He stood up, towering over her. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t make a sound. He was the most intimidating, gorgeous man she’d ever encountered, and she just wanted to stare at him forever.

“Zelie.” He leaned down. Two fingers slipped under her chin and raised it very gently, but decisively, forcing her head up. “Say you’ll meet me here tomorrow at five-thirty. I have to leave, and I can’t be late.”

His voice moved over her skin like the brush of velvet.

She wanted to shake her head and say no, but he mesmerized her. She wasn’t certain why it was important to her to please him—but it was.

“Yes.”

“Good girl.” He touched her lower lip with the pad of his index finger, turned and sauntered out.

Touching her lips with trembling fingers, she stared out the window as she watched him walk down the sidewalk. Very carefully she stood up, deliberately turning her back on the sight of him. What in the world was wrong with her? Why had she agreed to meet him for dinner? She had actually agreed to wear a dress for him. She had temporarily lost her mind.

He really was like a mythical hero in one of the books—the romance books she read. She secretly wanted a home and a man who would love her. She’d learned not to give in to her needs, and she wasn’t about to allow a man—a stranger—to shatter her hard-won feelings of independence and courage. She deserved everything she’d fought for, and she wasn’t taking one step back. Not one. It didn’t matter how gorgeous he was. Or what kind of voice he had. It didn’t matter that he affected her the way he did. She had to stay on her present course.

The moment the door to the coffee shop closed behind Andrii, the merry widows rushed to Azelie’s tiny table, the three of them giggling like schoolgirls. Penny fanned herself.

“You just struck gold,” China said. “We tried to hear what you were talking about, but he speaks so low. So do you.” She made it an accusation.

“Did he ask you out?” Blanc wanted to know.

“Give us the details, girl,” Penny insisted.

Azelie found she didn’t have to say very much. She wasn’t about to tell them she’d made a total fool of herself, but she did admit Andrii had asked her out. That sent the merry widows into a fluttery frenzy, allowing her to sit back and wonder how she’d gotten herself into such a mess.

TWO

“What do you think, Maestro?” Lyov “Steele” Russak, the vice president of Torpedo Ink, asked. “We’re under the gun with this one. You don’t have a lot of time to get the job done if Billows is holding prisoners. We don’t know if he’s gotten in a new shipment of victims, but we need to find out.”

Steele might be one of the younger members of the club, but he was highly intelligent and a skilled surgeon and, most importantly, he had developed his abilities to be able to heal with his mind and hands. Married to Breezy, he was the only member of their club besides their president with a young son.

Two hundred eighty-seven children were taken from their parents and placed in a school run by a high-powered man. He had their families murdered, and those children were to be shaped into assets for their country—taught to be assassins. The instructors were sadistic pedophiles who grew crueler as they were encouraged to treat the children any way they desired. Only eighteen survived the vicious abuses of the school. At least they believed only eighteen survived. Recently, a nineteenth survivor had joined them.

His name was Rurik “Destroyer” Volkov. Destroyer was a large man covered in prison tattoos, as he’d spent a great deal of time in one of the worst prisons in Russia. He was still learning to be a part of the Torpedo Ink world.

The club members were in their meeting room, where they often met when discussing club business. The room was large, with a bank of windows on one side allowing views of the ocean. The table was huge, oval in shape and made of solid oak.

Torpedo Ink had purchased the old paymaster’s building in Caspar to renovate into their existing clubhouse as well as the surrounding land. The compound was extremely large and was surrounded by a high chain-link fence. Razor wire on top of the fence and tall rolling gates gave the appearance of a fortress. The side yard was a full acre with views of the ocean, and held fire pits, benches and the beginning of gardens. Most of the meadow was still wildflowers and brush, but they were slowly taming it.

The common room was very spacious. A long curving bar with a gleaming oak finish was on one side of the room. Stools were pushed up to the bar. In the center of the room were tables and chairs. On the opposite side from the bar and in front of a gas fireplace comfortable chairs and couches were positioned for conversation. The bedrooms were in the back part of the building, where most outsiders were never invited.

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.

Torpedo Ink had one newly patched member, Fatei “Rock” Molchalin. Fatei had been with them almost from the beginning. He’d gone to the same school in Russia that Gavriil had attended. He didn’t have the obvious muscle many of the Torpedo Ink members had, but he was strong and could always be counted on. They’d begun calling him Rock because he was the one they had learned over time they could count on. He was a quiet, intelligent man, and had proved his loyalty over and over.

“Unfortunately, he’s right,” Code said. Code was their main source of information. He could handle computers the way race car drivers drove on a speedway. When Code had been brought into the basement of the school where the other children were, he had been thin and frail, his eyes weak. Czar had recognized the genius, tenacity and loyalty in him. Code was a survivor and extremely valuable to Torpedo Ink. He was anything but thin and frail now. He had developed the physical strength to match his enormous intelligence. It didn’t take much for him to get on the scent of a trail and track down whatever the club needed. But the hierarchy of the trafficking ring had eluded them. They were able, at times, to stop auctions and free the women and teens used for prostitution against their will, but those successes seemed few and far between.

“If we can’t utilize this information and get to Alan Billows before he sends out the next batch of sex slaves he could be training, they’ll be lost. We won’t be able to get any of them back,” Code added.

“But we don’t know if this girl—woman—is involved,” Alena “Torch” Koval objected. “Shouldn’t we get more information on her before we destroy her self-esteem? We’ve learned the hard way that we should be more careful of how we handle human beings.”

That was Alena. She tried to be tough, but she was soft on the inside. She’d given Maestro the premature silver streaks in his hair. Alena, like all of Torpedo Ink, had been trained to be an assassin. She was good at her job but lacked the toughness the rest of them had. She had compassion and empathy. Unfortunately, that could get her killed.

Alena was a beautiful woman, in Maestro’s opinion, both inside and out. With her curvy body, platinum hair and icy blue eyes, she was striking. Coupled with her fast thinking and compassionate heart, she was extraordinary. Maestro thought of her as a younger sibling, a sister he protected even though she didn’t believe she needed it. Younger birth sister of two Torpedo Ink members, Dmitry “Storm” Koval and Isaak “Ice” Koval, she owned the Crow 287 restaurant. Alena’s ability to cook was undisputed.

Maestro tried to be fair. “I believe we need to act on the information we have. It took us too long to get it, and if we miss this opportunity, we may not get another one.” If he was being honest with himself, he wanted to spend time with Zelie. He also wanted to do the right thing if Billows was holding prisoners.

“I watched her pay for two different orders for a couple of women who clearly needed it and couldn’t afford it. She didn’t make a big deal of it and did it anonymously. She often treats the older women who refer to themselves as the merry widows,” he conceded.

“I looked into her financials,” Code said. “She doesn’t have much, but she’s still generous to others. We’ve had eyes on her for three weeks, and she consistently helps the homeless, seniors, new mothers, and single dads. Most of her money goes to pay for her school, and living in San Francisco is expensive, even in a small studio apartment like hers.”

Maestro found that last bit of information regarding single fathers irritating, which made no sense. “On a different day, I saw her help an older lady when the woman was confused, and two teenagers were laughing at her. Zelie gave them a look that said ‘back off’ and took care of the woman, making certain she had her purse, glasses and food.”

Alena sighed as she drummed her fingers on the end table beside the comfortable chair she occupied. “She doesn’t sound like the kind of woman who would be involved in a human trafficking ring.” She tilted her head to look up at the president of their club. “You tell us all the time that we need to find a way to fit into society. That we should keep learning to be better people. Taking this poor girl’s life apart and destroying all trust, to get information she may not even have, doesn’t sound like we’re progressing to me.”