Page 111 of At Her Pleasure
She paused. She hadn’t told Mick yes or no, drawing out the anticipation, but that was that, and work was work. “Do me a favor and clear my calendar? I’m going to be out of the office for the rest of the week.”
Bastion put a hand to his brow. “Catch me, I’m feeling faint.”
“I’m not worried. The floor will catch you.”
Her good mood lasted until she reached the top floor. Vera was standing in the doorway to Ros’s office. When she turned in Cyn’s direction, the worried set of her mouth had Cyn ducking into her office only for the time it took to put her coffee on the nearest flat surface. She hurried their way. “Abby?”
The other woman’s gaze cleared, as if that hadn’t been on her radar, which eased the tightness in Cyn’s belly. “She’s fine,” Vera said. “She had a late start, but she’ll be here for the staff meeting.”
“Okay. So what’s up?” Cyn peered into Ros’s office. “Please don’t tell me Matt had internal bleeding and ended up at the hospital. Though I admit it would make me feel marginally better about him kicking my ass.”
Humor vanished at Ros’s expression. Cyn saw anger, concern, and regret. A worry even deeper than Vera’s. “You’re sure this isn’t about Abby? Where’s Skye?”
“She’s in a design meeting with her people. Come in and sit down, Cyn.”
That one sentence told her that this was about Cyn. Was the anger and regret about her, too? Perplexed, Cyn came in and sat. To push down her automatic defensiveness, her readiness for a fight, she reminded herself of their friendship, how much they’d been through. But that mental assurance only went so far, so her tone had an edge.
“What’s going on?”
Ros was doing that back-and-forth thing she did with her pen, a seesaw over her knuckles, the pen’s front and back tapping the top of the desk. “About a week ago, I reached out to a contact to do more digging on Mick.”
Cyn sat up straighter. “You did what?”
“Before your hackles rise, keep in mind I’ll always do what I think is necessary to protect my family.”
“I’m not going to do anything to harm this family,” Cyn said, stung.
Ros leaned forward, her blue eyes shards of glass. “How many years will it take, Cyn, before you know you’re one of that family? One of the people I will do anything to protect?”
It brought her up short, but she knew the answer. Ros did, too. Why are you still fighting like you think none of those things are safe, that they’ll disappear tomorrow?
Because it had been Cyn’s experience that, as soon as someone else’s life mattered more than her own, Fate took them away from her. Either physically, or by revealing a side to them that killed her love and loyalty as effectively as death itself.
Cyn met Ros’s stare and went with the only answer she could face right now, without knowing what was going on. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to check into him?”
Ros’s gaze shifted to Vera’s, then came back. “I wasn’t looking for your permission, because I didn’t need that. But I intended to share what I found with you, whether innocuous or not. If you wish to hear it. That’s your choice.”
Ros had her hand tented on a folder on her desk. Mick had told her what he was into. She didn’t need to see it. But what if what was in there was something he’d left out? A lie of omission, or because he wasn’t ready to share it. If it was the latter, hearing about it would be a breach of privacy. If the former…
As Cyn stared at the folder, she expected a whole nonverbal conversation was happening around her. But she understood that. Cyn finally looked up at her boss. Perfect makeup, hair curled close to her finely made shoulders. Pen set aside and fingers interlaced on the desk.
“Okay.”
Ros opened the folder and spread the information out. Cyn saw photos, plus reports on official-looking agency letterheads. The picture on top was a surveillance photo from a restaurant. Mick was having dinner with three men, and he was smiling, toasting the man to his right. Ros tapped the man with her manicured nail.
“He was convicted of human trafficking two years ago, a few months after this picture was taken. He’s part of an organization that convinces women in other countries there’s work here. They bring them in, take away their passports, brutalize them and put them to work in the underground sex trade.”
Cyn picked up the photo and gazed at it as Ros continued, watching her closely. “Law enforcement groups have noted Mick’s connection to the human trafficking trade. Though they have no concrete proof of his direct involvement in criminal acts, they’ve deduced he’s a logistics person for the distributors. A problem solver.”
Vera touched another of the reports. “They have secondhand reports that he’s ensured human cargo gets over the borders in Mexico and Canada, as well as through other access points. He meets routinely with traffickers all along the distribution chain.”
Anger flashed through Ros’s gaze. “It explains why he’s good at event planning, juggling details and adapting to last minute crises. A BDSM event is nothing next to this.”
Cyn fanned out the other photos. More of the same, Mick rubbing elbows with different suspects, from high placed players to middlemen, based on the captioning and support data. He didn’t stand out. Same well-dressed, understated look, professional and pleasant demeanor. Just businessmen meeting and networking. Casual business attire just works better for most things I do.
No one would suspect what they were doing, which was the whole point.
She remembered Mick’s terrible story, about sipping drinks while a billionaire raped a teenage virgin.