“Alena.” Maestro spoke as gently as possible. “I know you’ve experienced betrayal time and again. It hurts, but it can also make you strong. I’m not going in with a bulldozer. We know she has information that could be vital to us. She’s central to getting inside the underground rooms situated below the nightclubs. She has keys to those rooms.”
Maksimos “Ink” Korask, their resident and extremely popular tattoo artist, weighed in. He had wide shoulders and dark hair. His body was covered in tattoos, mostly of animals and birds. Ink was a phenomenal artist and had an affinity with the animals tattooed on his body. He owned Black Ink Tattoo, a popular tattoo parlor in the small town of Caspar.
“We’ve spent more than two years trying to get names, anything at all, to help us find a way to break this ring. If Billows has women trapped in those rooms below his club, we need to get them out of there. We also need answers from Billows.”
Savva “Reaper” Pajari and his younger brother, Savin “Savage” Pajari, were the sergeants at arms for the club. Savage rarely spoke, but when he did, they all listened. He shaved his head to keep his blond curls away. He had shockingly blue eyes, and his very appearance often was enough of a deterrent when other bikers wanted to cause fights in the Torpedo Ink Roadhouse, a bar the club owned and operated.
“We can’t interrogate Billows until we know where those keys are kept. Breaking into the underground rooms hasn’t been a viable solution. Too many risks. We need the keys. Hell, we don’t even know where the entrance is. Maestro, do you believe you can get them from her?”
Maestro had no doubt that, given time, he would be able to search for the keys and make a copy when he found them. Zelie would have to trust him enough to allow him to roam freely in her studio apartment. They’d already searched her living space multiple times when she was out but hadn’t found the keys to the rooms below the club.
“I told you, give me the time and I’ll get everything we need from her. She’s extremely susceptible to me.” He didn’t add that he was also susceptible to her, but somehow, he must have given it away.
Steele gave him a hard look. “You need me to send Keys in?”
Maestro allowed himself to appear a little disconcerted. “Why would you do that?”
“You reacted to her. You’ve never reacted to any woman.”
“She’s a fuckin’ mark, Steele. For all we know, she could be the brains behind this operation. I’d be shocked, but she’s smart enough. She’s into their books. I don’t see how she could see their books every day for all these years and not know what’s going on. Maybe not the trafficking, but she knows this owner is dirty. She actually told me that the first time she ever did the books for Billows she kept him out of prison, and she was only sixteen.”
There was silence for a moment. Czar shook his head. “Sixteen years old and she’s cooking the books for one of the worst criminals we’ve come across.”
“I think she’s a genius when it comes to numbers and patterns,” Maestro admitted. “How else could she manage those books at such a young age?”
Steele sighed. “That’s one more strike against her, Maestro. She’s intelligent enough to keep Billows safe from IRS scrutiny, and she’s worked for him for at least seven years. It seems a little far-fetched that she doesn’t know.”
“I disagree, Steele,” Alena objected. “She’s looking at numbers. She doesn’t necessarily know where the money is coming from.”
“There has to be some accounting.” Kir “Master” Vasiliev was their treasurer and a genius with numbers and making money. Code would steal it from the targets they chose to go after, and Master invested it, making them even more money. He was tall with dark hair and ripped the way most of them were. He’d recently married Ambrie, and that, Maestro had to admit, had turned Master’s life around. “You don’t just have numbers without some explanation.”
“Before Billows has her come in to work on the books,” Lana “Widow” Popov backed up Alena, “it would be easy enough for him to make shit up.”
Lana was gorgeous; there was no getting around her looks. Tall, with a curvy body and shiny black hair like a raven’s wing, she had a way of walking and talking that was pure seduction. She was tougher than Alena, although the same age. Her birth brother, Kasimir “Preacher” Popov, was older than she was and extremely protective of her, not that Lana ever wanted any of his protection.
Czar sighed and swept a hand through his hair. “There are good arguments for both sides. Maestro, you’re the one who will have to put in the work and be with this woman day and night. You’re the one setting her up. There’s always a danger in that. If there’s anyone in this room who understands the damage betrayal can do, it’s you. No matter how many times you tried to save the girls in that school, it was impossible. That took its toll on you as well. I don’t want you taking this assignment if it will make things worse for you.”
Maestro shrugged. “I don’t feel I’m in jeopardy in any way.”
He honestly didn’t know if that was the truth. He knew it would have been true in any other circumstance, with any other woman. He believed they needed to find where the kidnapped women and children were being taken. He wanted to find out how to get to them before they were sold if Billows was holding prisoners. He absolutely believed in what they were doing.
He’d been imprisoned for years, from the time he was a child, at the mercy of sadistic pedophiles. He knew what the life of a sex slave would be. He’d seen it. Lived it. The purpose of Torpedo Ink was to eliminate as much trafficking as they could. They found pedophiles, took back their victims, returned them to families or took them in if they had nowhere to go. The pedophiles were eliminated, sometimes in not-so-nice ways.
Maestro wasn’t a man to take an interest in outsiders, particularly women. He partied hard at times but walked away quickly from any entanglements. He didn’t feel. That was the bottom line. He’d never met a woman who got under his skin—until Azelie.
Shadowing Zelie these past few weeks, watching her closely, hearing her soft laughter as she teased the merry widows and their gentlemen friends, gutted him. She had slipped into his veins, the fire burning slow until he found himself thinking about her night and day. That was unlike him, and anything out of the ordinary raised an alarm. He didn’t trust emotions—not his anyway, not when it came to women.
Maestro gave the president of Torpedo Ink a look of complete confidence. He felt confident in his ability to manipulate the situation. Zelie was younger than him by a good ten years. He was very experienced when it came to women. She had no experience when it came to men. A man like Maestro could chew her up and spit her out.
When he thought too much about this job, a tiny nagging emotion he couldn’t identify but didn’t like surfaced. Was it shame? He knew betrayal. He had lived a lifetime of betrayal. Women weren’t to be counted on. Neither were most men. He told himself this woman wasn’t any different from the ones who had betrayed him over and over. She deserved whatever happened working for a slime bag like Alan Billows. He knew she was intelligent. He couldn’t get sucked into feeling sympathy for her because she’d lost her family in much the same way he’d lost his and the others in Torpedo Ink had lost theirs.
Young women and children were being ripped from their homes, trained as sex slaves and sold to the highest bidder. Torpedo Ink had to find them. Maestro believed that. It was the vow they’d taken together. Yeah, they had a code they lived by, but that code was between the club members. Anyone involved in trafficking of any kind was fair game.
Czar pinned Maestro with his piercing gaze. “You’re willing to see this through.”
“No problem.” He did his best to sound casual when that weird emotion nagged at him. “I’m looking forward to it.” That was the truth. He wanted a chance to spend time with Zelie. Really get to know her in every sense of the word. “I haven’t been around a true submissive in years. I’m sure that’s the only reason my body responded to her the way it did. It gave me a rush like I haven’t experienced since I was a kid.” He didn’t think she was submissive, more a woman who needed to care for her man, to please him. That was even more intriguing to him.
Steele and Keys exchanged a long look. Maestro noted both expressions held apprehension. Even alarm. The others knew him, but not like Keys or Steele. Keys and Maestro guarded Steele and his family, which often meant they stayed in his home and interacted with him on a regular basis.
“Explain, please,” Fatei “Rock” said.
Maestro exchanged a look with Savage. Savage knew exactly what he was talking about. “I can spot a submissive a mile away, even if the woman isn’t aware she is one. In Zelie’s case, she must know she’s a pleaser. A nurturer. She’s too intelligent not to recognize those traits in herself. She doesn’t think of herself as submissive, and she doesn’t mind pleasing the people she loves or even likes.”
“Would it follow that if she liked Alan Billows, she would please him by assisting him with his trafficking ring?” Fatei asked.
“Not necessarily,” Savage denied. “A submissive isn’t necessarily passive or docile. Oftentimes they are very intelligent and don’t go along with just anyone. They might avoid confrontation, but they don’t give their submission easily.”
Maestro continued the explanation when he read confusion on Fatei’s face. “A submissive doesn’t just turn over their trust to anyone. One has to work at earning it.”
“So, what you’re saying is you would get this woman to fall in love with you?” Fatei asked.
“Not necessarily,” Savage denied. “It’s possible for a submissive to spend time with a dominant, give him her trust, but neither falls in love. They can have a long-distance relationship where they meet up every month or two and both are satisfied because their needs are being met.”
“A sexual relationship only?” Fatei pressed.
“For the most part,” Maestro agreed. Instinctively, he knew Azelie would never turn over her trust to any man without being in love with him. He felt it prudent not to mention that.
“In your school, with all the training they put you through, you must have seen submissive girls,” Savage said.
