Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 123672 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123672 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
“Have you ever done a Google search on Crew? You didn’t hear anything on the news after he was killed?”
Viper pauses, waiting for my response, and I shake my head. “I could barely get out of bed after Crew was attacked, let alone turn on the TV to listen to the news,” I tell him, unsure where he’s going with this. “I don’t understand why the news would want to cover anything to do with Crew’s death. It was a robbery gone wrong.”
“Was it?” he questions, letting out a heavy sigh and leaning back in his chair. “Mason Ledger is a piece of shit. He deals in stolen goods.”
My brows furrow. “What kind of stolen goods?”
Viper holds my stare, his gaze quickly flicking around the small café again. “I need you to understand that what I’m about to tell you can not come back on me,” he tells me. “This ain’t my business, and if it gets back to Mason that I opened my fucking mouth, it’s gonna come back on my club, and I can’t have that.”
I nod. “I won’t say a word.”
“I’m fucking serious, Kyah,” he says. “This is the type of shit people lose their lives over. Once you know, there’s no going back, and it’s going to change the way you see Crew. All those memories over the years will be replaced with nothing but vile ugliness.”
I clench my jaw, feeling an intense pressure settling over my shoulders, but how can I back out now? I need to know what the hell is going on. “Just tell me, Viper,” I say. “What kind of stolen goods is his brother dealing in?”
“The human kind.”
I suck in a breath, my eyes widening in shock. “What do you mean?” I ask. “Are you saying he’s involved in human trafficking?”
“Exactly that,” Viper tells me. “The Ledger family has created the biggest and most profitable human trafficking ring on this side of the fucking globe, and Mason stands at the head of it.”
My face falls. “No. No, that can’t be right. I would have known if Crew was involved in something like that.”
“Why do you think he never told you who his brother was, huh? He wanted to protect you from that part of his life, keep you hidden from it. He knew exactly what his brother would have done to such a beautiful young thing like you. For a long time, he resisted working with his brother, but over the past year, he started to take on more of an executive kind of role.”
“No, you’re lying.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Kyah, especially not about something like this.”
My heart races, and my whole world flips upside down. He has to be lying. I would have known if Crew was involved in something like that. In those last few days, he was an asshole, but I knew his heart beneath that, and he wouldn’t hurt a fly. I would fucking know.
I shake my head, my chest heaving. “I . . . I . . .” My words fall away, not knowing what to say, but the proof is right there in the way Mason cornered me last night. “I don’t understand how he could do something like that.”
“People are never who we think they are,” Viper tells me. “Hell, I can guarantee that there are things I’ve done that you would never be able to forgive. You wouldn’t even be able to look me in the eye again, but I don’t fucking pretend to be something I’m not.”
I swallow hard, trying to process everything he’s told me. “This is why you’ve always warned me away from him,” I say. “I just figured it was some kind of pissing contest between you and Crew. I never thought there was real weight to what you were saying.”
“At first, perhaps,” he tells me with a slight shrug of his big shoulders.
I nod, trying to work through all of the information. “You said he started working with his brother over the past year.”
Viper presses his lips into a hard line, and the way his eyes darken suggests that this is the part he’s been trying to protect me from all this time. “I don’t know all the details, and I doubt I ever will, but from the intel I’ve been able to find, Crew got himself into some financial trouble last year. He had a hard-on for the underground.”
“What’s that? Like fighting or something?”
“Mm-hmm. He was a gambling man, and he made some bad choices with money that didn’t belong to him. When those debts caught up to him, he had no choice but to either ask Mason for help or lose his fucking life.”
I never knew that he liked to gamble.
“What does asking for his brother’s help actually mean?”
“From what I can tell, Mason paid his debts, and in return, Crew would work for him, sourcing women for Mason’s henchmen to snatch off the fucking street, and if he couldn’t bring in enough women to cover those debts . . . Well, that’s where you came in.”