"Magnus, you don't have to come with me-" I began, but he grabbed my neck again and tilted my head back for a searing kiss.
"Shut up and find us a flight," he said softly against my lips. His thumb caressed the spot just beneath my ear and I shivered.
I managed a nod and did what he told me. It felt good to have a single task to focus on.
Aleks is alive.
Tears stung my eyes, but I forced them away. I needed to temper my hopes because there was a possibility Remy was wrong and it wasn't Aleks.
But if it was …
A host of thoughts went through my mind as I tried to imagine my little brother. He'd be eighteen now. A young man.
A young man who'd been brutalized for the last ten years.
I'd spent years torturing myself with thoughts of what had happened to Aleks in the days after he'd been taken. I'd learned enough about the sex trafficking industry to know how valuable my brother would have been to his abductors. He likely would have been sold off to the highest bidder. After that, he could have ended up in the hands of countless men as a prostitute or he could have become some toy for more discerning clientele. There was really only one certainty.
My brother had suffered every single fucking day for the past ten years.
While I'd been having sex with random strangers, he'd been repeatedly violated.
While I'd been taking my pleasure wherever I could find it, he'd been waiting for me, for our parents, for someone … anyone to help him.
The image on the tablet in front of me blurred before going dark. I felt it gently worked free of the death grip I had on it. Warm hands rubbed over my forearms.
Why was I so fucking cold?
"Dante," Magnus said softly. I managed to focus on him, but he too looked blurry. I realized it was because of the tears filling my eyes. I blinked to clear them and felt the warm liquid slide down my cheeks.
"We have to find him, Magnus."
"We will, baby. I promise."
I should have told him not to make a promise he couldn't keep, but I really needed that promise. So instead, I wrapped my arms around his neck and his warmth instantly seeped into my skin as he held me. As frantic as I was to get to Aleks, I was also afraid to let go of Magnus. I'd been planning for this moment for years, but now that the prospect of bringing my brother home was within my reach, I was crippled by a fear I didn't want to give voice to.
What if he was alive, but I was still too late?
Even the strongest of men would have struggled to overcome the brutality Aleks would have faced after he was taken. My little brother had been sweet and gentle and often overly sensitive to even the mildest show of anger. How much of that would have survived what he'd been through?
Magnus carefully pushed me back and then grabbed the tablet. He used his sleeve to dry the tears I hadn't realized had fallen on the screen and then handed it back to me. "Find us a flight, baby," he said.
I nodded. I could do this. It didn't matter how broken Aleks was when I found him. And I could live with him hating me for the role I'd played in his abduction. I was bringing Aleks home because he was my brother and I'd always promised to look out for him.
I'd failed him once.
I wouldn't let it happen again.
Chapter Twenty
Magnus
"Have you been looking for Aleks all this time?"
Dante cast me a glance and then turned his head to stare out the window. I highly doubted he was really seeing any of the passing scenery, but I suspected he preferred the blur of cars and flat farmland flying by to looking at me. After all, he hadn't been able to look at me even once since he'd finally managed to focus on finding us a flight to Chicago. It bothered me more than I wanted to admit, but I needed to concentrate on the situation at hand. With Dante waffling between sheer desperation and crippling devastation, I needed to be the one to keep a cool head. I had no doubt that Dante had dreamed of this moment for years, but the reality of what it really meant was crushing him.
Because he wouldn't be bringing home the same little boy who'd been stolen from him ten years ago.
"I started after my parents kicked me out, but it took me a while to make any kind of progress."
"How did you even know where to start?" I asked.
"I started with the cops investigating the kidnapping. One of the guys took pity on me – probably 'cause he was there when my parents kicked me out. He told me everything he knew about the different trafficking rings shuffling people out of Brazil. Then I started asking questions closer to home."
"What do you mean?"
"A favela isn't exactly a model neighborhood," he murmured. "I did whatever I needed to get the information I wanted. Who was who and who was running what. It took me about four years to finally learn there were three major players running various sex trafficking rings out of Rio."
"Did you have specific information on Aleks?"
Dante shook his head. "I was careful … I knew if I asked about a specific kid, people would get suspicious. I pretended I wanted in."
"You mean you pretended you wanted to be in the business."
"Yeah," he said softly. "I only did low level shit … I was basically a glorified errand boy. I never saw any kids or anything," he said hastily.
"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Dante," I said as I glanced at him. "If Jenna had been in that situation … " I let my words trail off because I didn't want to even consider the prospect. Jenna had struggled and she'd suffered at the hands of her killer, but Dante's brother would have had to endure so much more.
Dante studied me for a moment and then dropped his gaze to his lap. He had his phone in his hand and began flicking his nail against the edge of the protective case. "I was in long enough that I figured out which guys specialized in supplying kids and where they were sending them."
"The U.S.," I offered.
He nodded. "I learned which cities they typically sent the kids to. I started in L.A. and was there for almost a year. I focused on the kids instead of the guys running the rings."
"What do you mean?"
Dante began chewing on his lip. "I was desperate, Magnus," he whispered.
"Hey," I said and waited until he looked at me. "I get it," I said. "Nothing changes," I added softly.
He nodded and then said, "I hired kids who I suspected might be a part of the ring. Some were, some weren't. I never fucked any of them," he added quickly.
I nodded because I knew he wouldn't have been capable of that. "Go on."
"If I could get the kids out without giving myself away, I would. Sometimes it meant getting rid of their handler."
He cast me another tentative glance so I merely nodded. I knew what he was saying and even though the cop in me rebelled at the idea of vigilante justice, the pragmatist in me knew it would have been the only way to help the victims.
"I couldn't save them all," Dante murmured and then his eyes were back on the window. "Some didn't want to be saved."
I knew his thoughts were on Aleks.
"So your search led you to Chicago?" I prodded.
"Yeah … about a year ago. There was a power struggle going on and this guy named Eduardo Santero had just taken over the business. One of the kids I hired had been in the ring at one point, but he'd gotten out."
"Remy," I murmured.
Dante nodded. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire," he said softly.
"What do you mean?"
"He managed to escape Santero's ring only to end up with a pimp who turned him into a junkie," Dante said. He shook his head. "I offered to get him into rehab..."
"What's his link to Aleks?" I asked.
"When I would hire the kids, I'd ask them if they'd seen Aleks. He has a distinctive birthmark … it's in the shape of a heart on his collarbone near his neck. If he's wearing a shirt with a low collar, it's easy to see."
"So, Remy recognized the birthmark."
"Yeah. Only kid who ever did … I'd thought I'd won the fucking lottery. Turns out he and Aleks were held in the same house when they were first taken. Remy was a couple years older. He told me Santero was working as a handler for the ring at that point."
"So Santero became your link to Aleks."
"He did. Remy was moved to a new house a few days later so he didn't know what happened to Aleks. When I met him last year, I asked him to call me if he saw or heard anything about Aleks. I never really expected to hear from him … he was my last hope, though, so I kept calling him to see if he'd heard anything. He never called me back."
"What about Santero?"
"That's where things get complicated," Dante said quietly and I saw him cast me a sidelong glance.
When he didn't continue, I said, "Tell me."
He hesitated before saying, "Am I talking to Magnus, my boyfriend or Magnus, the cop?"
Under any other circumstances, I would have been thrilled to hear him referring to me as his boyfriend, but the question had me on high alert. I glanced at my watch and saw we still had plenty of time to catch our flight so I pulled the SUV over to the side of the road and put it in park.
"When all this shit settles down, I'm going to ream your ass for even asking me that question, and not in the way you like," I said. "But for now, I'm just going to say that anything you tell me … anything … stays between us."