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The back of my neck prickled.
“Franklin Whitaker,” Nik said.
The name had been in the air since Scarlett and Lucian came back from Spain with files linking him to the global sex trafficking network behind the monastery.
Nik’s expression hardened. “He’s a predator with an Ivy League education and better manners than Delgado. He doesn’t need gangs on street corners. He needs men with money, influence, and appetites they can’t show in daylight.”
My jaw locked.
“He worked his way into Leon Brands through the billionaire who built it. He started as a financial adviser and made himself the gatekeeper. Now he manages the money, foundations, real estate, private events, and access to models. He runs the kind of rooms where a man can shake hands with a senator at noon and choose a girl from a private list by midnight,” Nik continued. “Scarlett and Lucian brought back enough from Spain to prove the monastery wasn’t an isolated nightmare. Every file opens into another institution and another girl.”
He dragged the corporate map wider.
Leon Brands sat near the center of the web.
“Whitaker has become my number-one focus,” he said. “Every time I pull one thread, a thousand more come with it.”
He took a slow drink from the coffee, rubbing the edge of the cup across his bottom lip and studying the information.
“And now Sarah Farris, our surprise assault victim, leads to him.”
“She’s being paid to frame Xyst,” I barked.
“Paid, pressured, handled…who knows? Maybe all three.” Nik sent several files to the printer. “But she is not random.”
Paper began spitting out of the machine.
I stood because sitting had become impossible, then paced across the office.
“What about the woman who came to the club with all this cooked-up bullshit?” I asked.
Nik shifted screens, and I moved to stand behind him, arms crossed over my chest.
“Let’s see who Miss Delgado really is.” The keyboard clattered away as he typed faster.
A city personnel file opened, followed by a résumé, a bar record, and a university transcript.
“Isabella Delgado,” he read. “Twenty-six. Born and raised in San Antonio, with an undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Top of her class. Law review. Then a summer associate at Harrington Shaw & Pierce, doing white-collar and regulatory work. She was admitted to the New York bar and hired by the City’s Law Department less than three months ago.”
“Sounds shiny.”
“Very.”
“Too shiny?”
“Not fake shiny.” He kept reading. “That’s what bothers me.”
“You’re telling me the woman who walked into our club is legitimate?”
“I’m telling you her credentials are.”
“That’s comforting.”
“She’s well-educated, polished, and credentialed enough to know exactly which statute to quote when she wants a business owner nervous.”
“Why the hell would a woman with that résumé trade private-law money for working in city enforcement?”
Nik glanced over his shoulder at me.
