5. Leona
LEONA
I woke up with my head still lying against Max’s thigh. My eyes widened, and I scrambled away from him, then regretted it immediately. Every nerve in my body felt like it was on fire. I gingerly touched my swollen face and flinched. It hurt to just breathe .
With a groan, I curled in on myself and leaned against the bars. I wanted to whimper, to collapse into one of my guys’ arms, and to let them comfort me. But I couldn’t let Max see any more weakness. I shoved the pain deeper inside.
“Leona.” His voice was soft, careful.
My eyes flicked up, and I glared at the concerned look in his titanium eyes. He had no right to look at me like that. Like he cared .
His hands raised in a placating gesture. “I just want to know if you’re all right.”
“Do I look all right to you, Max?” I wheezed. My eyes closed. My mouth felt like I’d swallowed cotton, and my head pounded. “How long has it been?”
He glanced at the watch on his wrist. His father’s watch, the one with the silver band and deep blue face. Max and his mother had given it to his father on his last birthday before his mother died. “I’d say about twelve hours.”
My eyes snapped open. “That’s how long I was out?”
He nodded. “You’ve been asleep since they brought us back to the cell.”
My chest tightened. Where were my guys? Were they coming for me? I glanced at the door, hoping they’d burst through it any moment.
The Camorra. The Albanians. War. My father. Other product on the ship. My brain felt like it was skipping from puzzle piece to puzzle piece, trying to link them all together in a way that made sense. They wanted to sell me, but they wanted to use Max against the Camorra.
“So this is your fault,” I accused. “They’re after you because you are buddies with the Camorra. What the hell?”
Max scoffed, derisive and cold. The concerned look dropped from his face. “You’re the one who took out our best defense against the Albanians. If you want to blame anyone, blame yourself.”
I tried to sit straighter to retort, and pain shot down my spine. I settled for a seething stare. “You started this?—”
“No, your father started this,” he interrupted. “Blame him if you’d like.”
I opened my mouth and closed it. My father had been working with the Albanians.
He was the one who let them into the city.
I knew that, and we were trying to fix it.
It would have been easy to blame Max for killing him and causing their attention to turn to me, but that just led right back to Luciano Vero and his mile-long list of fuckups.
Still, it felt like there was some piece I couldn’t see. Something Max knew that I didn’t. The clue was in the twitch of his jaw and his avoidant posture.
“What are you hiding from me? What was Lucia doing for you?” I asked.
He’d told me at Trattoria Luminosa during the VCI board meeting that Lucia, his hacker, was their best defense against the Albanians.
He’d told me I’d had no clue what was going on, and I had thought it was all a ruse. Was I wrong? “Tell me the truth.”
He looked to the side but said nothing.
“Seriously?” My voice broke on the question. “You still won’t tell me?”
The Max of our childhood used to tell me everything. It wasn’t until we were teenagers that he stopped talking to me.
His hand clenched into a fist. His right arm still hung limp, but he rested the other against his knee. “You know what happened. Your father let the Albanians into the city, and I’ve been trying to fix it ever since.”
“Oh, what a hero,” I said sarcastically.
His head snapped in my direction. “I never asked to pick up the pieces of Luciano’s failures. All I wanted was to keep you and Cas out of them. But you just had to be typical, stubborn Leona and stick your nose where it didn’t belong.”
“You murdered my father at my birthday party!” I practically shouted. My lungs burned, and I pressed my palm to my ribs as I winced.
“And I let you go , Leona!” he shouted right back, leaning slightly off the wall.
My mouth clamped shut. He didn’t let us go. He tried to kill us that night. Didn’t he? I tried to remember what happened when Cas grabbed my arm and ran through the backyard. All I could remember was the image of Max staring, that dead look dulling his eyes.
“You ordered a hit on us.”
He rolled his eyes. “Cas was more than capable of handling a few amateurs.”
“So then what the fuck were you doing?” Why would he order a hit if he knew Cas could easily kill the people coming after us ?
“Trying to run you out of the city!” He raised his good arm exasperatedly and then let it fall in his lap.
“Bullshit,” I snapped. “You knew my life challenged your rule over the Family, and you wanted me dead. I saw too much that night.”
“I thought Cas would be smart enough to take you far away from New York. But he let you do whatever the fuck you wanted—like usual. I should have known better. So then I had to go after you so you didn’t make everything ten fucking times worse.
If you had just listened to me, everything would have gone according to plan, and neither of us would be on this ship. ”
A chill ran through my body. I wished I still had Ryuji’s knife so I could plunge it into his chest. “How dare you talk about Cas?”
His mouth thinned, and he schooled his emotions back to passivity.
“You tortured him. You almost killed him.” I couldn’t stop a tear from spilling down my cheek, but whether it was the physical pain searing through my every limb or the cavern yawning inside my chest, I wasn’t sure. “Your best friend.”
He glared at the wall. “I’m done talking.”
Cas was a fucking wreck when we rescued him. He was still healing. “I’ll never forgive you for that,” I whispered.
“Fine,” he sighed. The fight in him bled out before my eyes. “I’ll never ask for your forgiveness, and I don’t need it.”
“You pointed a gun at me,” I threw at him. “At my chest, in my father’s study. You planted a trap to lure me there to kill me. You chased me through my home . You told me I was part of the corruption and you couldn’t take over the Family while I lived.”
“I thought you’d run, Leona. I thought you’d realize this life is too dangerous. And when you didn’t—” Anguish twisted his face. “—I couldn’t let you ruin ten years of work.”
“So you’d kill me?” My tears were hot and bitter. “You’d send assassins after me in LA? You’d press a knife to stomach in a crowded restaurant while you try to push me out of my inheritance?”
He said nothing.
“What work?” I pressed. “What am I caught in the middle of?”
He looked so…empty. He refused to meet my eyes or answer. We’d gotten off track. I still needed to know the truth about what he was hiding, about what the Albanians wanted from him. What he was doing with the Camorra that had caused the Albanians to kidnap one of the most powerful men in New York.
But who was this man sitting in front of me? And how had I ever thought he was my future?
“What happened to the boy I loved?” I asked quietly.
“He died when I was fifteen,” he responded, voice dead. “I buried him with my father.”
Uncle Massimo’s death had changed him. It had taken Cas and me weeks to fix him, but it had worked. He had returned to his normal self. He had been the old Max we knew. So what was he saying?
“Why? What happened?”
“Enough, Leona.” He turned his body to the side.
“Tell me,” I pleaded.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“You’re lying. Something happened after your father’s death. You’re hiding something.”
“I think both my parents dying is enough reason to grow up.” He cast a sneering glare in my direction. “I’m sorry it took you so long to do the same.”
I sucked in a breath, trying to figure out what to say to him, when the door to our room screeched open.
Both of us snapped our heads up, locking on the three Albanian men who entered the room.
I crawled away from the bars, closer to Max, even as my torso screamed in pain. Max shifted his body in front of me.
Buzz Cut sauntered closer. He sneered down his ugly nose at the two of us. I hated the way I involuntarily flinched. “Ah, she’s awake.”
I pressed my lips into a thin line and dug my nails into my palms to keep me from throwing an insult at him. Until my guys came, I couldn’t risk it. He might not kill me, but he’d take pleasure in hurting me. The pain I’d shoved down inside my chest rattled in its locked box.
“The bitch has learned to hold her tongue,” he chuckled. “About time.”
Max reached his good hand behind him and squeezed my knee. “What do you want?”
He sucked his yellow teeth and stared at me, tilting his head to the side. His gaze turned predatory. “Tell me how to infiltrate the Camorra’s main compound.”
The question was for Max, but the disgusting way he licked his lips was directed at me.
Max said nothing.
“I won’t ask again,” Buzz Cut said. “You have to be useful if we’re going to keep you alive.”
“I don’t know,” Max finally replied. “I thought this was a hostage situation, not an interrogation.”
Buzz Cut sighed before turning toward the two men who lurked behind him. “Open the cell. Grab the bitch.”
“Wait.” Max pushed me fully behind him when the door screeched open. I latched onto his arms. My heart rate skyrocketed. “Get away from us.”
Buzz Cut started laughing. “Or what?”
Max didn’t have an answer, and neither did I.
The Albanian men stalked forward and reached for me. All I could picture was their fists slamming into my stomach, or worse. My brain raced, trying to decide what to do, but my instincts answered for me.
Wynn’s voice echoed in my ears. Surprise is your friend against a larger opponent.
I stepped around Max and high-kicked one of them right in the face.
I almost collapsed from the pain in my ribs, but it was enough for the man to recoil.
Blood poured from his nose. Max lashed out at the other with a precise jab, landing it directly across his jaw.