and then made our way up the stairs until we reached the VIP area. Vanessa glared at me as we passed the VIP bar she was in charge of at that moment, the look softening when she found Simon. He ignored her pointedly, rounding the bottom of the steps and taking the lead up the stairs so that Matteo, Lino, and I were in the middle and followed by the other of my guys.
I trusted them with my life. I trusted them with Matteo and Lino's lives.
It might not be the same brotherhood I'd found in the Army, but it was a brotherhood all the same. I'd even argue it was stronger since I didn't do the job out of a sense of loyalty to my country. I protected them because I wanted them to be safe, and there was nothing more satisfying than having a direct love for the people the cause benefited when you put your life on the line every day, instead of a general vague responsibility that never quite felt tangible.
We passed my office, going further down the hall to the one that Matteo and Lino shared. It rarely saw use. Not since the Manager took over the daily operations at the club. He had no use for a big office since he spent most of his time down on the floor supervising employees and interacting with our VIPs.
But the office was off-limits to anyone not in the upper echelons of the Bellandi family. Even I only went inside when I had specific permission, and considering I frequently ate dinner at the estate, I suspected I'd somehow maneuvered my way through the ranks to be one of them.
Matt and Rocco stayed in the hall, guarding the door and the blind spot it created as Georgio closed it behind us. Matteo took his seat behind the desk like a king on his throne, glancing down at the dance floor through the two-way mirrored glass with a scowl on his face. He and I had more in common than I liked to admit, with our hatred of the overly loud music.
"Where's Ryker?" I asked, settling in to lean against the wall with my arms crossed over my chest. Lino took one of the chairs, but Simon and Georgio stayed standing with me. Once you trained to become a soldier, whether for the Bellandis or the Army, it became difficult to relax. Even in the safety of a private office in a club your boss owned with guards on every entrance.
Nothing was safe. Nothing was sacred.
Danger was everywhere.
"At the warehouse," Lino said. "He grabbed another one of Tiernan's men with a bait girl." I flinched, hating the fact that we used any of the girls from our stables as a snare. There were too many variables for my taste, too much at risk if we failed to protect them, but if the alternative was to just let them take women until we were ready to launch a full-scale take down, then it was a risk we had to take.
Until we had Liam O'Connell, the head of the Irish, on our side and willing to help us rid the city of the scum he allowed to walk in and out of his house without consequence, we couldn't dismantle Murphy’s human trafficking operation. So Ryker watched. Ryker took photos. He gathered evidence of every betrayal Tiernan committed against the man who was soon meant to be his father-in-law. A man who was already his boss.
And in the coming weeks we'd sever Tiernan from most of his network, and then, when our additional support came from our allies around the world, we'd have everything we needed in place to take down his entire operation. His buyers. His transports. All of it.
We'd burn it to the ground until nothing remained.
"That's the third one we grabbed this week." I chewed on my left thumbnail, thinking over the escalation and what it could mean. Either Murphy thought we'd decided his human trafficking wasn't worth the effort to dismantle, or he'd finally caught on to what we were doing.
If he was sacrificing men to us, there had to be a reason, and the only one that made sense was to serve as a distraction.
But a distraction from what?
"It's an alarming escalation," Matteo echoed my unvoiced thought. "Any word from your guys?"
"After the shooting at the new bar on Broadway, they agreed they'd be here sooner. End of next month," I told him. It wasn't soon enough,