Chapter 128: The Most Famous Organ Trafficker in the Country

GIDEON

"Thanks, Kai, you don’t have to," Ivy’s soft voice filtered through the receiver.

"If you don’t tell me, I’ll use other resources to get..."

"No, no, please, Kai!" she panicked. "I’ll handle it, okay? This is my fight. Please. I’ll tell you, Ro and G everything later, I swear. I just need to handle this."

Her words wouldn’t leave my head. Even after she and Kai finished talking and he cut the earpiece, they kept looping.

I thought I was barren. I thought my body was broken. He was the devil himself.

I stood by the window of my office and stared at the city without seeing a thing. The afternoon sun was beginning to dip and cast long shadows across the room. Behind me, Roman paced back and forth, and at this rate his shoes would wear a permanent hole in the carpet.

"She wanted a baby," he muttered, his voice tight. "She wanted a baby, and they took that from her."

"I know."

"And she’s been carrying this alone for three years. Three fucking years, G."

"I know, Roman."

"I shouldn’t have listened when you said to give her space. I should have gone looking for her."

"Roman." I finally turned and pinned him with a look. "Pacing my floor isn’t going to fix anything."

He stopped, but only for a second. Then he was moving again, running a hand through his hair, his jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping. My brother wore his heart on his sleeve, and right now it was bleeding for her.

The door pushed open and Kai appeared holding a black box, his chest heaving from the run. "You heard all that, right?"

"All twenty minutes of it," Roman grunted.

Kai nodded and dragged a hand through his curls. "We have to find the fucker she was married to."

"Exactly! No more waiting. I can’t stand to see her like that..."

"The files, Kai," I interrupted, holding out my hand. "And the cold wallets."

Kai pulled a USB drive from his jacket and dropped the box on my desk. I opened it to find several hardware wallets, no bigger than credit cards.

"Got everything you asked for. Meyers’s patient logs, financial records and his personal stash of crypto. The man has been very busy."

I plugged the USB into my laptop. The files loaded, and within seconds the screen filled with spreadsheets, medical records and security footage in cold blue light.

"Organ trafficking," I murmured, scrolling.

"Meyers has been running a side business. Patients came in for routine procedures and died unexpectedly. Their organs were harvested and sold on the black market."

Roman leaned over my shoulder, his eyes narrowing. "How many?"

"Dozens, over the past decade. He’s been covering it with false death certificates, and Felix receives a share every month."

Normally we would wait. Our plan was to find everyone who helped Felix destroy our family before we took him down, and Meyers was one name on that list. But this was different. Meyers was one of the names, the files gave us leverage over Felix without ending him, and the man had hurt Ivy.

"The FBI would have a field day with this," I said. "Felix will be investigated as well."

"And the crypto?" Kai asked, a cruel grin curling his lips.

"Here’s what I’m thinking. We scatter it to the wind. A little charity for Wisteria. Anonymous donations, random acts of kindness, money appearing in people’s bank accounts. Meyers would lose his fucking mind watching it vanish."

Roman’s eyes lit up. "That’s diabolical. I love it."

I nodded. "It’s smart. Meyers won’t be able to reclaim it, and Felix will scramble to protect his name or, like the coward we know, abandon Meyers."

"And good old Meyers won’t take that well. I can’t wait to watch them take each other out." Kai flopped onto the sofa.

"I’ll send the files to our men and tell them to tip off the press. By tomorrow morning, Dr. Meyers will be the most famous organ trafficker in the country."

"And Roman," I said, glancing at my little brother, "you can then have a field day with him."

"Now we’re talking. He’s going to pay for every second Vivi cried. Him and that husband of hers."

"Speaking of which," Kai said, sitting up, "she still wouldn’t give me a name. She said it’s her fight."

"She’s so stubborn," Roman muttered affectionately.

"She’s scared," I corrected. "There’s something she’s not telling us."

Roman was already pulling out his phone. "I’m calling her."

He wandered to a corner of the room and dropped his voice to a murmur. I watched his shoulders relax the second he heard her voice, his free hand clenching and unclenching as if he were fighting the urge to reach through the phone and touch her.

This was getting complicated.

Kai was already on his laptop firing off emails and messages to our network. "Files are sent. Press and the FBI will be tipped within the hour. By morning, Meyers is toast."

A nagging feeling gnawed at my gut. Something wasn’t adding up. Miss Harpley had been in Wisteria only a few months, according to what she’d said, so how did a housekeeper from nowhere end up tangled with one of the most connected doctors in the city?

How had her husband worked with Meyers to convince her she was barren?

Was that why she gave so much to the orphanage? And what was she so terrified of that she panicked when Kai asked for her husband’s name?

How did a domestic accident turn into this? How many more lies and inconsistencies was Ivy Harpley hiding behind that smile?

I waited until my brothers left, then pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn’t called in months.

"Mr. Knight," the voice on the other end said, crisp. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I need you to look up someone for me."

Milo had been the one to look into her originally. He had said there was nothing out of the ordinary. But Milo had turned out to be a traitor, and I had to ask how much of what he told me about Ivy was true.

"Ivy Harpley," I said. "Every record, every address and every relative. Start with where she lived before Wisteria."

Who the hell are you?