A knock on the door startled both Aaron and me, but he immediately indicated for me to sit on the bed and pull the covers over me to hide the fact that I was wearing pants and a hoodie. Aaron opened the door and his shoulders relaxed as Marco walked in. When Aaron closed the door, he turned toward me.
“It’s okay,” he said, and focused his attention on Marco, who was holding up a phone. Aaron took it without a single word and tapped the screen a few times, a frown line creasing his brow.
“She’s too high profile. We can’t risk it,” Marco hissed, throwing strange glances my way as I sat up. “Are you sure you don’t want us to have this conversation somewhere else?”
“No,” Aaron said determinedly. “We don’t have time. We’ll have to try option B.”
Marco’s mouth fell open. “Are you crazy?”
“Probably, but there’s nothing else we can do.”
“And when he finds out, then what? It’s not worth it! She’s not worth it!” Marco raised his voice, then seemed to catch himself, and just gave Aaron a long look. I leaned forward, wondering what they were discussing.
“He doesn’t have time to care about that. I don’t expect him to even remember her. Just fix up her hair or something and he won’t even recognize her.” Aaron handed the phone back to Marco, who tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Just don’t forget to get rid of everything.”
“Okay.” Marco shuffled his feet, looking resigned. “But what about the rest?”
“We’ll see. Just do what we agreed, okay?”
Marco nodded. “But I still think you’re being an idiot.”
“Duly noted.”
It was obvious Marco was more than just Aaron’s bodyguard; he was Aaron’s very close friend.
“There’s something else we should discuss. The thing tomorrow.” Marco wiggled his eyebrows.
“It should go as planned.” Aaron’s voice was barely audible. Marco whispered something back, so I quietly slipped out of the bed and inched forward while they were distracted. Aaron was checking something on his own phone, so there was no way for him to see me reaching for the phone in Marco’s pocket.
“Hey!” Marco turned toward me as I snatched the phone and dashed across the room.
“Give it back! Now!” Aaron said with a hint of a threat in his voice, but I avoided Marco and jumped up on the bed, quickly scrolling through the info. My mouth fell open as I scanned through various fake passports, documents, and locations where the girls should be taken after his father had picked his favorites. If I wasn’t wrong, Aaron and Marco were shipping the girls off to other countries and giving them false identities instead of killing them like Roberto requested. Even their closest family members seemed to have been taken with them in some cases.
Was that what they were trying to do with Katya? Ship her off somewhere? Have her drugged so she wouldn’t even remember what had happened to her or who she was? Was that why Aaron had mentioned option B? Katya couldn’t just be sent somewhere random since my family would be looking for her and they’d find her. Marco had climbed on the bed with me and got a hold of my arm, trying to pry the phone out of my fingers, just as I scrolled past a plan that suspiciously looked like a tip off to the cops about one of Aaron’s shipments.
It even contained the name of the detective... Although, maybe that was just to warn the cops to let them pass and search elsewhere, but it didn’t look that way. Why would Aaron want his own shipment to get busted? Maybe so his father would give him some of his? Marco managed to take the phone from me and I crossed my arms as I glared at Aaron.
“You’re both idiots for keeping this information written down on that.” I nodded toward the phone. “What if it’s hacked or stolen? You saw how easy it was for me to take it.” Unless that was exactly what they’d wanted me to do. I bit down on my lip, eyeing Aaron as I got down from the bed.
“That information will self-destroy as soon as Marco’s out of this room,” Aaron said. “And that’s not a phone. It just looks like it. It can’t be hacked that easily and no one knows I have it. But if you breathe a word to anyone about what you’ve seen, the deaths of all those women and their families, including your cousin’s, will be on you, because if my father finds out, he’ll hunt them all down.”
I flinched at the mention of my cousin. There was a tic in his jaw as his hard eyes met mine. So he’d found out Katya was related to me, probably the same way he’d figured out my real name.
He glanced over his shoulder at Marco. “You can go. Proceed as planned.”
Marco quickly exited and shut the door behind him. Aaron’s gaze settled on me again.
“Are you trying to bust your own shipment?” I asked.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Um, you made it my business when you forced me to help you, so why don’t you tell me what exactly we’re doing? I could be of more help if I knew what the hell is going on. Why are you helping those girls anyway? Do you think it makes you less of a monster? You’re still sitting there and doing nothing to stop what your father’s doing. Do you think saving a few makes up for the ones that your father uses and kills?”
He pressed his lips into a tight line and just watched me for a moment. “You can think whatever you want about me. I don’t care. I told you why you’re here and there isn’t anything else you need to know. Do you really think I’d give that information to my enemy? Did it ever occur to you that having too many dead bodies lying around would be hard to explain? My father sometimes thinks he’s untouchable, but I know better. If the girls don’t remember anything, it’s better to send them away. Easier and much cleaner.”
“I don’t believe you.” A smile quirked my lips. “I’ve seen the files. No one would miss those girls or look for them too much. Hell, I don’t think anyone even knows some of them are in this country, and yet... you try to do everything to get them safely far away from your father.”
He let out a loud laugh. “Believe whatever you want to, but if you think I won’t do whatever it takes to get what I want, you’re fooling yourself.”
“Right,” I said dryly. “You want to take over the whole drug empire, but you don’t care about the girls.”
“Finally you get it. I don’t want anything to get in my way, especially not some insignificant pets.” He flashed me a smile so cold I thought the room would freeze over.
“How do you expect me to trust you that you’ll let me go once I do for you what you ask of me when you say things like that?” I raised an eyebrow at him. He was lying about not caring about the girls. If he was worried about the cops, he’d just do what his father did and get them buried somewhere deep where no one could find them and kill off anyone who dared to ask about them. Why would he care about the body count when I’d seen footage of him killing his enemies or partners who’d betrayed him? The cops wouldn’t even blink if he killed someone right in front of them because his father had them in his grasp.
“You can’t, but now that I have your cousin...” He sounded so pleased with himself. “She’s been drugged out of her mind. If you want her to stay alive, you’ll do exactly what I say.”
“Yeah, yeah, so I’ve heard, but I’m going to need proof.”
His brow furrowed.
“I want proof that my cousin’s alive and well.”
“Fine.”
I waited for him to say something else, threaten me, or argue, but he didn’t. Huh. Maybe I should’ve asked him if he was bipolar.