Page 71 of Conceal

Unknown Number: Here's a secure dropbox. Upload everything here, and I'll take a look

It’s a short URL, but I do just that, navigating to the site and dragging absolutely everything that looks like it could be related to trafficking into it.

The progress bar is painfully slow, but it’s a ton of data, so I’m not surprised.

I’ll keep looking and keep uploading if it takes me days.

I find another folder called “expansion”. The top file is a photograph of a warehouse by the shipping docks on the Maryland side of the river.

I recognize it.

It’s one my father used to use. Why would Vitale have a photograph of our property?

I zoom in.

A message beneath it reads:

Secure enough for temporary holding once the princess is removed.

My blood turns cold.

Princess. Me?

The next few images are screenshots of a text exchange.

K: C will retaliate if the girl is harmed

Vitale: The girl is the point

C: Shooter must miss

Vitale: He knows the terms

The air in my lungs seizes. He ordered the hit. But he ordered the shooter to miss. He shot Ro intentionally. But why? To convince my father that I was safer with him? But does my father know who ordered the shooter?

My brain is doing that fuzzy, I-feel-dumb-thing where it’s grasping for connections that don’t exist yet.

Unless my father promised me to Vitale as a form of insurance? Vitale gets the warehouse and me in exchange for peace? The supposed “shooting” was the threat to make my father make this exchange?

Oh, my God. Is my father trafficking women and children too?

Jesus Christ, I hope not.

I stay up, copying documents into the encrypted website until I fall asleep on the keyboard. No detail is too small. If someone is going to build a case that takes this ring down, I don’t want it to fail because I looked over something.

I want to reach out to my guys. To tell them that we’re closer than ever. But I don’t want them to get their hopes up. I don’t know anything about the legal system, or what proof is needed to arrest Giovanni, or if they even will.

So I text them ‘goodnight’ and collapse face down on my bed.

Chapter forty-four

Mikhail

Work and working out weren’t cutting it today. Tati’s ‘goodnight’ text at seven this morning has me on edge. It means she stayed up all night and was just going to sleep. But why? What would keep her up all night?

The lack of progress on any plan to get her safe was driving me crazy.

The bell over the door to Twisted Ink tinkles pleasantly, and the familiar and comforting buzz of tattoo machines and classic rock loosen a little of the pressure in my chest. My body Pavlovian knows that pain is on the way.