26. Ciel
CIEL
T he Luccheses were a problem.
Leona came out of Rossi’s restaurant ready to storm their castle and tear it apart brick by brick looking for Orik Vokshi, but that was “unwise,” as Obi has so graciously put it.
We couldn’t fly into their territory without a plan, demanding they overturn someone who should be their enemy, and expect them not to get pissed at us. It was too great of a risk.
So we’d returned to the penthouse to regroup.
We all agreed the Luccheses and the Sandrinis needed to be addressed. Obi said he’d think of a plan to go after them both while I tried to stay on top of tracking Orik Vokshi.
Here we were a week later with little to show for it.
Orik Vokshi had disappeared. He’d vanished from Lucchese territory without a trace, slipped through my fingers like a ghost.
There wasn’t even someone deleting his digital trail, like Lucia had done with Max before. Nope, he was still there, hiding in a goddamn hole—unlikely—or he’d avoided getting caught on any cameras.
Fucker. It was so frustrating .
The time had passed in a blur while we all kept ourselves busy.
Leona was physically healing, but still burying everything.
Nothing we did encouraged her to open up.
Same with Wynn. They’d both been back in the gym, even though Wynn had set his recovery back by overexerting himself the night of the marina.
He’d been in pain ever since. Willow and I had both chewed him out, which only made him retreat further away from me.
He was deteriorating right in front of my face.
He became increasingly frustrated that we’d only scratched the surface of the Vokshi operation.
He’d disappear into his room for hours at a time.
He wasn’t healthy. He was growing stronger yet weaker at the same time.
I wasn’t even sure he was sleeping, because he had stopped sleeping in the big living room bed with the rest of us.
Dios mio , I just wanted him to stay alive. Every time he looked at me, my heart raced. Every time a smile peeked through his lips, my soul soared.
The Wynn I knew was determined. He was confident and earnest, brave and beautiful. He’d throw himself into his work, but always remember to come home to us.
This Wynn was withering away.
I had to help him find that again.
So I kept looking for Vokshi while we waited for Obi to tell us what to do about the Luccheses.
Ryuji went back and forth between his clubs and home.
Leona worked as much as she could with VCI and Anton Felix.
She and Cas spoke regularly with Giulio about their skirmishes against Max, where at least we seemed to gain the upper hand.
She tried to keep herself busy with planning, but nothing helped.
We’d all been extra careful around her, trying not to trigger her or startle her.
“Leona?” I knocked softly on the door to her room.
No response. She’d gone to her room after picking at her lunch to take a shower. I opened her door and stepped inside.
“Leona?” I repeated .
The bed was empty. Steam rolled from the bathroom. I’d just peek my head around the corner to make sure she was all right.
She stared at herself in the mirror, a towel wrapped around her body while her wet hair dripped down her back. Her bruises had faded over the last week, and the scabs on her chest had fallen off, leaving behind little white lines that made my heart twist in pain.
“Baby girl?”
She didn’t move, like she didn’t even hear me. Her finger hovered over the scar on her cheek. It was still an aggressive pink, bright against her pale skin. Her eyes turned forlorn while her lips pressed together like she was trying to keep herself from crying.
Her eyes caught mine in the mirror, and she blinked herself back to the present. In an instant, she shuttered her emotions and smoothed her mouth into a small smile.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” I said, leaning the side of my head against the archway into the bathroom. “You okay?”
She nodded as she picked up some moisturizer and gently rubbed it all over her face. “Fine.”
I watched her do her skincare routine, trying to figure out what to say or do. When she was done, she moved on to smoothing some product through her curls.
“I could use your help,” I finally said. “If you want.”
Her eyes lit up, meeting mine in the mirror. “Help? With what?”
I had mountains of data about the Vokshi Clan to analyze.
I was trying to find patterns and connect them back to the questions we had about how the Vokshi were transporting their victims on land, where they were keeping them, and who was buying them.
My eyes were crossing while staring at it all myself.
Leona’s brain worked exactly like mine. She was excellent at finding patterns I couldn’t see .
“Boring stuff.” A smile pulled up at the corners of my mouth. “Stuff I don’t want to do.”
She scoffed. “So you’d make me, your lowly trainee, do it.”
“Isn’t that what trainees are for?”
“Sure, sure, use and abuse the trainee. I don’t even get paid! I should report this to someone.”
God, I had missed her snark. “I’m sure Obi will hear your complaint.”
She turned away from the mirror and sauntered closer, some of her usual sway returning to her hips. A spike of desire went through my body, but I tamped it down.
As far as I knew, none of us had pushed touch further than hand holding, hugs, cuddles, or the occasional kiss. We didn’t know what would trigger her, and we’d agreed to take the cautious approach just in case. I didn’t want to push her or make her feel like I wanted more than she was ready for.
“I thought you were my boss.” She stood in front of me, head tilted so she could look me in the eye. “Bosses should hear the complaints of their underlings.”
I swallowed. She was flirting. This was good news. Progress. Keep it going, Ciel . “In that case, your boss is telling you to get to work.”
Her little laugh was like the crisp touch of snowfall against my skin. Magical and invigorating.
“Yes, sir,” she responded, giving me a little salute.
I wanted to kiss her so fucking badly. But was it too soon? Would I upset her? Make everything worse when she was finally smiling again?
I stepped back. “I’ll meet you in my room?”
Her eyebrows creased as her smile faltered. “Okay.”
Her tone threw me off. All the teasing was gone. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah.” Her tone was flat as she stepped around me. “Just let me get dressed and dry my hair. ”
“Don’t take too long,” I teased, but she didn’t respond.
Shit. I rubbed the back of my neck. Maybe inviting her to work with me was a bad idea.
We got to work organizing the data and looking for patterns on how Orik Vokshi disappeared, where he went, how they might move their product, and where they could hold the victims. There had to be answers in all this data, and I knew the two of us could figure it out.
She didn’t bring up whatever happened in the bathroom, and neither did I. She sat down in her chair next to mine.
“How’s your hand?”
I flexed my fingers and rubbed my injured palm. It was stiff, but useable. “It’s all right. Sometimes it’s hard to type, but that’s why I have a trainee.”
I hated, though, that any chance he got, Wynn stared at my hand like it was proof that he’d fucked up, and therefore I’d hate him.
He’d take on this pained, desperate look that felt like a dagger to my chest rather than my hand.
He had asked me a few times if it was getting closer to normal, and I’d told him yes, but I was so much slower at working than I used to be and I wasn’t sure if I would get my old speed or agility back.
I honestly didn’t even care. I cared about him, and Leona, and our family. Nothing else mattered.
She smirked. “So what are we doing, boss?”
“I’m looking at mountains of information and struggling to process it. Thought our brains could team up for a mind meld.”
“Let’s do it.”
I walked her through everything I had.
The Albanians had exploded in footholds within the city and surrounding area. They’d bought up dozens of businesses, expanding into multiple different industries. They had legitimate business functions, but how were they managing the criminal side?
It was too much to target one by one, like Wynn used to. We had to make a bigger move that disrupted them.
They were also only one side of this problem. Trafficking only existed because of customers willing to buy. We needed to make our stance clear to everyone. Trafficking was a no-go under our watch, and there would be consequences for anyone who didn’t get on board.
The more answers we had, the better. It had to be enough to keep us all from losing our minds.
That’s all I was trying to do. Hold us together.
My foot tapped as I read page after page of data. Leona did the same beside me, and I barely noticed the minutes ticking by.
Locations. Dates. Sightings. Street skirmishes Giulio reported. There had to be something I was missing. How they kept slipping past us. Some way Lucchese and Sandrini were connected. We knew they were using boats for transportation, but what else? Who was helping them?
“Ciel,” she whispered so softly I did a double take whether I had heard her.
“Yeah, ángel ?”
She was quiet for a long while. Fuck, had I upset her earlier somehow? I knew I had messed up. I opened my mouth to ask, to apologize, but she spoke. “Is there a reason none of you want me?”
My heart stopped. “Non—none of us want you?”
I wanted her so much I had to stop myself in the bathroom. My brain whirred as I tried to find my misstep—and then it hit me.