52. Leona
LEONA
I walked deeper into the darkness of the tunnel, hating every second the light got dimmer but having no other idea of what to do.
I was crumbling.
Cas followed behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself standing, but after so many minutes of tasting blood, the nausea was overwhelming.
My pulse throbbed, drowning out whatever Cas had just said. My hands shook. I stared down at them, begging them to stop, but the tremors shook my entire arms.
I was light-headed, unsteady on my feet. I paused in the tunnel, scrambling backward until my back hit the cold, hard concrete of the wall. The freezing feeling sinking deep into my bones cut my tether to reality.
“Leona?” Cas’s voice was frantic, but he was so far away.
I was underwater. Drowning.
I was in a metal cage.
I was getting kicked over and over.
I was being pressed into the ground, a weight forcing the air from my lungs .
Hands groped my body.
A knife slashed my skin.
Blood dripped down my face.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe.
Cas’s face hovered in front of mine, but he was on another planet compared to me.
“Fuck, Leona, you’re scaring me,” Cas said. “You’re having a panic attack. It’s not real, baby. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.” He gripped my fingers. “Shit, you’re frozen cold. What can I do? We need to calm you down. I need to get help, but I don’t want to leave you.”
Help.
“Max,” I croaked. No matter how many breaths I took, nothing helped. I was going to suffocate. Black spots encroached on my vision.
Cas’s eyes narrowed. “Did he cause this?”
“Max. Please, Cas,” I begged, tears streaming down my face. “Get Max.”
“You…want Max?”
My eyes squeezed shut, but that was a fucking terrible idea because all I saw was Buzz Cut’s sneering face. His snarling yellow teeth while his nails cut grooves into my body. Penny and her girls. The dead bodies Max and I had to leave there.
I didn’t want to remember it.
The smell. The death. The pain of that ship.
The promise that it would happen to me.
How close he came.
“Okay, baby, I’ll get Max. But I have to leave you to find him. The rest of the guys are helping Wynn and cleaning up in the big hub chamber.”
“Please,” I gasped.
Max helped me on the boat. He could help me now .
Cas hesitated for just a moment before he pressed a hard kiss to my forehead. “One minute, baby. I’ll be back in one minute, I promise. Try to breathe. Try to focus on something real .”
I tried to ground myself with one thing I could see and one thing I could feel, but all I could see was dark, metal cages and all I could feel was cold. So fucking cold.
I wasn’t sure how long passed until Max’s face swam in front of mine.
“ Piccola ,” he whispered, crouching in front of me. “Tell me.”
I broke out sobbing again. “The cages. The cold.”
He nodded, not needing any other explanation. His hands cupped my cheeks. “Come here. Just like on the ship. You’re going to be fine.”
He maneuvered us so he sat against the wall where I used to be, and I hid my face against his chest. His arms circled me, and my muscles began to relax.
Cas stood above us, looking completely devastated. I didn’t just want Max. I wanted him too. I needed them both. My best friends. I would die without them.
“Cas,” I whimpered, reaching for him.
He met my outstretched hand and sat down, crowding against my back. They formed a protective barrier around me. Their combined warmth began to burn away the cold.
“Now would be a great time for that astronaut nightlight,” Max said lightly while he held me. He craned his head to look at the ceiling. “It would actually look pretty cool in here.”
I closed my eyes and let Max’s words wash over me. The memories faded into the distance. They weren’t real. They were still there, but not all-consuming.
“Keep talking,” I murmured.
“Remember that one time when you put toothpaste in my Oreos?”
The memory was so random, so different from what we were dealing with. It was like the shock of a defibrillator to my brain instead of my heart.
Behind me, Cas chuckled. “You ate two before you even realized. I’ll never forget that stupid look you had on your face.”
Max scoffed. “Forgive me for enjoying a tasty treat now and then, and thinking my best friends wouldn’t tamper with it.”
“You never bought the big Oreo sleeves after that.” I smiled, remembering his outrage. “Only the packaged sets.”
“I wonder why,” Max returned. “And then, after that debacle, the two of you decided to put shaving cream in all my shoes.”
That time I chuckled, picturing how much of a fit he threw when his socks got soaked. “Your new loafers! You were so mad.”
“They were brand new,” he deadpanned. “You ruined them.”
“They matched your dad’s,” Cas said with a laugh. “You wanted to be just like him. You were so sad your new pair wasn’t the same shade.”
At the mention of his dad, Max stiffened. “It’s not my fault I have impeccable fashion taste and you don’t.”
“Oh, sorry we don’t all wear designer,” Cas snorted. “Some of us were poor, you know.”
The two of them kept bantering, and every second that passed felt like I gained a firmer grip on who I was and where I was. I was Leona Vero. I was in the tunnels underneath New York City. This was real.
What happened on the ship was over. That pain was old. It was behind me now. I was fine.
Cas’s hand traced patterns on my arm. Max’s hand rested on my lower back.
“How are you doing, piccola ?” Max murmured.
Their touches grounded me. The onslaught of panic subsided. My breathing slowed. My hands stopped shaking. “A little better.”
“Good.”
The quiet stretched between us. I stared at his father’s blue-faced watch and how the hands ticked the seconds away .
“This doesn’t change anything,” I said against Max’s chest, the same words I’d whispered to the space between us when he comforted me on the boat. Cas squeezed my hand.
“I know,” Max answered, following his assigned script. His fingers were so gentle as they cradled my head.
“I’m still going to kill you,” I murmured. As the adrenaline and cortisol left my body, everything became heavy. I sank deeper into his arms.
“I know.”
The nausea subsided. With Max at my front, and Cas at my back, a wave of calm washed over me. My eyes lidded.
Inside my head, we were kids again.
We were Max, Leona, and Cas facing down countless make-believe enemies.
We were friends, whispering in the dark, planning our latest prank attack on my father’s men.
We were partners in every single way. Inseparable.
What would things have been like if my father hadn’t done the things he’d done? If Max hadn’t made his choices, and I’d made mine?
The panic attack was gone, but the warmth felt so good in the cold and dark.
“ Amore ,” Cas whispered. “Can you move?”
Everything was quiet.
“I think so,” I whispered. “I’m okay now.”
I felt hollow, but I wasn’t drowning anymore. They’d both pulled me back from that dark abyss.
Max’s arms slowly let go, and Cas helped me stand. I wasn’t about to collapse anymore, but I felt like a giant pile of shit.
Cas gave me a questioning look, like he was looking for an explanation, but I didn’t have it in me to talk about. I got it under control, back inside the box, and that was all that mattered.
Thankfully, Cas didn’t press, but I doubted the rest of my guys would be as accepting of my silence as he was. I’d deal with them later. He kept his arm around my shoulder, keeping me steady as we walked the path back down the tunnel. Max stayed a few feet apart, distancing himself.
When we made it back to the room with the cages, Willow’s team was already at work. Wynn noticed me and rushed over before crushing me to his chest. Ryuji and Ciel came next. Both were covered in blood splatters, but I didn’t hesitate to meet their outstretched arms.
“You okay?” Ciel whispered in my ear.
I nodded. “How is it out here?”
“Under control,” Ryu answered. “The Vokshi are dead. We think a few might have escaped through the tunnels, but we have a whole handful of buyers who can’t wait to talk to us.”
Ervin Vokshi’s body still lay about thirty feet away. My fingers brushed over my neck, and I winced at the bruising. Ryu’s jaw clenched.
Sigh. So much for interrogating him. That just never worked out for us, did it?
“Is Willow handling them?” I asked Wynn. Willow’s team was triaging. Already, it looked like there were fewer people. They must be transporting them out in groups.
“They’ll be fine,” he assured me. “Willow can help them.”
Obi walked over while exchanging a look with Cas, and my eyes narrowed at whatever unspoken message passed between them.
Obi pressed a kiss on my forehead. “You are okay?”
“Yeah.”
His lips thinned. “We will talk about this at home.”
“I’d rather not,” I replied. That sounded like dropping lemon juice on fresh wounds. Better to just move on. “Everything is fine.”
“It is not,” he answered.
I pulled my face from his grasp and looked around the room. There was so much pain within these concrete walls. I wanted no more of it.
I was so tired.
“Why Volpe?” Ryu said with a glare over my shoulder. “Why him?”
“Please, Ryu, can we just wrap up here and go home?”
Cas put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Yeah, amore . We’ll go home.”
We helped our men and Max’s pile up all the bodies.
23 Vokshi men.
5 dead buyers, 18 alive.
33 trafficking survivors, 1 dead.
Max called clean-up crews to remove them, but I gave the girl’s body to Willow. Willow would try to return her to any family, but if she couldn’t, she’d bury her on their compound.
I still couldn’t bear the thought of visiting.
Maybe Ciel or Obi could talk to the survivors instead. They might have some useable information.
Max’s men and Giulio’s men agreed to question the buyers and gather whatever other information we could. I didn’t give a fuck what happened to them after that. Max said he’d deal with them—and a large part of me hoped he’d kill them, but with the feds on our tail, that might not be an option.
My brain was too fried to worry about it now. Giulio would update us when everything was taken care of.
I leaned against Cas’s shoulder while our men prepared to leave. Daniele and Max talked quietly in the corner, with Daniele gesturing toward me. I watched as Max’s passive mask fell over his face and his body went deadly still .
He said one more thing to Daniele before walking toward us. Daniele followed him.
“Couldn’t handle it, eh, princess ,” Daniele sneered when he got close. “A panic attack? I knew you were weak. You should have stayed in your skyscraper. This life isn’t for the likes of you.”
My jaw clenched. I told him before I would kill him if he disrespected me again, but before I could grip my knife in my thigh holster, Max whirled on him. The sound of a gunshot tore through the tunnel.
Daniele looked down at his chest, where a red spot bloomed right over his heart. He gaped, murmuring something, and then collapsed in a heap.
Max turned back to me and my men. “I’m done here. I suggest we leave.”
Wynn’s fingers interlocked with mine. His touch kept me grounded as we made the trek back to the city’s surface. Nobody said anything else.
We left Daniele’s body behind.