Chapter 15

Royce glanced at Rurik. The man was flexing his hands and curled them into fists, a growl barely audible. Dimitri's words sank in, and Royce felt his stomach heave. His blood began to boil.

"You mean human trafficking."

Dimitri slipped his hands into his pockets. "Yes. He's one of the biggest traders in the flesh markets."

If there was one thing in the world that could change Royce's mind about killing a man in cold blood, it was sex trafficking. The monsters who did that to women, who stole their freedom, their bodies, their livesit was a fate worse than death. It was hell. Royce stared down at the vial of ricin in his hands, and made his decision.

"Then he's a dead man," Royce said. He wasn't going to let someone like Vadym continue breathing if he had a say in the matter. It wouldn't stop human trafficking in general, but he was going to stop this bastard if he could.

Hans looked to Dimitri. "Guess that's that. Where can we find him? You mentioned the club he gets into?"

"It's called the Black Diamond Bar, but it's not a bar." Dimitri flashed a rueful smile. "It's a BDSM club."

"You ever go there?" Royce asked him. "We need someone who's familiar with the territory."

Dimitri stroked his chin. "A few times, but they tend to prefer sadists, and that's never been my thing."

"How can I get in?"

Dimitri reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wallet. He handed Royce a black card with a silver diamond symbol.

"That will get you in, but you'll need a sub. They don't let unattached Doms come to play, not unless you're shopping for a pet who isn't legal. The club gets used as an auction house for traffickers. When I found that out, I looked for membership elsewhere."

Royce tapped the black card against his palm. It looked like a fancy hotel card key. "You still have an active membership?"

"Yes. I kept it to help with an Interpol raid once. They didn't catch everyone, but it did slow the trafficking for a short time. I felt it might come in handy again someday."

Royce glanced at Hans. "Tomorrow night I'll go with Kenzie."

"Don't be an idiot," said Hans.

Dimitri's eyes sharpened. "Who's Kenzie?"

"The assistant I mentioned earlier." Royce met the Russian's eyes. "I brought her to Moscow with me."

"The assistant Vadym almost killed?" said Dimitri. "You brought her to Moscow, and now you plan to take her to a BDSM club to hunt and kill Vadym? My, Devereaux, you just throw all the rules out the window, don't you?" The Russians laughed, but Royce didn't. Nothing was funny about him bringing Kenzie to the club, but he wasn't going to take anyone else with him.

"You have someone Hans could take, right?" Royce asked Dimitri.

Hans looked at his hands. "That bondage stuff isn't my thing."

"But you can't get in otherwise," Royce reminded him. "It's just an act."

"Fine. But I'm not spanking or whipping anyone."

"I will hire someone for Mr. Brummer. One who will understand her purpose there," Dimitri assured Hans. "We will see you at the Black Diamond Bar tomorrow. It's south of the center of the city. Ask a driver to take you to the Soho Rooms. It's a tourist spot where the runway models and the Mafia meet for a night of fun."

"Thanks." Royce shook hands with Dimitri and Rurik before he and Hans picked up the weapons and headed back to the changing room.

"I kinda hoped we'd get to use the bathing pools," Royce muttered.

Hans laughed. "You really have been watching too many James Bond movies."

"You stripped naked before I did," Royce reminded him.

"Touché."

"We have to get back to Kenzie. There was a mischievous twinkle in her eye that I don't quite trust." Royce reached into his locker and began pulling out his clothes and dressing.

"Mischievous twinkle? She's not Tinkerbell." Hans was grinning as he slid his jeans on.

"No, she's not," he growled. "But I'm afraid she's not taking this as seriously as she should. She might be treating this like a game to avoid the trauma of the past couple days."

"Yeah, well, taking her to this club isn't going to help that delusion. It's all about roleplay there."

He wished Hans hadn't reminded him of that. He didn't want to think about all the things he wanted to do to her, bad things, dirty things, things he knew by her reaction to the Gilded Cuff that she would love.

Hans must have seen the look in his eyes because of the way he grunted. "So it looks like I'll be babysitting both of you tomorrow, because one of you or the other is going to lose your mind."

"I don't lose my mind," Royce said as he jerked his leather jacket on.

"Yeah, you do, kid." Hans carried the weapon cases to Royce, who was putting on his boots.

Royce looked up at Hans's reflection in the mirror. "I haven't been a kid in a long time." Not since he was eight, when Emery and Fenn had been kidnapped. Everything had changed after that. Everything.

No matter how carefully he'd tried to put his world back together, he just couldn't make the pieces fit. Masked gunmen kidnapping your best friends had a way of destroying a boy's innocence. The intangible bogeymen of his boyhood nightmares suddenly became real, and they wore black ski masks.

There was a part of him that would always be that child who spent one evening camping in the woods, sharing ghost stories with his friends, and the next night sitting on his father's lap in his home, shaking as a policeman asked questions about his missing friends.

Hans's voice softened. "You went through hell, I know. Trust me, I know. I remember all of it, every damn minute from the day the Lockwoods hired me to protect Emery. I wanted to protect all of you. Just like I am now."

Royce's throat tightened and he straightened his leather jacket, tugging it down slightly. Hans was in his fifties, but he'd been close to Kenzie's age when he started protecting Emery. Half of his life had been spent watching one rich kid with a target on his back.

"You're a good man, you know?" Royce could barely get the words out, even though he meant it.

Hans nodded, saying nothing. "Let's get you back to your brown-eyed girl, eh?"

"My brown-eyed girl, huh? I like that." Kenzie, his sexy, tempting, and forbidden brown-eyed girl.

When they got back to the hotel, they'd been gone far longer than he'd expected, and he assumed Kenzie would have ordered room service and fallen asleep. But as he opened the door, he didn't see Kenzie. His brown-eyed girl was nowhere to be found. He opened the connecting door to Hans's room.

"Kenzie there?" He peered around the second suite of rooms. Hans was checking the guns in the cases, and he shook his head.

"She's gone?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe she went to the pool?"

"Alone?" Royce almost growled the word. If she'd gone against his orders, orders he'd given to protect her, she was going to be punished. That kind of behavior in this situation could get her killed or kidnapped.

He stormed back into his room. "I'm going to redden that ass of hers."

"I think you might be overreacting," said Hans.

"She disobeyed me. If she does that now, what about later at the club? I agreed to bring her along, but I'll be damned if I let her put both our lives at risk."

"Don't forget to take your swim trunks!" Hans's laughter followed him as he grabbed a swimsuit from his bag and stepped into the large bathroom to change.