Calisto
Time was running out.
Calisto glared at the digital clock on the dashboard, wishing he could make it fucking disappear. He had thirty-six hours to find Emma, get her back to the penthouse, and then put her on a plane to New York.
Thirty-six hours was not enough time.
He waited out a red light. How long was the damn thing going to stay red for? It seemed like everything was taking too long, when Calisto needed it to go a hell of a lot faster.
It took the pawn shop almost eight hours the day before to unlock Emma’s iPhone without losing crucial information on the device. Calisto shoved the money across the counter when the guy said it was done, and ran out of the shop, already looking through the last calls that had been made.
Poppy Johansen.
Calisto had recognized the name the very moment it popped up on Emma’s contacts. Poppy came from a Nevada socialite family, and toted a father worth a couple of hundred million, thanks to his casino bids. What the girl could do for Emma in a situation like this, Calisto didn’t know.
He intended on finding out.
After trying to reach Poppy using Emma’s and then his own phone, Calisto had decided to give up that route. Clearly, the girl wasn’t answering. Emma had probably told her not to, which was a smart move.
For now …
But time had run out.
For him.
For Poppy.
And for Emma.
Calisto had a little information on Poppy Johansen and he intended on using it. The address to her nice little penthouse had been in the pack of research Calisto collected on a few of Emma’s close friends. If the woman wouldn’t answer phone calls or text messages, then he would go to her.
Directly.
The ringing of his cell phone brought Calisto from his infuriated thoughts. He grabbed the device and hit the speakerphone to answer
“Yeah, Donati speaking,” he said.
“Cal, I looked into that girl you asked about. Poppy Johansen, right?”
Calisto’s irritation ebbed away slowly. “Great. Give me something to work with where she’s concerned. I need her to talk.”
“It might have helped me to get this done sooner if I knew what I was looking for,” Norris said.
Norris happened to have a mighty set of skills where computers, hacking, and tracing was concerned. The guy mostly worked off the grid, and Calisto had only needed the man’s help a couple of times in his life when he needed to locate someone.
Thankfully, Norris didn’t work for Affonso.
Or any Cosa Nostra.
“That’s not important, just give me what you have right now. Her family is fucking nose up, right? There’s got to be some kind of skeletons in their closet for me to pick at when I see her. I don’t like strong-arming females into compliance. Mental nonsense works far better.”
“Yeah, yeah. Shut up for a second. This is bad shit, Cal. Poppy, I mean. The stuff I found might not be the kind of thing you want to go wading into at all. Even for your kind of business, this is pretty stomach churning crap.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Where are you?” Norris asked.
“Driving at the moment.”
“Pull over. This is important, Cal.”
Calisto did as his old friend asked. It wasn’t often than Norris got serious enough to demand anything from Calisto during a conversation.
Once the car was parked alongside of the highway, Calisto said, “All right, let me have whatever it is.”
“From what I gathered, Poppy isn’t living off her father’s dime anymore. She hasn’t been for a long while. In fact, the girl hasn’t been seen out with her family in a public setting in almost a year. Seems a while back, there was an issue with a man that Poppy had been running around with on the social scene.”
“What kind of a problem?”
“What do you think?” Norris asked back.
“Poppy’s family is big-time, right? They probably didn’t approve of the guy.”
“Hit the nail on the head, Cal. Here’s the thing—Mika Orlov is the guy. A little checking on him told me that he came from an immigrant mother straight out of the slums of Russia’s poorest. He grew up shit poor in the States, and his mother made ends meet in such a way that gave her a rap sheet three feet long.”
“What kind of charges?”
“Drugs. Possession. Solicitation. Same old thing. Over and over, man.”
“How’s a street kid like Mika get mixed up with a socialite like Poppy?” Calisto asked.
“My guess is they met on her turf, probably after he’d gotten off the streets by making a living in the only way his mother ever taught him how to. This all brings me back around to the father issue with Poppy again—he didn’t approve of this Mika. He made no secret about it. Tabloids ran with it for a while, guessing, speculating, and all that garbage.”
“Let me guess, her father likely cut her off from the money and family side of things?”
“Seems like it,” Norris confirmed.
“So what am I missing here?”
“Poppy seemed like a dead end on her side of things, except she’s still been seen out and about with this Mika character on occasion.”
“How deep?” Calisto asked.
“Underground, man. This is the part where you don’t want to get mixed up in.”
Calisto didn’t have a choice.
“Try me.”
“Seems Mika moved on from his socialite drug dealing scene to the sale of skin.”
Jesus H. Christ.
Calisto’s chest tightened with anxiety, but he refused to let it show in his voice when he said, “How did he come about joining that?”
“Seems he’s got some ties to a Bratva organization in Russia that transports girls back and forth across the country. That could be how his dealing worked, too, honestly. It’s hard to find info on Bratva organizations because they’re so fucking secretive and down-low about everything, especially when they’re headed in another country.”
“His mother came from Russia,” Calisto noted.
“He was born in the States a few months after her arrival. She would have been barely pregnant when she immigrated, but he was conceived over there.”
“His father could have been in the organization.”
“Likely. Old school Bratva men are known to shun their children, usually the boys, until they become a certain age. Then they come out of the woodwork, promising to bring them into the folds.”
“That might have seemed like a dream to a kid like Mika who struggled his whole life,” Calisto said quietly.
“This is all speculation, man. Keep that in mind.”
“But the skin trade isn’t speculation.”
“No, he’s definitely got his hand in that. I checked in with a contact of mine on the official side of things—”
Calisto made a noise under his breath, disgusted. “Fuck, you know I don’t like when you do that.”
“I wanted to get this info right for you the first time.”
“Fine. What did your guy say?”
“They’ve got a taskforce trying to pin down the ring of men running part of the skin trade in Vegas. All they can say is there’s some kind of auction thing, from what they understand, that goes on every few months. It’s not the only thing Mika has his hand in.”
“What else?”
“He also fishes in females that would be easy to victimize. The ones no one would notice missing. You know the stories of people who hook up with prostitutes by way of craigslist or whatever?”
“Yeah,” Calisto said. “What about it?”
“Well, it’s like that. He grabs a girl, pumps her full of drugs, keeps her needing the fix, and makes her work in hotels. According to my guy, these girls never stay in one place for very long. They’re known to take them from state to state weekly to keep on the move and out of the eyes of officials. It’s one of the reasons why they’re difficult to catch and why set organizations like the Sorrentos don’t make a fuss because they’re not really fucking with their business.”
Calisto’s stomach churned.
This was bad.
His best hope was that Emma hadn’t gotten herself somehow mixed up in this crew of people, but that was highly unlikely, given her last calls had been to Poppy. Emma needed help, and she went to someone she thought she could trust for it.
“There’s something else,” Norris said.
“What is it?”
“Those auctions—they’re not for the hotel girls. They’re for the kind of girls that a man might want to use again and again. Clean, sober, pretty, healthy girls. My guy said men are known to fly in from all over the world for a chance at these auctions, and then they fly out with a slave who now has no name, no past, and no definable future.”
Oh, God.
Calisto let out a slow breath. “And?”
He could hear the unfinished words. There had to be more Norris wasn’t saying.
“My guy believes there’s an auction happening soon. They believe them to happen in the early hours of the morning at an unknown location. Vegas is the perfect place for one because people fly in and out from all over the world all the fucking time. Calisto, I don’t know what’s going on with you right now, but this is dangerous shit and you have to be careful, man.”
“Did your guy say anything about Mika having a hand in the auctions, or just the hotel girls?” Calisto asked, ignoring Norris’s final warning.
Norris sighed. “He doesn’t believe him to be directly involved with the auctions. But he said from what they do know, if Mika could get his hands on a good enough girl to sell to someone higher in his organization who does have a hand in the auctions, it would be yet another in for him. Mika is clearly an upstart—they like to keep going up.”
“What about someone like a principessa della mafia?” Calisto asked softly.
Norris was silent for a long time.
“Jesus.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yeah, that’s a yes, Cal. She would be priceless, just based on her last name alone.”
Calisto swallowed the lump in his throat. He checked the time again, noting the lost minutes since he’d answered Norris’s call. “Do you have an address for this Mika?”
“No. Seems he’s all over the place, but he favors a few businesses in particular.”
“What about Poppy? Is her address the same one I have in my documents?”
“No on that, too. Her old penthouse was sold by her father six months ago. She moved into a smaller apartment.”
“I want the address, now,” Calisto said.
“Sure, let me bring it up again.”
He would start there.
With Poppy.
May God save her fucking soul when Calisto came knocking.
“One more thing,” Norris said.
“Shoot.”
“If you do somehow manage to get in on the auctions, make sure to bring money, Cal. A lot of it.”
Calisto was suddenly grateful that Vegas didn’t run on everyone else’s time.
With a steady hand, Calisto lifted his cigarette for a drag. He inhaled the smoke, let it burn in his lungs, and then exhaled a steady steam to the alleyway. The sound of bells jingling as the door to a small bakery was opened rang in the darkness. Calisto pushed off the wall, and kept his cigarette in his mouth all the while.
He’d went to Poppy’s place, only to find she wasn’t there. A quick check with her neighbor, a charming smile and a smooth word, and the older woman let him know that she heard Poppy talking on the phone before leaving the building.
Apparently, Poppy’s neighbor was nosy.
That was good for Calisto.
The old neighbor let Calisto know that Poppy had a taste for coffee and bread from a shop down the street, and that’s where she told her caller she was going. The woman even let Calisto know the name of the small bakery.
Norris had emailed Calisto a picture of Poppy, one that had been distributed in one of Vegas’s socialite magazines. He knew which woman he was looking for.
The waiting game was still a killer.
Stepping closer to the mouth of the alley, Calisto took another drag from his cigarette and leaned his shoulder to the brick wall. The bright lights of Vegas were everywhere. A person couldn’t even see the fucking stars from down below because the lights outshined them.
It was a shame.
Calisto missed New York.
He still hated his uncle. But he missed home.
It was easier for Calisto to think about the little things that were bothering him than to let his insides be eaten away with all the worries he had about Emma. Maybe over the last three weeks, he had allowed himself to get too close to the girl, even if it was at a distance.
He’d worried about what would happen after she married Affonso. He didn’t like that she wouldn’t be happy. It made him sick to think about Emma being in his uncle’s bed night after night.
Calisto shouldn’t have concerned himself with those things at all.
So yeah, he stared at the fucking sky and let himself be annoyed by the lack of stars.
It was easier.
A redhead strolled past the alleyway, drawing in Calisto’s attention. He was thankful for the distraction. Poppy Johansen could dress herself up or down however she wanted; she could hang out in the worst neighborhoods, or go to the elite parties on the weekends.
What the girl couldn’t hide, was her flaming red hair.
Stepping out of the alley without making a sound, Calisto followed behind the woman. He kept his head down, smoked his cigarette, and kept one eye on the unknowing woman ahead of him. It wasn’t long before a block had passed and they were closing in on the building where Poppy lived.
She still hadn’t noticed Calisto when she rounded the front of the building and unlocked the main doors to get inside. Calisto had waited earlier for someone to leave when he had entered, but being as close as he was to Poppy, this time he only had to grab the door before it closed.
That was the first time she took notice of him.
Poppy gave Calisto a strange look, smiled slightly, and then headed for the elevators. Calisto followed without a word.
Standing in front of the elevators, Calisto took note of the messenger bag Poppy had slung over her arm. She likely had a gun in there, or maybe a knife, considering her choice in company for men. He wanted to make sure he wasn’t on the receiving end of any weapon she might have.
Poppy reached out and pressed the button for the elevator. The right one opened almost immediately. She stepped in, shooting Calisto a glance over her shoulder, and he walked in right behind.
“Are you new to the building?” Poppy asked as she hit the third floor button.
“No,” Calisto said. “Visiting someone.”
“Which floor?”
“Fourth.”
Poppy hit the floor number, and the doors closed. Calisto took note of how she held her bag a little tighter as the elevator began to lift.
At the third floor, the elevator came to a smooth stop before the doors opened to allow Poppy out. Calisto gave her a smile as she stepped off the elevator, and started to walk down the hall. Just as the doors began to close, he stuck his hand out and stopped them, forcing the elevator to open and let him out, too.
Poppy’s place was only a couple of doors down from the elevator. Calisto had taken note of that earlier. As he stepped out into the hallway, Poppy was just unlocking her door.
With her head down, she didn’t even see him coming.
Calisto grabbed her bag off her shoulder as the barrel of his newly acquired gun met the back of her neck. The girl froze like a statue, and her keys fell on the floor.
“You should answer your phone when someone calls,” Calisto said. “Since you wouldn’t answer mine, I decided to come over for a little visit. It’s Poppy, right?”
Poppy nodded. “Yes.”
“Is there a gun in your bag, Poppy?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“No,” she said.
Calisto didn’t believe her, but since he had the bag in his hand, he figured he was okay. “Open the door and step inside. Turn on the light. Keep quiet, or I’ll blow your spinal cord out through your throat when I pull the fucking trigger. Is that understood?”
“Yeah.”
Poppy did as she was told. Once they were inside the apartment, Calisto tossed the bag ten feet into the space and far away from his current captive.
“Emma called you. Where is she?”
“I don’t—”
Calisto spun Poppy around fast, shoved her into the closet wall, grabbed her throat in his free hand, and pointed his gun right between her wide eyes. “Lying won’t make this easier or faster, Miss Johansen. I simply want to know where Emma Sorrento is.”
Poppy’s gaze darted back and forth as her mouth opened and closed. Calisto knew that look. It was the look of someone trying to search for a lie.
He cocked the hammer back.
Poppy whimpered.
“His name is Mika, right?” Calisto’s smile was deadly.
Poppy sucked in a ragged breath. “What?”
“I hear you like to sleep with monsters, sweetheart.” Calisto dragged the barrel of his gun from Poppy’s forehead, over her nose, and down to her trembling lips. “The kind of monsters that take girls just like you, shoot them up with drugs, and shove them into a room for the taking. And do you know what the monster you sleep with does with those girls he takes? He sells them, Poppy. He lets other men go in and beat them, use them, and rape them however they want for the right price. Don’t tell me that you don’t know the kind of monster you’re sleeping with.”
“And if I do?”
Calisto’s smile melted into a smirk. “Let me introduce you to a whole new kind of monster. And the best part about me is that I’m not the monster fucking you, sweetheart. Did you fish her into his hands? Is that what happened? Are you trying to get your boy a little higher in his game so that you can live off the wealth of a man other than your daddy?”
Poppy sneered. “Go to hell.”
“I already live there.”
She blinked, stunned.
Calisto didn’t give a fuck. “Make this easy, tell me where I can find either Emma, or Mika.”
“I don’t—”
He grabbed her cheeks, spread her mouth wide, and shoved his gun so far down her throat that she gagged on the barrel. Poppy’s eyes filled with tears, and slivers spilled over her cheeks.
“Tell me,” Calisto urged quieter, “and I’ll seriously consider letting you live tonight. You’re nothing more than a stupid, spoiled little rich girl who is so far out of her fucking league that you can’t even afford the tickets to the show you’re trying to see, sweetheart. I’ll let you live tonight if you tell me where to find your little boyfriend. And you know what you’ll get to do then?”
Poppy swallowed around the barrel, unable to speak.
“Then, tomorrow, when you wake up and see the news of your boyfriend’s death plastered across the television, you’ll be able to go back to your father on your hands and knees like the worthless bitch you are, and beg him to let you back in to your family. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? I bet it’s much better than your father having to come here and identify what is left of your face after I pull the trigger.”
More tears spilled.
Calisto kept smiling.
Poppy mumbled something around the barrel of the gun. Calisto pulled the weapon out just enough to let her speak. She instantly blurted out the name of what sounded like a strip club.
“Where is that located?” Calisto asked.
“About twenty minutes from here,” Poppy cried, her sobs following right behind.
She said a street and number. Calisto filed the info away in his mind for later.
“Thank you,” he said, stepping back from Poppy.
The girl fell on the floor, holding her face and throat in her hands. She didn’t notice Calisto reaching behind his back to grab the silencer. She cried below him as he spun the silencer into the tip of his barrel.
“I lied,” Calisto said.
Poppy glanced up, her brown gaze zoning in on the gun pointing at her face.
“My apologies to your father,” he added.
Calisto pulled the trigger.