Maestro had clocked the man the first day he began following Azelie, but Billows’ investigator was lousy at his job. Most of the time he was looking at his phone, not paying attention to his surroundings. Maestro hadn’t once been seen by him. He’d even walked next to the parked car. Maestro was a man people noticed, yet the investigator had been playing a video game on his phone and hadn’t even looked up.
“I could have killed him multiple times,” Maestro pointed out.
“Same here,” Storm agreed. “He doesn’t bother following her most of the time. I think he’s bored out of his mind.”
“Good for us, bad for him,” Mechanic said. “Although it’s a pain in the ass having to keep a lookout for him.”
“When we move, he’ll be the first to go,” Storm said.
Maestro shook his head. “The goal is to keep Azelie safe while we’re getting those women out and getting information from Billows. We can’t risk tipping him off.” He looked directly at Czar. “Maybe coming clean with her and asking her outright for her key and a map of the underground is the way to go. We could move her to a safe house until it’s over.”
“That’s not your head talking, Maestro,” Czar said. “If Billows doesn’t have women down there, but you find evidence he trains them there, we missed a shipment. There is bound to be another coming immediately. We don’t want those women to be shipped somewhere else without our knowledge. We need to see this through.”
Alena and Lana exchanged a long look. “What if she isn’t safe now, Czar? Can we risk that? Look at her. She’s holding herself in check but just barely. Mechanic programmed heart rate monitoring into that camera as well as audio. You can see she’s terrified.”
“She’s been living that way for a long time,” Czar said. “I know it’s rough, but she’s under our surveillance. We’re not going to let anything happen to her.”
“I just would like to point out that she’s alone in that hallway with that guard and scared out of her mind,” Destroyer said.
Czar sighed. “We put a lot of effort into this before we got any kind of a lead. Years of work. This is it, all we’ve got. We can put it to a vote to abort the mission and pull her out of there, which is fair. She doesn’t deserve to live the way she’s living. And she’s Maestro’s. That makes her ours. Before you vote, weigh the consequences to the other women lost to trafficking that we know we’ll never get back against the fact that leaving her would be like leaving Blythe or Soleil or Anya. Seychelle or Zyah. Any of our women.”
There was a long silence. Maestro broke it with a sigh of resignation. “I want her out of there. I’m not going to lie, I want her out more than I want my next breath, but I want her out for myself. For my peace of mind. I know damn well I’m never going to find another woman like her. No one else is going to do it for me. Do I want to protect that? Fuck yes.”
Savage nodded. “I would feel the same way if it was Seychelle hanging out in the danger zone.”
Reaper, Ice and Player murmured agreements, as did Master.
Maestro shook his head and then ran both hands through the sides of his hair. He had to do the right thing even though it went against everything his mind screamed at him to do. “But it wouldn’t be what Azelie would want. She would put those women first every time. She’d be pissed beyond hell if she found out we’d sacrificed other women to get her out. She would tell me she’s worked there a long time and knows how to handle Billows and she could work there for several years more if that’s what it took. She may be soft inside like Alena, but just like Alena, she’s got a core of absolute steel.”
Azelie looked small and fragile to him and to the others. But he knew her now. “She would never agree to be put somewhere safe if that meant jeopardizing other women’s freedom. And she wouldn’t forgive me for taking that decision out of her hands.” He knew that to be true, and it was the most difficult thing for a man like him to tell his brethren and sisters.
For years he had advocated that women obey their men when it came to matters of safety. He’d said it shouldn’t matter what the woman said or did. She should be punished for not trusting her man to make the right decision. She should always follow his lead. He’d not only advocated for that shit, but he’d also believed it. To some extent, he still believed it. He needed his woman to allow him to lead. He needed control. But after watching Azelie with others and seeing the way she was with him, he also knew their relationship had to be about trust.
Like Maestro, Azelie had known betrayal—the ultimate betrayal by a family member. Someone she loved. She’d lost everything she valued. To be her partner, he had to always give her reason to trust him. That meant he had to know her. Read her smallest cues. It was important to provide what she needed for her happiness if he was going to keep her.
Maestro was a man who looked at himself closely. Kept himself in check. Knew what he had to work on about himself and what he needed in his life to keep those around him safe. He was dangerous, and when he was dangerous, that meant lethal. Azelie made him even more lethal. He had never expected a miracle. A gift such as she was. Every instinct in him was to wrap her up in Bubble Wrap, keep her in a safe room, never let her leave his side, but that wasn’t going to make her happy.
He struggled to find a balance between his intense personality and needs and her gentle independence. She wanted to stand on her own two feet, when he wanted her to depend on him. Needs versus wants. He absolutely knew Azelie would never forgive him if she thought other women suffered because he took her out of play.
“You’re saying you want to leave her where she is.” Czar attempted clarification.
“Fuck no! That’s the last thing I want, but that’s what she needs. I’m asking every one of you to be vigilant if we leave her there. The moment we have the information from Billows we need, and if we manage to find the victims, we’ll get her out of there. Hopefully, she won’t be in any danger once Billows is gone, and I can just come clean with her.”
There was another long silence. The other members of Torpedo Ink stared at him in astonishment. He couldn’t blame them. He’d been spouting so much shit for years, voicing his opinion of women and what they should or shouldn’t do, none of it good. He was telling them he thought they should do just the opposite of what he’d always proclaimed should be done.
“Maestro.” Alena’s voice was soft and soothing. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Steele,” Keys said to their resident doctor, “you should check him out immediately.”
Maestro gave them the finger when the snickers started.
“Are you certain, Maestro?” Czar asked.
“We’ve got eyes on her,” Code pointed out. “We keep someone on her all the time.”
“I want her out,” Maestro reiterated. “But if I choose that path, it will be for me, not her, and not the other women caught up in this mess. She wouldn’t forgive something like that.”
“You going to be able to live with this choice?” Savage asked. “Think about it, Maestro. Things can go to hell fast. We all know that. We’ve lived through it.”
He had been thinking about it. He’d been thinking of nothing else. It wasn’t as if he could move in with her, lock himself to her side. He had the feeling Billows would sweep her up the moment he realized she was with Maestro.
“I know what can go wrong. I’m putting a tracker on her tomorrow when I take her out.”
“She knows his entire business. She might not know what he’s doing, where that illegal money is coming from, but if she turned on him and talked to the Feds, he would go down fast,” Master said. “What I’m saying, Maestro, is that Billows might decide to kill her, not traffic her.”
“What the fuck is wrong with all of you?” Maestro demanded. “I’m finally trying to do the right thing here, not for me, but for those women we’re looking for and for Azelie. You’re all trying to talk me out of it. It isn’t going to take that much.”
But he’d lose her. He’d have to go to the grave never admitting the truth to her. The lies would stand between them for the rest of his life. She would always know something was wrong because she had intuition, awareness. Especially when it came to him. She saw inside him where few others ever did. That was part of the reason he had leapt with both feet down the path he was taking them on. She saw him—the real man under his armor—and she was okay with that. She even seemed to admire that man. Definitely she wanted him.
Maestro was not only certain that Azelie was attracted to him physically—the chemistry between them was off the charts—but convinced she could love him. He’d never once thought that of another human being. Not even his Torpedo Ink brothers and sisters. They were loyal and protective toward him and even affectionate, but it wasn’t what Czar had with Blythe. Or what Savage had with Seychelle. He needed what Savage had. A woman willing to love him despite his many flaws.
“Do we want to put it to the vote?” Czar asked again. “If Maestro is right, and he reads people better than any of us, he will lose his woman if we take away her ability to choose to help.”
“She isn’t choosing,” Lana pointed out. “No matter which way a vote goes, she isn’t choosing, we are.”
Maestro knew that was true, but he also knew what her choice would be.
“Can’t risk pulling her out or letting her in on what we’re doing,” Reaper stated. “Sorry, brother, she may look in control when she’s talking with Billows, but she’s scared out of her mind. Anyone with a brain should be able to see that. Billows is an asshole.”
