Hushed Guardian: Brandon's Story

by Shandi Boyes

  When the goons ignore Dimitri’s English demand to leave, the wrath for their ignorance is recited in Italian. I’m not overly skilled in other languages, but I’m reasonably sure Dimitri’s warning this time around came with a death sentence, because not only do the three men immediately lower their guns, they also assist the still-passed-out man off the floor before dragging him to the parking lot at the back of the restaurant.

  Under Dimitri’s watchful eyes, I remove the magazine from my borrowed gun, dump the ammo onto the floor, clean the barrel and the chamber with my shirt to remove my fingerprints, then place the dismantled weapon onto the hostess’s podium.

  Dimitri peers down at the gun, looks up at the frozen-in-fear blonde, then nudges his head to the parking lot his goons just raced through. “Go.”

  He doesn’t need to tell her twice. She’s out the door faster than a vulture on a dead carcass, and I’m crossing the room even faster than that.

  Once were alone, Dimitri shifts his bright blue eyes to me. “You’re an idiot showing up like this unannounced. You could have gotten yourself killed.”

  “By whom?” I ask Dimitri, following him into the kitchen. “By you? Or the man you’re sheltering after sending every one of your siblings to their deaths?”

  Growling, he shovels a generous serving of the Malloreddus on the stovetop into a bowl before gesturing for me to sit across from him. “I don’t protect my father. You’re well aware of that.”

  It kills me to do, but I dip my chin. Dimitri was turned by Tobias years ago. Don’t misconstrue. He’s still a gangster in every meaning of the word, he just works against his father instead of the authorities. I don’t see that being the case once he takes over his father’s reign, but for now, it works in the Bureau’s favor.

  “Have you been back long?” Dimitri was transferred to the international side of his father’s operation a little over seven months ago. Although confident it was a short-term exchange, no one really knew if he’d ever return stateside again.

  He places a bowl of tomatoey goodness in front of me. “I flew in early last month. The Bureau is unaware of my return.” He slants his head to the side before viewing me through the eyes of a cold-blooded murderer. “I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Do you recall me telling you how it’s okay to tiptoe on the wrong side of the law as long as you always find your way back? Today is one of those incidences. Mutual respect is a rare thing for an agent to have with a known mafia entity, but when the relationship is for the greater good, I’m not opposed to it.

  “Your secret is safe with me, although I have a few questions I’d like to ask.” Dimitri jerks up his chin before making his way to a stack of drawers at the side of the kitchen. His hand freezes halfway into a cutlery drawer when I ask, “Were you aware CJ was participating in your father’s underground fighting circuit?”

  He shoves the fork into my meal with aggression before replying, “I had a feeling a few months before I discovered it the hard way. CJ was a good fighter. He was also willing to do anything to get into our father’s good graces, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.”

  I don’t point out the fact he always refers to CJ in past tense. He’s done it for longer than I’ve known him even with CJ’s disappearance years ago never being solved.

  “Were you aware Isaac Holt fought under your father?”

  I blow on a chunk of pasta to hide the crinkle in my top lip when he replies, “Who?” Dimitri is a dreadful liar. For a man set to become one of the most feared members of the Italian cartel, he needs to get less scrupulous eyes.

  “Isaac Holt.” I spoon a forkful of food into my mouth before digging out the photograph I stole from Isaac’s file from my pocket. “This was obtained at an event your father organized.”

  Dimitri doesn’t even glance at the evidence I’m presenting. “Isaac didn’t fight for my father.” He’s still telling the truth—unfortunately. “Col wanted him to, but Isaac wasn’t budging. We put steps in place to make it happen.”

  “We?” I almost choke on my food since I was so eager to ask the question I asked before swallowing.

  Dimitri pours me a glass of water. I doubt he’d care if I died, but he’d rather not have the corpse of an FBI agent in his kitchen.

  Once I’ve swallowed down half a glass, Dimitri expands on his confession. “We, as in Ophelia and me.”

  I put down my fork, too stunned to eat. “Your sister helped you, how exactly?” I need him to spell out the facts for me as I’m fucking lost.

  Dimitri wipes at his lips with his stained napkin before placing his dirty bowl into the sink. “Our father wanted Ophelia to coerce Isaac into fighting for him—”

  “So she dated him to deceive him?”

  I almost feel sorry for Isaac, but Dimitri saves me from the farce. “No. Ophelia was never with him for that. She truly loved him.” When he goes quiet, I wave my hand through the air, encouraging him to continue. He gives me his best you-make-me-sick face before continuing, “Ophelia wanted a way out—”

  “Of?”

  He glares at me, silently warning if I interrupt him one more time, our talk will be over. When I grumble out a half-hearted apology, he says, “She wanted out of the family. If you think my father was cruel to his sons, you should have seen how he treated his daughters. Monster is too kind of a word.” The mood in the room drops dramatically fast. “We knew how desperate Col was to have Isaac fight under him. We were also aware of how good of a fighter Isaac was, so we plotted for them to meet, knowing Col would use Ophelia as a bargaining chip.” He shakes his head as the tick in his jaw becomes noticeable. “We had no clue CJ was fighting for our father that night until it was too late.”

  You have no idea how hard it is for me to keep my surprise that Isabelle’s assumption about Isaac and CJ fighting was correct on the down-low.

  “They fought. CJ lost, and Ophelia went into a blackened rage.” He snatches up my barely touched meal and throws it into the sink, chipping the dishware. “That was the night of their accident.”

  “Ophelia and CJ’s?”

  Dimitri lifts his chin. “CJ spent weeks in the hospital before he vanished, Ophelia was buried with only one member of her family in attendance…” his eyes reveal it was him, “… and I never told a soul about the ruse we attempted to pull. I’ll take it to the grave.” The sneer on his face reveals I will be taken to my grave if I share his secret.

  He has no reason to fret. I’m sure he’s already being bombarded with guilt over CJ being beaten so badly, not to mention his sister dying in a twisted wreck only hours later. I don’t need to add to his grief. A shudder rolls down my spine just thinking about what CJ experienced that night. Liam and Wren’s bodies had been removed from the wreckage before I arrived, and the scene still haunts me, so I can only imagine how much it still affects Melody to this day.

  The letter I wrote last week but never sent feels less heavy in my pocket when Dimitri says, “What does this have to do with anything? I get your after Isaac, but the fight circuit you’re talking about has been running for decades. The feds are well aware of its existence. They’re not disbanding it for a reason.”

  “For intel,” we say at the same time.

  Dimitri nods. “So why are you bringing up old ghosts?”

  It could be stupid of me to do, but his honesty today deserves some kind of acknowledgment, doesn’t it?

  “I’m seeking connections between Col, Isaac, Henry, and Kirill Bobrov.”

  He’s quick to hide it, but I spotted the quickest flare of recognition dawn through his eyes when I said my last name. “Vladimir will be disappointed he didn’t make the cut.”

  “He’s still there,” I reply, just not in a manner I wish to share. Keeping Isabelle’s heritage hidden is as much on my shoulders as it is hers. “Have you heard of Kirill before?”

  Dimitri hesitates for as long as I did when contemplating whether I should tell him the truth or not before saying, “It’s been a while, but
his name rings a bell. What’s his kink?”

  He classes underworld trades as kinks.

  My shoulder touches my ear when I shrug. “Your guess would be as good as mine. We have an inkling perhaps he’s in the sex trafficking trade, but we’re only sitting on that theory because of one reason.”

  I stare at him like he’s a mind reader when he says, “Katie Bryne?” When I lift my chin, stunned into silence, he curses under his breath. “I knew I had heard the name before.”

  When he gestures for me to join him in an office at the back of the kitchen, I pretend my tummy isn’t grumbling. Excluding the two forkfuls I shoved in before Dimitri removed my meal, the only meal I have had the past two days was the pizza Isabelle and I shared last night.

  Just before I enter the room, Dimitri fans his hand across my chest before arching his brow. Air whizzes out of my nose when I see the mistrust in his eyes. He reminds me so much of Grayson when he wolf-whistles about me raising my shirt in the air and spinning around to show him I’m not wired, then he completely fucks my outfit by removing every button from my shirt and coat with the quickest slice of a knife.

  “Learned my lesson the hard way,” he grumbles under his breath while dumping the buttons into a half-empty glass of whiskey on his desk. Once he takes a seat behind his big desk, he gestures for me to sit. “If word of this gets out to anyone outside of these walls, my guests will dine on freshly minced veal this evening.” Veal is his way of calling me a contemptible bastard.

  When I seal our agreement with a head bob, he pulls out a leather-bound document from a safe bolted to the floor under his desk. The beeps of the safe’s electronic lock reveal his code is an eight-digit sequence, but Grayson and I have tried numerous times to unlock it remotely. We’ve yet to be successful.

  Considering the thickness of the document, it should take Dimitri longer to find the page he’s seeking. Since it happens remarkably quick, I’m confident in saying he has perused this page many times the past few years.

  After pushing across a handful of legitimate business documents, he places the handwritten ledger down in front of me. “Katie Bryne…” he murmurs, dragging his index finger across her name in the ledger, “… was sold to K Bobrov for three hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars.”

  The evidence he’s handing me is invaluable, but I’m a little lost. “The date shows her sale was a little under five years ago. Katie was abducted nine years ago.”

  Dimitri slaps the ledger shut before placing it back into the safe. Once it’s safely locked away, he slouches low in his chair before making a tee-pee with his fingers. He’s willing to give me anything if it will help take down his father, but he doesn’t want to get snared by the same lure.

  “Tobias’s arrangement is still in effect, Dimitri. You’re immune from prosecution. Within reason, of course.”

  Leaning forward, he balances his elbows on his desk. “It’s the men picking the reason that I’m wary of.” He deliberates for a few more seconds before saying, “Hypothetically speaking, each sanction runs their operations differently. Some prefer underage girls, others prefer more mature ones. Then there are ones who aren’t specifically looking for a whore. They want a wife, someone to raise children with, but they don’t have the time to seek her in a crowd of millions, so they look to someone who can give them what they’re seeking without additional training.”

  “Training?”

  Dimitri licks his dry lips. “On being the ideal wife. They’re taught how to cook, clean, raise children, and anything else their procurer wants of them. Some take months to learn their role. Others take years.” His eyes drop to his safe. “Others never learn.”

  I don’t know why, but I have a feeling his last comment wasn’t referring to Katie. If I trusted my gut like I once did, I’d ask him about it, but since I don’t, I thank him for his information by standing from my chair and giving him a tidbit of advice to even our exchange. “IRS is planning to raid this restaurant on the eighteenth. I suggest you do some in-house cleaning before then.”

  Not speaking another word, I exit Dimitri’s office aware I broke a code but desperate enough for the truth not to care.

  20

  Brandon

  “Do the dates match?”

  The thud of my feet through heavy foot traffic doesn’t drown out Grayson’s murmur of agreement. Dimitri’s disclosure Saturday morning was more helpful to Grayson’s personal campaign than my own, but one thread binds us all together, so any discoveries benefit us all.

  Three days after Katie’s sale, Tobias’s team raided a Russian-strong sanction. Their operation was oddly similar to the one Dimitri mentioned. They imprisoned girls like the Sicilian operation we endeavored to dismantle when Tobias was killed, but they didn’t rape and torture their captives. The more pure they were, the higher their selling price.

  Don’t get me wrong, the women who refused to follow orders at the drop of a hat were beaten into submission, and a handful were killed, but the head of that operation soon realized his virginal mail-order brides fetched double the price of his standard offerings. It meant the age of the girls taken got younger and younger as the years went on. They needed them to be pure in every sense of the word and young enough to be brainwashed into believing life as they knew it was over, which meant they typically sourced girls in the ten-to- thirteen-year age bracket.

  Katie was a year, almost two older because she wasn’t procured in the normal way. She was picked up by a rival associate before being subsequently sold to the Bobrovs. From my understanding, that was the first time the Bobrovs had paid for someone. They usually kidnapped them. I don’t know if her uncommon purchase was the reason Kirill took an instant liking to her, but it’s not often you can find sense in the madness of the underworld.

  With Grayson’s silence weighing heavily on my shoulders, I issue a plea I haven’t given him in a very long time. “We’ll find her, Grayson. It just takes time.”

  “Time I don’t fucking have.” He breathes heavily before saying, “I’ve got to go, BJ. I’ll be in touch.”

  Not giving me the chance to reply, he disconnects our call. That’s so unlike him. He usually hackles me about calling Melody, so for him to forget, he must have a lot on his mind.

  Or perhaps he’s sick of reminding you how much of a fuckhead you are?

  Ignoring the highly-accurate voice in my head, I enter Harlow’s bakery to grab a morning pick-me-up. Between Alex’s demanding work ethic and my private investigations, I’m lucky to get three to four hours of sleep a night. I’m zonked.

  My eyes float up from the ground when my arrival in the almost dead-quiet bakery is greeted by a friendly voice. “Oh, good, you’ve arrived. I was getting worried I’d need to make them fresh again.”

  I greet Harlow, the owner of Harlow’s Scrumptious Bakery with a smile before joining her near the coffee machine. “Make what again?”

  “The coffees.” She cocks a brow before waving her hand over a dozen coffees in easy-to-carry cupholders. “Izzy usually picks them up by now, but I’ve not heard from her yet.” She raises her begging eyes to mine. “You work with her, right? Could you take them for me? I really don’t want them to go to waste. I can throw a handful of extra cookies in for you. Peanut butter and choc chip, right?” She takes a quick breather while moving to the section of the bakery where the cookies are stored. After stuffing half a dozen into a plain white paper bag, she stacks them on top of the coffees before handing them to me. “I really appreciate you doing this for me,” she murmurs like I had a choice. “I don’t want Izzy getting in trouble because her brains were banged out on the headboard if you know what I mean.”

  When she waggles her brows, the truth smacks into me. Izzy didn’t spend her weekend knee-deep in old case files like me. She was being entertained by a man, and if the knot in my stomach is anything to go by, I know exactly which one.

  Harlow stops busying herself with the coffee machine when I call her name. “If you see Izzy th
is morning, can you make out this was my idea?” When suspicion crosses her features, I quickly gabble out, “She got in the shit with the boss for a bad write-up she handed in on my behalf. I need to kiss ass to make it up to her.”

  “There are better ways to get back in someone’s good graces than lying, Brandon,” Harlow retorts, her tone low.

  “I know.” For the first time in years, my ability to lie on the spot shines brightly. “I’m just unsure what else I can do.” When the sternness in her eyes lessens, I mutter, “I’m up for any pointers you’re willing to give.”

  Her facial expression switches from wary to friendly in a nanosecond when she takes pity on my stupidly boyish face. “All right. I’m willing to help you out… after you’ve delivered the coffees.”

  Smiling, I lift my chin in thanks before making my way to the bakery door. The chime above the door has only just dinged when Harlow suggests for me to return with a notebook so I can jot down her ‘dating tips.’ Mercifully, the heavy flow of traffic that forever impedes the streets of Ravenshoe drowns out my disappointed groan.

  I have a new fondness for dictation when I leave Harlow’s bakery for the second time today. She was as serious about the notepad as she was about me writing down every syllable she uttered. Years ago, I liked having boyishly handsome features that made me appear weak to my competitors. Now, I fucking hate it.

  The past three hours was pure torture. I know as well as the next man that I have a lot to learn about the female species, but tell me one time you’ve crammed a lifetime of lessons into one three-hour study session. Melody is practically a genius, but even she would need more than three hours to digest everything Harlow just shared.

  If it weren’t for the little tidbits of Izzy’s weekend she disclosed unknowingly, I would have pulled the gay card two hours ago. Alas, I’ve been more an agent than a man the past six years.

  I climb the stairs to work off the dozen or so cookies Harlow fed me to keep me awake during her lecture. After dumping my leather satchel and notepad onto my desk, I make a beeline for the supply room where key members of the Bureau conduct strategy meetings to deliver the lunch Harlow made for Izzy.