Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

I needed to start working harder from the inside.

So I sat down in the tall, white leather desk chair before Irina’s computer and painstakingly went through every folder on her desktop, opening every icon, searching through her deleted history, and still nothing.

I tore my fingers through my hair and catalogued everything I knew about Wet Works.

It was, according to speculation from the club, the main front for the Ventura’s sex trafficking trade. So where did they keep the girls? Curtains had run a check on every employee associated with the company. All of them had a well traced past, were relatively local, and when approached, stated they were happy (or bound by addiction) to work for the company.

So where were the girls?

And how did they sell them?

Something about that last question triggered an errant thought, a here and gone flash that was forgotten in an instant. Only the urge to check the Wet Works Porn site remained.

I clicked through to the homepage and scoured every single icon and hyperlink.

My eyes blurred in the harsh blue light of the screen, but I refused to give up until something yielded itself.

Ignacio used to say “El flojo y el mezquino, recorren dos veces el mismo camino,” which essentially meant the lazy have to do the work twice.

I stayed vigilant, clicking and clacking on the keys, working fast but steady because I knew Irina wouldn’t wrap up filming until she had enough footage to salvage the loss of one of her girls.

Finally, in the span of a blink, I clicked on something that triggered the website to go black.

For a moment, I thought she’d caught me. That Irina and her massive bodyguard, Arturo, would burst into the room with guns held high and plant a bullet in my brain where I sat.

No one entered.

A moment later, my hands frozen in a hover over the keyboard, the screen blinked, and a login box popped up, prompting me for a username and password under a simple heading titled ‘The Game’. I read the small script below that described ‘The Game’ as the elite corner of Wet Works Porn, a private club, members only.

The subscription was ten thousand dollars.

A month.

The usual monthly fee for a premium account on Wet Works was thirty dollars.

I gaped at the screen, my skin buzzing, eyes dry as hell, but I didn’t blink, worried the image would somehow fade. Keeping my gaze to the screen, I reached into my bag, produced my phone, turned it on without looking, and finally, took a shot of the screen.

Lila: Found something.

I sent the image and text off to Curtains, Lion, Nova, and Zeus along with the text.

An instant later, my phone buzzed with three responses.

Zeus: Motherfuckers. Li, you get outta there and come to the club. We debrief and then you. Are. Done. With Irina Ventura. You hear me?

Curtains: Atta fuckin’ babe! Now copy the URL, send it to me, and search the user folder on her desktop again specifically for ‘The Game’. Unless she’s encrypted it, there should be analytics stored there.

Nova: I’m outside. You don’t get your ass out here in ten minutes, I’m comin’ in. I mean it, Lila, get the FUCK outta there.

Evidently, whatever ‘The Game’ meant, it was not good.

I had just done my homework for Curtains, deleted the browser history, and was closing the window when voices sounded outside the door.

“Fuck,” I cursed a moment before the door opened, and I dropped to my knees to squeeze beneath the desk.

I probably could have passed off being on Irina’s computer somehow, but panicked instinct kicked in and I chose hiding over lies.

It ended up being the best decision I could have made.

At first, I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of my pulse and the rush of adrenaline flooding through my system.

And then I did, and I wished I hadn’t.

They were speaking in Spanish, which confused me at first because I was too terrified to switch my thoughts over from English.

“Javier, you need to be smart here,” someone was saying in a rich, almost rhythmic voice that made my skin break out in goosebumps. “If this ship goes down, you lose your entire fleet. Don’t let Irina be the end of you.”

“Please, you know I would never let such a thing as my wife get in the way of success,” Javier replied with disgust, as if the idea of loving his partner was repugnant. “She has assured me this shipment will more than make up for her past…discrepancies.”

There was a pregnant pause and then, “I hope that’s the case. My boss is not a man who accepts mistakes. He made allowances for Irina before because I vouched for you given our history, but he nor I will do so again.”

“Yes, of course,” Javier allowed. “Nor will I. If Irina fails, she knows she is as good as dead.”