Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 129980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Andrii “Maestro” Federoff shook his head at Steele. “You know these kinds of relationships aren’t built overnight. It takes time to build the kind of trust needed between us for me to get the information we want.”
“We need to find these women if Billows is holding them. We know he trains them as sex slaves,” Steele said. “If he has victims and they’re auctioned off before we can get to them, we don’t have a prayer of ever getting them back.”
Andrii was well aware. He wouldn’t have gone along with this assignment if the stakes weren’t so high.
Viktor “Czar” Prakenskii, the president of Torpedo Ink, Maestro’s motorcycle club, studied his hard features. Maestro kept his expression a mask. No one wanted Czar’s scrutiny. He had a way of seeing into a man or woman and knowing their secrets. Maestro had too many secrets he couldn’t afford to expose.
“How hard is this going to be for you?”
The question was put to him in a mild, almost casual tone, but Maestro wasn’t deceived. He’d been around the club president since they both were young children. Czar had saved his life on more than one occasion. Maestro was still undecided about whether that was a good thing. On some days, especially when he was around Czar’s children or Steele’s son, there was a lightness in him he vaguely recognized as happiness. His music gave him peace. He lived for his music. And there was his affinity with wood. At times just being in a work environment, hands on wood, gave him close to the same peace as music gave him.
“Maestro?” Czar pressed. Czar was a big man and very strong. His blue-gray eyes often could turn a liquid silver when he focused wholly on someone. His hair, worn long and usually pulled back at the nape of his neck, was black but streaked with silver.
Maestro knew he was taking too long to answer. Just thinking about Zelie sent strange waves of euphoria snaking through him. He didn’t like the foreign sensation.
Maestro lifted one dark eyebrow, a smirk appearing briefly. “Easy target. She isn’t going to be a problem. I made the approach. The connection was solid immediately.” His smirk faded. “I’ll say this much. She’s gorgeous, intelligent and the real deal. That combination doesn’t come along very often. In fact, I’ve never seen it. Not ever. Not once in all the women I’ve been with.”
There was a stunned silence. The other members seated in the meeting room exchanged long shocked looks. “You’re really attracted to her,” Lazar “Keys” Alexeev blurted out.
Keys was his best friend. Together they played in the band Crows Flying. They owned a construction business, 287 Construction, with the two other band members. Keys and Maestro guarded Steele whether he liked it or not—and he didn’t like it. They made it their business to keep him and his family safe. Keys had wide shoulders, dark hair and hazel eyes. He looked fit, his arms bulging with muscle that was more genetic than built in a gym.
“She got me hard as a fuckin’ rock,” Maestro admitted. “She didn’t do anything but sit there looking at her tablet, with the sun shining through the window hitting all that hair.”
Czar frowned. “That could be a problem for you, Maestro. Finding someone who fits with you and knowing you’re deceiving her can take a toll.”
Maestro’s gut tightened unexpectedly. He didn’t know why Zelie affected him the way she did. He didn’t trust women or outsiders. He couldn’t imagine anyone ever changing his mind. His childhood and teenage years had been horrific, thanks to the many betrayals and, worse, him losing those he cared about because they refused to listen. They refused to acknowledge anyone else’s expertise.
He’d seen that trait in a few of the women his Torpedo Ink brethren had chosen for partners. He could never—would never—be able to put up with that type of what he considered reckless and willful disobedience. He knew he was a control freak when it came to anyone he cared for. The fear of losing them was so strong that he often said and did things that even his sisters and brothers in Torpedo Ink didn’t understand. How could they, when he barely understood how he had become the way he was?
“She’s a mark, Czar,” Maestro reiterated, more for himself than Czar. “We have no idea if she’s involved. This is the first time we’ve had solid information on anyone high up in this trafficking ring. How long have we been working on it? Two years? Three? How many women and children have been lost because we couldn’t find names or places to look for them?”
All members were present as usual when they were deciding on something important. They might follow Czar, their president’s, lead, but the policy was that everyone had a voice. The original members of Torpedo Ink had been joined by two of Czar’s birth brothers, Gavriil and Casimir. Stamped with the Prakenskii looks, both had been held and trained in Sorbacov’s schools of horror. The schools they attended weren’t quite as bad as the one Czar had been taken to, but they suffered their own horrors, and more than once, Gavriil had been brought to Czar’s school as a threat.