I force a smile. “I love you for offering, but I think we both just need sleep right now,” I say.
Daya nods, and after wishing me goodnight, retires to her room.
I flop on the white duvet in her guest bedroom. Just like the rest of her house, it’s pretty bare in here. Light blue walls, decorated with a few oceanic pictures and white, gauzy curtains.
My eyes snag on those.
Not the curtains themselves, but what’s in between them.
For the second time tonight, my heart lodges into my throat, pulsating against my voice box and preventing me from making a sound.
Outside the window is the silhouette of a man. Staring directly at me.
I take a step back, ready to turn and call for Daya. When my phone buzzes, I flinch, freezing me in place and nearly choking me on the fear.
Keeping one eye on the man, I slide my phone out of my pocket and see a new text message.
UNKNOWN: You didn’t like my flowers?
Chapter 12
The Shadow
“There’s another video,” Jay says through the phone, his voice solemn. I scramble up from my couch and make my way into my office.
An array of computer screens line the ten-foot-long desk, and all my other illegal devices in here. Jammers, trackers, buttons that set off explosives in a number of places should someone betray me, and so on.
This room alone is worth millions with all the shit I have in here.
It’s both my happy place and my living nightmare.
This is where I make a difference in the world. Where I find women and children who need saving, while also witnessing the torture those sick individuals put them through.
It takes money to infiltrate high-security buildings, rescue the girls and give them sanctuary and safety off the grid.
Big corporations pay me an ungodly amount of money to hack into their rival’s systems for whatever bullshit reason, whether it be because they’re competing and want to know what the other is cooking up, or because they have a lawsuit against one another and trying to find information.
I don’t give a fuck what their problems are with each other. It’s only my concern that they get what they hired me for.
In the end, someone wealthy gets fucked over, my client makes a massive profit from it, and I collect interest on it. It’s dirty, but I’ve never been in the business of keeping my hands clean.
And it allows me to dedicate my life to ending human trafficking.
“Where?” I bark, my fingers already flying over the keyboard.
“Already encrypted and sent to your email.”
I roll my neck, cracking the muscles and gearing up for something that’s going to make the steak I just ate settle in my stomach like a wrecked ship in the ocean.
The video starts playing, and despite my instincts screaming at me not to, I turn up the volume so I can hear.
It’s a grainy video of a fucked up satanic ritual. The person recording is breathing heavily, more than likely from the risk of being caught doing something extremely dangerous.
Four robed men stand over a stone slab with a squirming little boy tied down to it.
Over and over, he’s screaming to let him go. His little voice breaking as he cries for help.
I run a hand over my face when they plunge a curved knife into his chest. They fill metal goblets with his blood and drink the entirety of the cup in one swallow.
I force myself to watch and endure the pain alongside this boy. Because even though this innocent soul is now gone, that doesn’t mean I won’t do everything in my power to find justice for him.
When the video is over, I have to turn away and breathe through the urge to vomit.
“Z?” I had forgotten Jay was even on the phone.
“Yeah?” I respond, my voice hoarse and barely there.
“I… I couldn’t watch it, man. I couldn’t do it.”
I close my eyes and breathe deeply.
“That’s okay,” I say. “You don’t need to.”
Jay knows how hard I take these things, but he also knows I refuse to turn away from them. That’s what most people do when it comes to human trafficking. Everybody knows it exists, and most will educate themselves on how to avoid it, but they can’t watch when it comes to the reality of it. Can’t listen. Can’t see the depravity. Because if they don’t look, then they can go back to their normal lives and live on as if there aren’t thousands of people out here dying every day.
Jay isn’t one of those people, he’s doing what he can. But he also doesn’t have the stomach for it, and I can’t blame him.
Because I don’t either. And to be honest, the people who do are the ones who are trafficking them and committing the crimes.
“Is it the four we’ve been tracking?” I ask.
Jay sighs. “No, Mark was spotted at a restaurant last night with his wife during the timestamp of the video. Looks like different men, but these ones aren’t identifiable. I imagine they only do the ritual once.”
I nod my head, my mind racing as I try to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do.
About six months ago, a video leaked on the dark web of four men in black robes performing a ritual on a little girl. I’m not sure if it was arrogance or what, but the men kept their hoods down, unfazed with onlookers seeing exactly who they were.
Even with the low-quality video and dim lighting, I was able to identify them immediately.
Senators Mark Seinburg, Miller Foreman, Jack Baird, and Robert Fisher.
They surrounded the little girl on a slab of cement, stabbed her and then drank her blood. The girl was still alive, wriggling and screaming at the top of her lungs as the men chanted around her.
The same exact ritual the little boy just went through, still looping on my computer screen. Except in this one, the four men surrounding the little boy have tall, sharp-pointed hoods drawn over their heads, concealing their identities.
I can already feel myself slipping back into that black hole it took weeks to crawl out of six months ago. It put me in one of the darkest headspaces I’ve ever been in.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.