36. Leona #2
Ciel grinned. “Data, baby girl. We’ve got it. It’s paper, which is honestly gross, but every piece counts.”
I let out a chuckle while I thumbed through the files. “What kinds of records are there, Max?”
“Transportation records.” Max dug inside the file and pulled out a chunk of papers before handing them to me.
“He kept records of transactions and delivery locations. He took notes of all of their movements throughout the Five Families territories. He detailed how the Vokshi stayed under the radar from the other Families and from law enforcement.”
My head snapped up. “So he knew how they were transporting their victims? He knew how they were moving through the city?”
Max nodded. “Old subway tunnels, cut off and no longer in operation.”
“Holy shit.” I looked at Wynn. His surprised look was also layered with hope.
My mind raced, making sense of all this. If they were moving through the tunnels, we could watch the entrance and exit points. We could station our men there, lay traps, and combine our forces to go on the offensive.
This was everything we needed.
These were the same boxes that Max had left for me to find when my entire worldview was blown up after learning what my father had been doing.
We’d dealt with a few of his issues—the stolen drugs, the Alacrán cartel.
The other outstanding, looming, giant fucking question mark was what my father had been doing with the CIA and the guns he sold to them.
I wanted to ask Max about it, but now didn’t quite feel like the right time.
“If you knew about all this, what have you been doing against them?” Cas asked.
Max braced his hands on the table. “I had them under control until you all decided to intervene. Since then, we’ve been a little distracted fighting everyone else in this goddamn city and haven’t had the manpower to go after them.”
Thus the truce.
He couldn’t deal with all of this if his men were tied up with us and the Russians. For a moment, I felt a little guilty.
“What about the tunnels?” Ciel asked. “Do we know which ones they’re using? Or how they’re getting to them?”
Max shook his head. “That’s another problem. I’ve looked into a few of the places Luciano mentioned, but the Vokshi switch things up very often. I haven’t been able to catch them, and I don’t have the resources to stick men around the city and just have them sit and wait.”
“We can put up more cameras,” Ciel said. “The corner where Lucchese dropped Vokshi was dead, and then he disappeared. I wonder if he went into a tunnel there.”
Wynn let out a breath. “I was going to ask you to look at some other dark spots around the city and see if we can make connections between the two. Maybe the tunnels are the answer.”
“Good idea,” Ciel said. He pulled out his phone and began typing away. “I’ll get it going.”
“They also ditch their cars all the time,” Max added. “They get their victims from the ships, they put them into commuter cars and vans, and they take them to the tunnels. After there, I lose them.”
“Commuter cars,” I murmured. “That’s why they were at that auto-shop. That’s where they get the cars.”
Max nodded. “Their numbers and the way they blend in make it impossible to wipe them all out.”
“Not for us,” Ryuji said sharply. “We’ll kill them all.”
Obi’s hand brushed against my waist, lingering there, almost possessively. “What about buyers? Did Luciano have any information about that? ”
Max crossed his arms over his chest. “No. The best I have to go on is the w?—”
“My father didn’t keep track?” I interrupted him. He locked eyes with me while my lips pressed together. His gaze dropped to the way my hands clenched on the papers.
Pictures. Hands on my skin. Max watching behind bars while tears rolled down my cheeks.
The cage rattled, and it took all my effort to keep my body still, my breaths even.
“He didn’t,” Max answered finally. “Only information that would incriminate the Albanians. Nothing about the other side of the sale.” I blinked, keeping my face calm, but he continued. “Our best option is catching them during a sale.”
I released the breath I’d been holding.
“Do you know how the sales are happening?” Wynn asked. “Brothels? Auctions? One to one handoffs?”
Max shook his head.
Wynn crossed his arms over his chest while a shadow fell over his brow. I didn’t blame him. The idea of a person buying another person made me want to hurl and scream with rage at the same time.
“We’ll find them somehow,” I said. “We can work together to catch them. We can tackle this problem from both sides.”
Without dredging up the pain of what happened on that ship.
“What about the war in Europe?” Obi asked. “How is that affecting them here?”
Max’s posture went defensive. “We’re not going to talk about the Camorra.”
Obi’s chest puffed. “I did not ask about the Camorra specifically, did I?”
Max sighed. “Fine. The Camorra have the upper hand in Europe. Now that Orik is dead, the Head, Armir, and his two other sons have become reckless. If they continue losing, the Camorra leadership thinks they may make a jump to the States. It’s also possible they’ll send one of the sons, Arion or Ervin, to the States to handle the trafficking business here. ”
Obi nodded. “We’ll keep an eye out for that. Ciel?”
“I’ve still got my facial recognition running through the airport databases. We’ll stay on it.”
“Keep us posted?” I asked, looking up to Max. “We need to know if they’re winning or losing.”
His eyes bounced around my face before he answered. “I will.”
We spent the next fifteen minutes agreeing on a plan for how to split our efforts.
We’d ceasefire, and start putting our focus towards intercepting victims and figuring out how they were using the tunnels.
We agreed that we’d both respond and retaliate with any Albanian attacks, but our side would handle the survivors.
Willow was still the best response to helping them.
The more we spoke, the more we worked together, the more the fire lit within my chest.
With all of us combined, it was possible to push them out and keep them out.
It was possible to save the women already in their clutches.
For the first time in a decade, the leaders of the criminal underworld were putting on a united front backed by swift and violent action.
As much as it pissed me off…this truce might be exactly what we needed.