Page 62 of Lord of the Underworld

"They narrowed the base back here to Chicago," Marco says, flinching, as his brother spits another bloody globule at his face. "They've been tracking the women who fit the profile who are around this region."

We've been so careful.

It feels like there's a hand on my throat, choking me. "Ivan, I have to call Yvette."

He looks over to Vadim, who nods, watching me with concern, before taking me over to a little office built into the corner of the building. "You can speak here without fear of being heard," he says before closing the door.

When my cognitive function came back online after that soul-stirring sex with Vadim - and it took a while - I'd called Yvette so that I could reassure her that I was safe, and that Vadim knowing about us was definitely in our best interests.

Her phone only rings once before she grabs it. "Oksana," she says, half-panicked again. "Are you -"

"Wait, stop, I'm fine. But this is important, and it's not good," I say urgently. "Our geographical spread has been so wide for the people that we've been able to rescue, it never occurred to me they could narrow us down by location. But somehow, they pulled enough factors together to know that the ringleaders are women from crime families, and that they operate from this area."

"Merde!" Yvette curses. "There's more, isn't there? I can tell."

"Manny Rodriguez, our transportation guy for the West Coast, we thought he'd just dropped out, right?" I ask.

"Yes?" she says. I hate the misery creeping into her tone.

"I think they got him," I say, my eyes wet. "They say their men captured two of the operatives."

"Sales bâtards diaboliques! Evil sons of bitches!" she shouts. I pull the phone away from my ear, wincing. "But he wouldn't have known anything, no one knows each other. That is why we run it this way." Her French accent is getting thicker.

"Yvette, take a breath," I swipe the back of my hand against my wet cheeks. "There's more. Some of the men whose wives got away found each other, they hired a team of hunters. That Irish dick -"

"Murphy? Oh, yes," she spits. "His ego couldn't bear that his wife escaped him."

"He contacted the Rossi's, and there's also someone from one of the cartels, I'm not sure what other men are involved yet."

She's muttering in French; I bite my thumbnail and wait. "What's the name of the team?"

"I don't know anything about them, but Ivan did. The Black Kynigós Group," I say. I cringe as glass shatters in the background.

"We are fucked, Oksana," she says urgently. "These men, they're monsters. They can find anyone." She lets out a humorless laugh. "I studied some of their tactics when I first started rescuing women to find a way to counteract husbands looking for them."

"That was brilliant," I say.

"It changes nothing now," she says bitterly. "We should have known some of these bastards would find each other. What are we going to do?"

Gritting my teeth against a furious scream, I try to think. I know that she's been speaking with two new women seeking help. "We stop everything for now," I say bleakly. "Just for now."

"I will tell the new ones that we have not forgotten them," she says. In a whisper, she asks, "Do you think that your husband would help us?"

Turning to look at him, I see that he's put a bullet hole in the Don's knee, then casually stepping on it, leaning in as the man blubbers and squirms.

"He despises them, I know that much," I say. "Not just for what they did to me. He's questioning the Rossi brothers. Once he's pulled every scrap of information from them, let's try to put it together and see what we know."

"Agreed," she sighs.

"Yvette…" I say hesitantly. She's alone, I know she's estranged from her family. "Do you think you should go on vacation for a couple of weeks? Maybe say that you're going somewhere for the holidays? I could ask Vadim to send a couple of bodyguards with you."

"I have my own," she says sharply. "I will consider it. Some good has come of this. Without your husband's intervention, everything would be gone. We would be gone. I'm so sorry about Lana and those women. I'm a fool. It never occurred to me that they would turn."

"It's not your fault," I say. "How could you know?"

"I should have," she says tiredly. I can hear a slow shuffle that tells me she's in her house slippers, pacing the length of her Gold Coast townhouse. "We'll talk tomorrow."

"Good night," I say.