22. Ciel
CIEL
A week crawled by.
The guys and I had to force Leona and Wynn to rest. Both chafed at the idea of sitting around, complaining that the rest of us had barricaded them inside the penthouse.
I’d been on the receiving end of plenty of eye rolls and annoyed huffs when I stayed on top of Wynn’s medicine regimen, but Willow had put me in charge of him before she left and I wouldn’t let her down.
As much as we all wanted things to go back to the way they were before, nothing was the same.
Leona was skittish. She was barely eating or sleeping.
She’d snuggle up with us on the couch or when we fell asleep on the big bed, but she’d wake up with nightmares.
She was always cold, needing heaps of blankets on the bed just to erase the chill.
It broke my heart to see her struggling, but every time I’d tried to ask about how she was doing, she’d shut me down with a half-hearted smile and assurances that she was completely fine.
Since we wouldn’t let her go into the field yet, she dove into her work with Vero Construction Inc.
—her father’s legitimate construction business—and had exchanged dozens of emails with her “mentor” there, one of the board members in our pocket, about the VCI projects.
We were finally getting a handle on our gun smuggling with the Chinese weapons via the VCI transport routes.
If she wasn’t doing that, then she was working with me on the Vokshi Clan.
As a family, we’d agreed to split our focus between going after the Vokshi and continuing to hit Max.
We’d returned Lucia Greco successfully by dropping her in Volpe’s territory.
I’d tracked her return to Italy via airplane and confirmed when she’d returned to Naples.
We’d just have to wait and see how the Camorra reacted.
We couldn’t be distracted by the Vokshi and let Max undermine our growing foothold in New York. We also couldn’t let the Vokshi operate without retribution. We had to end their trafficking, but they’d made it personal. None of us would let what happened to Wynn and Leona go unanswered.
However, the Vokshi were going to be a problem.
Adriatik Maritime Limited was my jumping off point.
I’d traced all the company’s paperwork back to the Vokshi Clan, proving they owned it.
Armir Vokshi, their Head, was an established businessman with extensive reach across the coast of Albania.
He also had previous run-ins with both local and international law enforcement, so it wasn’t hard to get intelligence on him through the law enforcement databases.
I sat back in my chair, eyes flicking back and forth between all the information spread across my different computer screens.
Taking them out was going to be our biggest undertaking yet. An entire organization. The South Americans with Rafael Arboleda—the people who killed my parents—were small compared to the Albanian Clans merging. Killing their Head alone wouldn’t make them collapse. Not this time.
“Hey,” Leona said as she poked her head into my room. “I was looking for you. ”
I glanced around my desk. Snack wrappers and empty energy drinks littered its surface. “What’s up?”
She stepped inside and turned on my overhead light. I flinched at the sudden brightness. What time was it?
“You’re going to ruin your eyes.”
“They’re already ruined.” I rubbed them underneath my glasses. “What brings you to my cave?”
She leaned her hip against my desk. I wanted to reach for her and draw her into my lap, but I still wasn’t sure how she was feeling.
She wouldn’t tell me. She wouldn’t tell any of us.
We’d agreed to stay careful, so we didn’t upset her or make her feel like we expected anything of her.
She needed time to rest and heal, and she’d feel more comfortable around us again. Eventually.
Still, my hands felt empty and my lap felt cold without her.
“Can I help you with anything?” Her head tilted to the side, and the glow of my computers illuminated the dark circles under her eyes. Her body needed sleep, but I was no stranger to a brain that wouldn’t stop running.
“Why don’t you rest? I’m fine. Just working on Albanian stuff.” I rubbed the palm of my bad hand, trying to loosen the scar tissue there. My fingers were stiff and increasingly slow to respond. The hand ached deeply the longer I worked, but I didn’t have any other choice.
The corner of her mouth pulled into a frown. “What kind of Albanian stuff?”
I looked at the stack of papers to my side, and then the database I’d pulled up in front of me with the picture of a man in his late 60s.
His grey hair was combed to the side, and the frown on his face only exacerbated his wrinkles.
His pissed off expression looked like he’d eaten a pair of hornets, and then was mad at them for stinging him.
“That’s Armir Vokshi,” I said, pointing at his picture.
“He looks like a wrinkly old ball sack. ”
I choked back a laugh. “Yeah, he does.” I clicked around, bringing up three other pictures.
“Those are his sons and underbosses. Arion is the oldest. He’s in charge of the worldwide trafficking operations.
Ervin is the middle. He’s in charge of their businesses in Europe.
Orik is the youngest. He’s in charge of business expansion.
I’m pretty sure he’s the one who lurks around the States and keeps clashing with Max.
I think he was the one behind your kidnapping. ”
Armir ran the Vokshi Clan ruthlessly. He’d been the driving force behind unifying the Albanian Clans.
He’d started absorbing other branches of the Albanian mafia slowly yet surely over the last five years, until his final sweep two years ago, where he and his sons had single-handedly taken full control either through forced alliance by marriage, or wiping out the other Heads and taking control of their forces.
Orik had then come to the States to make sure the transition of power went successfully.
All the other Clans had fallen in line behind the Vokshi, and that’s when the records showed an explosion in their businesses and transport.
Orik had a reputation of being ruthless, like his father.
He killed before he asked questions and put down all resistance.
To my knowledge, Armir hadn’t left Albania in years, so I assumed that Leona’s father must have been working with Orik for face-to-face visits.
Her face darkened as she stared at all four of the pictures. The sons were spitting images of their father, just younger. Each wore a nasty scowl.
“I want to kill him,” she said while her brow darkened and her eyes locked on Orik.
“I think we all want to kill him.” Personally, I couldn’t wait to wrap my garrote around his neck and watch the life choke from his eyes.
“Where is he now?”
I didn’t want to tell her because she’d want to go after him, but I couldn’t hide the truth. “I think he’s going to be at the next container ship arrival.”
Adriatik Maritime Limited owned a fleet of ships of varying sizes and cargo, but only four of them had recently made port in the United States, including the Red Talon .
The rest were spread out across Europe, Africa, and South America.
While we couldn’t guarantee that the Clan used every ship for trafficking, it felt like a pretty solid guess, so our plan was to start with intercepting the ships, saving whoever was on board, and then decommissioning or sinking them.
The next ship, Iron Ghost , was scheduled to make port at a small marina in New Jersey in four days. The other two were on track to show up in Miami within the next two weeks. We’d have to deal with those later, but right now, the Iron Ghost loomed in our sights.
Especially if the intel said Orik was going to be there.
Her eyes went calculating. “Four days, right?”
I nodded, grabbing her hand. “Are you sure you want to go? You and I could stay here and coordinate the operation while Cas, Obi, and Ryu led the attack on the ground. Wynn could stay with us, too.”
We’d have to deal with the crew and the survivors. She might be physically healing, but she wasn’t ready to see what lay on those ships again. She needed more time.
“I’m going,” she said, lips pressed into a thin line. She squeezed my hand. “I need to go, Ciel.”
My thumb brushed over her skin. I opened my mouth to ask her again if she wanted to talk, but my phone’s alarm sliced through the tense air.
It was time for Wynn’s meds.
At that exact time, a knock sounded at my door and then opened right after. The man himself walked in, head down, while looking at his phone.
“I’m here to report I already took the meds,” he said with a sigh. He’d been annoyed with me, but I wouldn’t let him slip. He needed to heal . “So you can turn off your…”
He trailed off when he looked up and saw us. His eyes flicked to our joined hands, held there for a second, and then looked away.
“Am I interrupting something?” he asked.
Leona dropped my hand, and I frowned. “Of course not.”
He took a deep breath and looked me squarely in the eye. “I’m going to the gym. I’m healthy enough to work out again.”
My eyes narrowed. “No. It’s too soon.”
“I’m not asking for permission, Ciel.” His jaw clenched. “The Albanian ship is arriving in a few days, and I am going to be on that mission, too. I’m just giving you a heads-up.”
“You’re not supposed to work out until I clear you,” I said. It had barely been two weeks since he was shot. He got winded just walking around the penthouse. “That’s what you agreed to with Willow before she left.”
He avoided my gaze while his hand clamped around his phone. Beside me, Leona exhaled heavily.
“You are both being overcautious. I’m healing just fine. I need to get my strength back.” He gestured to Leona. “Leona’s been back at the gym.”
My eyes widened when I looked at her. She shrugged. “All of you have been way too overprotective. There’s literally nothing else to do.”
“You’re both supposed to be resting .”
She snorted. “You’re one to talk about resting. When was the last time you left this room?”
My gaping mouth snapped shut.
“Exactly. I don’t want to hear it.”
My nostrils flared. “I’m fine?—”
“I’m fine, too.”
“So am I,” added Wynn.
“Great. We’re all fine,” she said .
I took a deep breath. These two were so goddamn stubborn.
Leona was burying everything to pretend it never happened, and Wynn was determined to outrun his guilt by throwing himself into work.
How the hell was I supposed to keep us all together when they were intent on running themselves into the ground?
“I just want you both to get better,” I said quietly as I stood from my computer chair. At my side, I stretched my bad hand, willing the pain to go away. “You will not heal if you’re not taking care of yourselves.”
“The Albanians are more important,” Wynn insisted. He exchanged a glance with Leona, like the two of them were in cahoots about this and had ganged up on me to get my permission. “We have four days to prepare. You won’t keep us home, so you might as well let us train.”
“It’s light work, Ciel,” Leona assured. “You could barely even call it working out.”
I almost rolled my eyes. “Fine. But I’m sticking to you both like glue on this mission. I’m serious. You’re both there for moral support at best. You stay behind us and watch our backs.”
Wynn’s teeth ground together. The look on his face had my heart twisting in my chest. I just wanted to stomp over to him and kiss the frustration off his face. Didn’t he understand I couldn’t lose him? Either of them?
“We’ll be fine, Ciel,” Leona said. “We’re ready to get out there again.”
I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t argue. The two of them nodded at each other and walked out of my room like they hadn’t just set off another bomb of anxiety inside my chest.
This mission was already going to be tense and challenging. Everyone was on edge. Everyone was itching for vengeance.
And I was just over here trying to keep us all alive.
I collapsed back into my computer chair and popped open another energy drink. I didn’t know what else to do except get back to work.