"Kim!"
"Dad!"
Bryan only had eyes for his daughter. Why Bella had kept Patrice alive, he didn't know. Didn't ask. No time.
He pulled Kim into his arms and held on tight.
Bella walked over to the broker.
"Please! Don't kill me!" Patrice was blubbering now. "I have two sons and a daughter—"
Bella laughed. Cold. Empty.
Bryan's jaw tightened. "You have a daughter. And you still did this."
Not a question.
Even in his designer suit, Patrice couldn't hide what he was. The sleaze practically oozed off him. "It was business! Just business! I thought it was legitimate at first—I swear I didn't know—please, you have to believe me!"
Nobody bought that for a second.
Seeing it wasn't working, he switched back to begging. "Don't kill me! Please!"
Bryan was ready to put a bullet in him right there. Bella stopped him.
"You really don't want to die?"
Stupid question. Who'd say yes to that?
Patrice nodded so hard his neck might've snapped on its own.
Bryan pulled Bella aside. "Why keep him breathing?"
She smiled. Slow. Satisfied. "I want him to rat out every politician and billionaire connected to this."
Bryan had spent his whole life in the shadows. He got it immediately.
"They'll kill him. Worse than we would."
Bella shrugged. "Not my problem."
Bryan took point after that, gun to Patrice's head, using him as a human shield. The scattered guards saw their boss and dropped their weapons.
Bella stayed in the middle with the girls. She'd been doing rescue ops nonstop lately—knew the drill. Even if someone slipped past Bryan, her psychic radar would catch them.
Natasha covered the rear.
The party venue was pure chaos. Rich people stumbling over each other, all that class and poise forgotten. Just panic.
Worked in their favor. The remaining gunmen couldn't fire into the crowd, and with Patrice as leverage, they walked right out the front door.
All three had driven there. The girls were thin, barely dressed. They squeezed in. Made it work.
Pedal down. Gone.
They dropped the girls at a Stark Industries branch office. A lawyer from New York would handle things from there.
Past three in the morning now. Darkest part of the night.
No rest.
They hit the Albanian sites next. Rifles this time. No subtlety. They went in hard and fast, killed over a hundred traffickers, pulled out thirty-plus girls.
These ones had been held a long time. Eyes empty. Minds fogged by drugs. Recovery would be brutal. If it happened at all.
But they were alive. Someone's daughters. Alive was better than dead.
The auction girls were the lucky ones. Nine total, including Kim. Being sold like property was humiliating, but it bought them time.
The thirty-two from the traffickers' safehouse had it worse. Amanda and the others—beaten, starved, one meal a day, some assaulted. But Bella's team got there before anything permanent happened.
The construction site girls were the worst.
Thirty-five of them. Walking corpses. Hit them, nothing. Scream at them, nothing. Just... empty.
That sight stuck with all of them.
Seventy-six girls total. Were there more out there? Probably. But they'd run out of leads.
Save who you can. The rest... bad luck. Wait for the cops. Personal resources only stretched so far.
Next day, Paris lost its mind.
Media. Police. National Security. Everyone was reeling.
Three hundred dead traffickers. Scum. Nobody cared about them.
But the party? Over a hundred bodies. Guards, bodyguards, guests. The three attackers hadn't missed. If you saw them, you died.
Four, five hundred dead total. Bad enough. But the VIP list? That's what made people panic.
Minister of Energy. Two senior presidential advisors. Two corporate CEOs. A major general. A deputy director of National Security.
All dead.
That deputy director? Used to be Bryan's friend. If he'd run into Bryan, maybe he'd have made it. Instead, Natasha caught him in the chaos. One bullet. Lights out.
When the cops finally showed up, bodies lined the streets. White sheets everywhere you looked.
The government was furious. Terrified. Both.
No secret stays buried forever. This had blown too wide open. Everyone knew now.
By morning, fifteen countries were breathing down France's neck. US. UK. Germany. The pressure was massive.
Bella and Bryan worked the phones nonstop. Stanford contacts. Old CIA handlers. Anyone who owed them. Everyone got the same story—just "things they'd heard" about what happened in Paris.
They were building a safety net. If France decided to go scorched earth—jets, tanks, whatever—hiding in a Stark office or even an embassy wouldn't mean shit. Politicians had no shame. They'd do anything.
The rescued girls who could still think straight were calling home too. These weren't poor families. Anyone who could afford international travel had connections. Money or influence, everyone was pulling strings.
At minimum, parents needed to get to Paris. Take their daughters home.
Natasha was the odd one out. Young. No powerful contacts.
She thought about it. Then made a call.
Nick Fury picked up.
Her excuse was simple.
"I have a friend who recently did a small thing..."