"Adrian, you have to let me help you. There is no way I can sit by and wait to find out if you've found our dear Brooklyn. You have to let me do something."

"I don't want you any more involved than you already are, Gina. I never intended for you to have to deal with any of this at all. You and I have been friends for a long time, and I never wanted that part of my life to be any part of this relationship. Everyone we're dealing with, including my father, is very dangerous and I don't want anything to happen to you."

"There has to be something that I can do though. Rinaldo, do you know of anyone that can help?"

"Yes, Ms. LaDonna, I think I do. I can definitely make some calls."

"Thank you, Rinaldo, but you have to understand what you're getting yourself involved in here. These men will try and kill anyone who tries to stop them."

"I understand, Mr. Bellini. I also understand your wife is in great danger. I would like to help, if I can."

"Thank you, Rinaldo," Gina said as she looked over at him, but still held my hand in hers. "Let me at least pay your expenses. Something. I feel so useless."

"You bringing me to your hotel room is more help than you realize. If you hadn't been there, Gina, I don't know what I would have done. I felt like I lost my mind when she disappeared."

"You do seem to be doing much better. I was very worried about you. Your eyes were so sad."

"I am doing better, especially now that I have people on the way to help."

* * *

The three of us spent that night in Gina's hotel room waiting for Grady and Lucas to fly in. They had both called me back within an hour and told me the exact same thing. Grady found out that the man who Brooklyn had originally been sold to was a high-level Russian mobster who, interestingly, trained girls as sex slaves himself. I wondered what else he and my father had in common and if my father was trying to replicate this man's business somehow.

Then when I talked to Lucas he confirmed that exact story. He talked to our father and found out everything. That they had come aboard the yacht to kill me and take Brooklyn, and they watched the men take her in the marketplace. But my father's men hadn't taken her, and my father wasn't sure it was the Russian mobster's men who had taken her. They were waiting for their next orders because my father didn't want to lose track of Brooklyn. He was apparently very anxious about getting her to her buyer.

It made me wonder what kind of deal they had between the two of them.

The sun had barely risen when there was a knock at the door. I had no idea if my father's men had followed us to Gina's hotel, so I cautiously approached the door and looked out the peephole.

I had mixed feelings when I saw Lucas on the other side of the door. I kept hoping I was doing the right thing by having him help me. So far he had been invaluable, but there was this voice in my head that kept telling me to be careful, to not get my hopes up, and to watch my back. I still wasn't entirely convinced that he wasn't here for my father.

I opened the door and he gave me a big smile and put his arms around me. I think if I hadn't been so shocked at his behavior I would have lost it right there.

It had been so long since I had seen him or touched him or gotten anything but a scowl and a sarcastic remark from him that I was immediately suspicious. But when he pulled away from me and I saw the look in his eyes, I let myself believe that he really was here to help me.

"It's good to see you, Adrian. I was wondering if you were ever going to invite me to come for a visit on your damned yacht. But I guess a trip to Russia is better than nothing."

"Thank you, Lucas. You have no idea how much this means to me."

Lucas had his hands on my shoulders and he shook me a little with a smile still on his face.

"It means a lot that you emailed me in the first place. I figured you didn't want to have anything to do with me or Dad anymore. Dad, I could understand. But me? I didn't even want you to go away in the first place. I told you that right before you went running after your girlfriend."

"Yeah, well, you said a lot of things and I didn't know what to believe."

"Okay, let's get in the room. I don't like standing out in this hall with all those thugs on the loose."

I turned to the side and let Lucas walk past me, and just as I was about to shut the door Grady showed up. He looked at me, then at Lucas, and I had a feeling he was wondering the same thing as me.

"Holy shit, you've got Grady working for you? You're a pretty sneaky bastard. I had no idea."

* * *

"So where do you think she is?"

"Well, where she is right now is hard to say," Lucas said as he sat on one of the chairs in the living area of the hotel suite, his elbows resting on both knees like he was ready to jump up and head out any minute. "But where she's headed looks like it's about three hundred miles north of Moscow. Depending on how they get her there it could take a day to fly or more than a week by boat.

"I've got some guys working on the exact location and some local men who will be able to help us once we get up there, but it looks like this yahoo, Mihai Syrnyk, lives in an isolated house that's hidden deep in a forest that's a good twenty or thirty miles from the nearest city. Apparently his house is really more like a palace, and from what I've heard he fancies himself as some kind of royalty, but isn't.

"He travels back and forth between Russia and the Ukraine and is a very high-level member of the Odessa Mafia. It's rumored that he has worked for both the Russian and Ukraine mafias, but if that's the case he's gotta be a total nut-job. Or someone who is so sought after and skilled at what they do that they would share him.

He seems to spend most of his time in this isolated house in Russia though. Oh, and you'll love this. He has an underground cavern where he has his own training ground, complete with multiple cells and the works. You'll never guess who modeled their wine cellar after his setup."

"Wait, are you saying that our dad copied him? Do they know each other, I mean, beyond this transaction?"

"From the way Dad made it sound, they're buddies or something. I have a feeling I didn't get the whole story though, because Dad never gives the whole story, but, yeah, they know each other. I think the information Dad gave me is quite a bit more than is common knowledge on this guy, but it's far from all of it."

"So how are we going to find this place?"

"I have some guys working on that. We have plenty of connections in the area so we're quickly narrowing down men who have worked with Syrnyk and are familiar with his compound. At this point we're not sure how were going to approach the place and get in, but we'll figure that out once we get there.

"What we need to do at this point is get to Moscow and start heading north. We'll drive until we get to the woods on the other side of Vologda, then probably stop for the night while we wait for more guys to show up and for our inside men to tell us how it's going to go down."

While Lucas was talking I suddenly remembered how this was totally his thing. This was why our father had always sent him after the transactions. Lucas loved this part. He loved figuring out how to get to them and how to bring them back. It was like a game to him or a puzzle that he was putting together in his mind. I glanced over at Grady, who was already looking over at me, and I was pretty sure he was thinking the same thing I was. That we were incredibly lucky to have Lucas on our side.

"So that's twenty men I've got flying into Moscow tomorrow, and I don't know how many, maybe twenty more that'll meet us when we get there. And Grady? Do you have anyone coming to join us?"

"Yeah, I've got about ten guys who are set to fly out whenever I give them the word on where to fly to. They're all guys I knew in the military who are mostly working security now, but more than anything they're guys that I know I can trust."

"Tell me what you need and I'll round up some men up as well."

"Who is this guy again?" Lucas asked as he gestured at the man who was working for Gina.

"His name is Rinaldo. He's my security guard and we both want to help as much as we can."

Lucas looked at Gina and shrugged.

"Get whoever you can, then. Preferably guys who have no problem with killing multiple people, and are down with working in a foreign country. Oh, and if you have anyone with any experience in Russia that would be a bonus. We'll be working with cell phones, so a phone with international coverage would be awesome. And it would be great if they could bring their own guns."

"I'll get working on it now."

Rinaldo pulled his phone out of his pocket and went into the bedroom to start making phone calls.

"When are we leaving?"

"Well, I've got my jet at the airport about twenty miles from here, so we can leave anytime. We can send your bags down now and head out whenever you're ready."

"I don't have any bags. I haven't been back to the yacht since Brooklyn disappeared."

"So you just have the clothes you've got on? You might want to grab something before we go. A change of underwear maybe?"

"I don't want to go back there. I just want to leave it."

"Well, do you have anything personal on there? A computer or a phone?"

"Yeah, there's Brooklyn's computer and I've got a tablet and the satellite phone."

"We really should take care of that. You don't want anyone getting on board and going through that stuff."

"Yeah, you're right. I'm not thinking straight. Okay, let's go down there and then head to the airport. I'll pack some things and then ditch that boat for good."

* * *

The thought of walking back onto the yacht filled me with doom. It felt like I was headed to the gas chamber as I walked down the wooden dock and to the slip where it was tied up.

I didn't want to get back on board without Brooklyn. It would have been fine if I had handed her off to Gina and knew she was safe, but everything on the boat remind me of her. And the fact that she was in some unknown place right now on her way to a Russian mobster's training compound in the middle of the woods made my stomach turn.

But Lucas was right. I needed to make sure I didn't leave anything behind that was connected to her or to me.

We climbed aboard and went into the main cabin where I found my tablet and the satellite phone, and took them back to the spare bedroom with me and threw them into a bag with some clothes.

"Is that the only computer on board?" Lucas asked as he gestured to Brooklyn's desktop.

"Yeah, Brooklyn backed everything up before she left so do whatever you want with it."

I had to look away when Lucas shot her computer. It just seemed so final. I wanted to believe everything was going to go back to normal and that Brooklyn would be accessing her files again. That she would be designing clothes again and we would be together again. I gave her suitcase to Gina to take back to Italy with her. I wanted to believe she would be wearing the clothes in that suitcase again.

"Holy shit, what the hell happened in here?" Lucas said as he stood in the doorway of the master bedroom.

"Our dad happened."

"Wow, so he really means business. I mean, I know he does, but I find it so hard to believe that he would do this to you."

"You're telling me," I said. "Thanks again, Lucas. I really thought I was all alone out here. I can't even tell you—"

"Don't mention it. You're my brother and I'd do anything for you."

I looked at him for a moment. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. For almost a year now I had believe that he hated me and it felt so good to have him back.

"All right, let's get out here," I said as I swung the bag over my shoulder. "I can't stand to be on this boat for another second."