday because she couldn’t,” I state, and Doug just stares at me since I’d already told him most of this. “Carly didn’t like the man before Friday, said he looked at her in ways that made her uncomfortable. If anyone was set up in any of this, it has to be her. That bastard probably had someone grab the folder when she wasn’t paying attention to lead her to that point Friday. I can give you the times and places where I ran into her in the last two weeks. Surely you can see if you can’t find someone that was following her, see if she was there two weeks ago at the same spots and if you can uncover what happened to that folder.”

“Try to prove that it was all a set-up, sure,” Doug agrees and one of the men shoots off a message to someone as I write down the list, before they hook up Carly’s phone to a laptop to download the information on it, including the reminder warnings from Brent Ellis that’d come through since their phone call.

“She has GPS info collecting in the background,” Kent tells us after a couple minutes while we discussed security for my building. “She’s not one that keeps to a routine route,” he adds as he turns around the screen to show us a map with multiple-colored lines all over the city. “Each color is a different day. None of them overlap completely other than beginning at her house and ending there, with a few stops into a restaurant just down the block from it.”

“That’s probably where her friend Chloe works,” I tell them, and Kent pulls up the info, nodding my way.

“Yup, she’s got a friend on her socials named Chloe that works at Nelson’s Steakhouse. There’s pictures of them together there,” Kent adds, and I can’t help but shoot a knowing look at Doug to say ‘see’.

“What’s so important about her not sticking to a routine?” Julie asks as he and Doug look at a few more things from her map as I stew, needing something to keep the bastard far away from my girl, to keep my baby girl safe.

“It means it’s harder for someone to follow her without being seen, as well as to grab her,” Kent tells us and my breath stalls in my chest, panic hitting hard and fast. “She takes a lot of pictures though, so that along with the GPS locations can help us map these places in real time as to when she was there.”

“She gets distracted easily. She told me the teachers tested her for ADHD and ADD when she was younger, but she came out on the low side, so they didn’t do anything else about it. She might have a mild version of it, but when she’s doing something that she enjoys, she’s fully focused on it. She takes photos of things that spark her interest as well as making sure she gets photos of where she was to see it in case, she wants to go back for it later.”

“You learnt all that in one weekend when you couldn’t keep your hands off her?” Julie teases me, making a smile tug at my lips but I don’t deny it. “She really is yours, isn’t she?”

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