His Juliet: An Age Gap Hurt Comfort Mafia Romance (Empire of Royals Book 2)

“Franco found them!” Enzo’s shout as he burst into Matteo’s office jolted me out of my half-asleep stupor.

We’d spent the past four days attempting to track the Butcher. We knew he was bringing girls into the city to sell, but the man was a ghost. Somehow, he avoided all video surveillance, and the few Albanian soldiers we’d captured weren’t high enough up in the organization to tell us anything useful.

The longer he taunted me, the greater my need to end him grew.

“What did he find?” Matteo asked, tightening his grip on a very pregnant Sofiya sitting on his lap.

Enzo held out his phone, and Franco’s voice rose from the speaker. He’d been Matteo’s top hacker for years. It was rare to get him out of his apartment, but he was incredible at what he did and had saved my life on more than one occasion.

“I’ve been watching this club in Midtown. It’s registered to an American company, but after a shit-ton of digging, I finally found ties to the Albanians. All the cameras in the area have been tampered with except for one in an ATM. I just hacked it and pulled footage from late last night. Most of it’s out of frame, but there were two men leading a woman inside the back of the club. I used facial recognition software on the guys, and there was a match to one of the Butcher’s soldiers.”

Matteo’s jaw clenched. “Get us whatever you can on that building. I want blueprints, footage, and any other useful intel. We’ll raid it tonight.”

Enzo ended the call and waited for orders. I was already running down the list of men and weapons I wanted with me.

Sofiya made a small noise and clutched her husband’s arm. They locked eyes and carried on a silent conversation. Something stirred in my chest that felt suspiciously like longing. Juliet had felt perfect in my arms.

Matteo turned back to me. “Can you take point on this one? I’ll stay here and work with Franco on comms.”

I kept my expression neutral to hide my surprise and nodded. Matteo wasn’t one to sit on the sidelines, but Sofiya was less than two months from delivering, so I understood her desire to keep her husband out of the line of fire. While part of me missed how things used to be—Matteo and me running recklessly around the city together—I loved Sofiya like a sister and wanted to do whatever I could to support their growing family.

“You should pull Sienna in to help Franco,” I said.

Sienna was the best hacker I knew, but Matteo was extremely protective of his sister and had never wanted to involve her in Family business.

“Franco has it under control,” Matteo said.

His unwavering gaze met mine, and I knew I wouldn’t win this argument today.

“I’ll let our men know to get ready,” I said.

“The club closes at two a.m.,” Enzo said.

My hands tightened on the armrests. That was hours away, and the darkness inside me that hungered for blood pushed me to go now. But I would be smart about this, ensuring we had a strong plan so my men stayed safe.

I was ready for vengeance.

My knee bounced as I waited in the back of a van. We’d parked as close to the Albanian club as possible while avoiding their surveillance cameras. The medic across from me was sorting through first aid supplies.

“You got everything you need?”

She looked up at me, eyes wide, and stammered out a yes. She looked young and nervous, but if Aria, the head of our private clinic, thought she was competent, I had to trust that she was.

Once we cleared and secured the club, two medic vans would be waiting for us to transport any girls we found.

Every minute that ticked by on the clock mocked me. It was smart to wait for the club to close, but every passing second was another opportunity for those girls to get hurt.

I reached inside myself, touching the monster I kept locked deep within. On nights like this, it eagerly laid in wait.

Angelo nudged me. “You okay?”

His voice was low so our soldiers didn’t hear. He’d risen through the ranks quickly these past few years until he’d become Sofiya’s bodyguard. He was a good man and I trusted him to have my back, but fuck him for being a little too perceptive, for seeing the parts of me I hid away.

“Fine.”

He grunted.

Franco came in on my earpiece. “The patrons and most of the staff have left. We don’t know if all the staff are Albanian Mob, so proceed with caution.”

“And bring the Albanians back here for questioning,” Matteo cut in. “Keep them alive.”

I looked at my men and they all nodded. “We’re ready.”

We drove the remaining blocks to the club through quiet streets. Our van parked at the front entrance and the other, carrying the rest of our men, parked in the back. I took a deep breath, allowing the darkness to fill me, before leading our group to the front door. I shot the locked handle and Angelo shouldered it open.

Franco hadn’t been able to hack into the cameras inside the club, which meant we were flying blind. It made me nervous—Franco was good, which meant the Albanian’s tech person was even better.

I moved in through the door, gun raised. My eyes immediately fell on a group of four men by the bar. They were wearing dark suits and looked to be in their sixties.

“Hands in the air!” I shouted, knowing Angelo had my back.

They reached for their weapons but were too slow. Screams filled the air as I landed bullets in their arms and hands.

“Tie them up,” I commanded. Irritation pulsed through my veins at having to keep them alive for questioning. They deserved to suffer.

I would be doing the questioning, though, and that soothed my bloodlust enough to keep going.

The rest of our men joined us, having entered from the back.

“We’ve got one tied up in the office, but we didn’t see anyone else,” Accardi, our new enforcer, said.

“Help secure these bastards.” I gestured at the four men writhing on the floor. “And make sure the alley and medics are covered. The rest of you spread out, and let me know if you find anything or anyone.”

I nodded at Angelo and he covered me as I searched the remaining rooms, throwing open all the doors. We didn’t find anything suspicious until my eye caught on something in the back of a storage room. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, forcing me to squint.

“That look weird to you?” I muttered.

Angelo held up his gun, the mounted flashlight illuminating a back wall covered by a large, off-kilter sheet of plywood. We looked at each other and moved to shift the plywood. When we did, it revealed another door. Angelo pulled it open, exposing the creepiest-looking set of stairs I’d ever seen.

“We found stairs,” I updated Franco and Matteo through my earpiece.

“Be careful,” Matteo grunted.

“Aww, I knew you cared.”

I could practically feel his eye roll.

We headed down the stairs and were confronted with yet another door. A sick feeling took hold of me. Nothing good was waiting for us.

It was locked, and I pointed my gun’s light at the handle so Angelo could pick it. Moments later, it swung open.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was sweat, blood, urine, and desperation. Darkness shrouded the room, making it impossible to see anything, but I already knew this place would haunt my nightmares.

I pointed my mounted flashlight into the space and immediately wished I hadn’t.

Six girls were chained to the back wall. They were dirty and emaciated, dressed in only their underwear and sitting on the hard concrete floor. Their wide, terrified eyes met mine. I expected them to scream or beg for mercy or ask for help, but they were silent. Bile rose in my throat at the realization of what they must have gone through to keep them this quiet.

“We’re here to help you,” I said softly. I didn’t know if they understood English, but hopefully, they understood my tone. “We’ll take you somewhere safe, I promise.”

I got closer and the girls finally reacted, flinching away from me. It didn’t help that I was pointing a gun at them so I could see their chains better.

I turned to Angelo, who had hung back. “We either need the keys for the handcuffs or a bolt cutter. And some fucking flashlights.”

I could barely make out his features in the dark, but what I saw in his gaze matched the white-hot fury in mine. He nodded and left the room.

I backed away from the girls so I wasn’t looming over them. “Do any of you speak English?”

Silence.

I tried Italian, but no response.

The other girls we had found who were trafficked by the Albanians were Ukrainian. I’d lost a bet with Sofiya, so she’d taught me to say, “I am a loser,” and forced me to announce it at a poker game after she beat me.

“Ya nevdakha,” I said in what I was sure was a clumsy accent.

This got the slightest reaction, which seemed promising. Although now they were probably even more confused why an armed man was calling himself a loser.

“Matteo,” I said into my earpiece. “We found six girls, but they’re not responding to me in English. Can you have Sofiya call me so she can try Ukrainian or Russian?”

There was a long beat of silence. “I don’t want to stress her.”

I scrubbed my hand down my face. Matteo’s protectiveness of his wife had skyrocketed with her pregnancy. I didn’t blame him, but we needed Sofiya’s help, and I knew she’d want to give it. “I need them to know we’re going to take them to the safe house and that I won’t hurt them.”

There was a long pause.

“Fine. I’ll ask her.”

Angelo returned. “Found the key and one flashlight.” He pointed it at the girls. They were handcuffed to chains attached to the walls.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I answered.

“Hey, I’m here,” Sofiya said. “The overprotective overlord finally gave me the phone. Am I on speaker?”

“Putting you on speaker now.”

I hit the button and moved closer to the girls, crouching down to make myself less intimidating. Sofiya said something, and the girls looked at each other. Sofiya kept talking, and eventually, one woman responded. She looked like she was the oldest—two of the younger girls clung to her arms.

The woman spoke to Sofiya, exchanging a few sentences.

“I told them they could trust you and you were going to take them somewhere safe, but who knows if they believe me,” Sofiya said in English. “But Romeo, she said there’s another girl in the room. Locked in a closet or something?”

My heart stuttered. Shit shit shit. The woman met my gaze and pointed into the back corner. Angelo scanned the room with the flashlight, landing on a metal door that blended into the dark wall. My heart pounded as he went over to it and tried the handle.

This one opened right away.noveldrama

Angelo’s body blocked my view but his loud swears told me everything I needed to know.

He fell to his knees. “I think she’s still alive.”

I moved so I could look over his shoulder. A young woman was curled up in a tiny fucking closet, completely naked. She was pale, unconscious, and had a nasty wound on her leg. Someone had tried to bind it with scraps of cloth, but it was a mess of blood and puss.

“Sweetheart, can you hear me?” Angelo placed his hand on the girl’s forehead and cursed again. “She’s burning up. She needs the hospital now.” His voice was filled with fury as he lifted her pale, limp body into his arms. He turned to run out of the room, but I stopped him.

“You can’t shoot with her in your arms. Wait for me so I can cover you.”

He looked ready to murder, but handed me the handcuff key and pointed the light at the chains so I could free the women. I hurried, knowing the girl in Angelo’s arms wouldn’t hold on much longer.

One girl cried silent tears when I got close, but they all stayed still and let me unlock them.

“Sofiya, can you tell them to follow me closely?”

She relayed the information to the girls and they nodded.

“Alright, let’s go.”

I went first, gun raised as I checked the hallway. My men spoke to me through my earpiece. They’d cleared the rest of the building, but I didn’t relax as I led our group to the back exit where the medics and vans waited to take them to safety. Sofiya had set up apartments in the city and upstate to provide safe, long-term housing for any trafficked girls who wanted to stay.

Accardi waited for us at the backdoor. “The men who were here are already on the way to holding. We found another two in the back. They pulled guns on us and one died in the process.”

Shit. Hopefully the men we got would have the information we needed. I was looking forward to breaking them.

I stepped out into the dark street. I gestured at Angelo, covering him as he carried the woman to the back of the van where the medics were waiting. One of them stepped forward and tried to take her.

“I’ve got her,” he growled, shoving past the medic and carrying her straight into the van. “We need to get to the clinic fucking now.”

“You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll follow with the others in the second van.” The woman’s listless body was scaring the shit out of me.

Once they’d pulled out of the alley, I turned to the other women and gestured for them to get in the remaining van. I hated the terror on their faces and wished I had a more comfortable mode of transportation for them, but they complied. I got in the passenger side and reloaded my gun in case we were attacked on the way to the clinic, but the ride was uneventful.

When we arrived, Aria was already assessing the woman from the closet and I cocked an eyebrow at how Angelo was hovering over her.

“You got this?” I asked Aria.

She waved me off, and that was my sign to leave and exact revenge for every wound—visible and not—that these girls had suffered.

My knife sliced through flesh. I’d sharpened it last night so this bastard’s body offered virtually no resistance, but there was no satisfaction in it.

Blood spurted from the deep cut, drenching the floor and saturating the air with the scent of coppery iron.

The Albanian men had squealed right away. Disappointing, honestly. I had been ready for a challenge.

They confirmed they were part of the Albanian Mob in New York. They had been fragmented and fighting amongst themselves since the loss of their leader, Arben, last year. We had expected the whole organization to collapse with little pressure from us after Matteo killed Arben, but the Butcher had stepped into the leadership void.

He was the Krye or Boss of the largest Albanian clan in Europe, and now the motherfucker was trying to gain power in the states, importing girls to gain the money and favor of the morally corrupt rich assholes who reveled in the opportunity to buy sex slaves.

When one of the sniveling men confirmed that these weren’t the first girls they’d brought into the club and that three others had died? I finally got the opportunity to use the sword Enzo had given me as a joke gift. It lopped off the man’s hand with ease. The useless limb fell to the floor with a thud, spraying blood everywhere. My inner monster stared impassively as the bastard bled out in front of me and the other men moaned and begged for mercy.

This didn’t feel like justice. Nothing would erase what those girls had gone through. No matter what I did to these men, nothing would make it better.

“Put the remaining trash in the cells,” I commanded Accardi. He gave me a curt nod, expression stoic. He was in his mid-thirties and had been promoted to enforcer after Domenico betrayed us. It had proved a good decision so far.

I washed my hands in the side sink. I’d take a shower once I was back in my apartment, but I didn’t want to drip blood all the way through the building.

I called Matteo on the elevator ride up, filling him in on what the Albanians had said. As suspected, none of them were high enough ranking to know much of anything. They were paid to keep the girls in the basement and were given a list of numbers that identified each buyer. The next group of buyers were supposed to come to the club in two days. If they caught wind of our raid, they would know to stay away. But in case any of them were stupid enough to come, we would be waiting for them.

I hung up as I got off the elevator. Sienna and I shared this floor and she had decorated my apartment, making it look like someone actually lived here. But as I slipped inside, silence the only thing greeting me, I felt empty.