14. Leon
14
LEON
M ia Natali is a very dangerous and precious thing.
It might not be the first time I’ve thought it, but she surely embodies it in this very moment, lying peacefully in my bed.
In sleep, there’s something wholly innocent about her. No frown lines to mar her smooth skin, no flames behind her endlessly green eyes. The effect is entirely angelic.
I’m staring at her when her eyes eventually flutter open, and…no, now she looks angelic.
“Good morning.” There’s a small smile playing in the corner of her mouth.
I lean in to kiss her softly. Her perfect lips are slow to respond and the kiss is chaste, but they send something entirely lovely through my chest.
She sighs into it.
Everything feels easier in the warm morning light, wrapped in sheets, wrapped up in her.
“Leon…what is this?”
Even that question feels somehow easier. There’s less heat, less anger, less longing.
Her hand reaches for mine. The edge of her bandages crumple slightly as she strokes across my palm.
“I don’t know,” I confess back. Then, after thinking about it, I say, “Something important.”
She nods as if this is a satisfying answer.
We just lay in silence, stealing this moment by stretching it out as long as we can.
“I’m so angry at you. All the time, I’m angry, but there’s also this .” She stops stroking my hand to squeeze it instead. “And then there’s you who keeps walking away.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to, but you didn’t choose this. You didn’t choose me. You feel obligated, and I can’t…I won’t take advantage of that.”
Her face crumples into something so far from satisfaction she almost looks like an entirely different person. She’s still so lovely. She’s still lovely when she rolls away onto her back.
“Why did you do it?”
I frown at the question. “Do what?”
“Threaten my father?”
It takes me a second to place a conversation that feels like a lifetime ago. A conversation in an elevator in a hotel with a woman who had just become my wife.
“Mia…I never threatened Marco.”
She glances over at me, eyes shining with something distraught. “Don’t do that. Don’t lie to me.”
“I told you I would never do that. I didn’t need to do that, why would I…” something suddenly clicked. “You never believed me, did you?”
“Just tell me the truth! If you just admit it, then maybe I can…maybe we can talk about it, maybe we can fix this.”
A part of me feels a pang of something warm at the thought of forgiveness—only this is not something I need forgiveness for.
“I never threatened him, Mia. I swear it. And…” I take a breath, knowing my next words might just incriminate me further. “I don’t think Teo would have either.”
“He didn’t,” she replies with certainty.
Ah. She’s spoken to him. She believed him. Which means all this time…
“Look, I think this is something you need to discuss with your father,” I say, surprised by how pragmatic the words come out. “But I need you to know that I would never. I could never intentionally hurt you.”
Her eyes flicker over to mine, and I pray that she sees the truth in my face.
This has been hurting her. I’ve been hurting her.
“Okay.”
My heart skips. “Okay?”
“I’ll talk to him.”
I let out a breath. “Okay.”
The moment stretches again until Mia sighs and gets up.
“I’m sorry,” she pauses but continues before I can ask what for. “I didn’t get much information for you yesterday. Things went south a lot sooner than expected.”
I close my eyes for a moment to realign myself.
“We know that intercepting their shipments has caused them a fair bit of inconvenience. Hopefully, Amos is too distracted trying to placate his clients to notice us working against him.”
“Ivan is suspicious of me,” Mia says as she pads across the room to grab a bathrobe.
I click my tongue. “I tagged his car before I left. Do you think he’d jeopardize your position with Carmen?”
She turns to look at me, contemplating something with her teeth against her bottom lip. “He told me if I stepped out of line, he’d…” she swallows, “bleed me out in front of those tech guys and let them have me.”
Something very cold and very lethal comes over me.
“I think Ivan has outlived his usefulness.”
The tracker takes us to a factory near the Coney Island Yard, and sure enough, as Max and I pull up a block away, Ivan’s sleek, gray Mercedes is parked right outside.
We settle in to wait as long as we need to.
The sky turns slowly gray, and by the time Max is done getting me up to speed on his last meeting with Dante—the Guild is sending the Cartel’s stolen merchandise to California—the heavens have opened.
I watch as the rain trickles down the window. It makes it more difficult to see the entrance to the factory, but not impossible.
“Can I ask you something without you biting my head off?” Max says after a pause of comfortable silence.
“That’s not a good way to start a conversation.” My tone definitely indicates that heads may be bitten off anyhow, but Max continues regardless.
“Why did you swap out with me the other night?”
He’s talking about the infiltration at the beach house. I wrack my brain for a valid excuse. “It was a simple job, no need for both of us to waste our time on it.”
“So it had nothing to do with the mercenary?” he asks innocently.
I turn to see my second blinking his eyes at me, a smug little smile slapped on his face. If he wasn’t so goddamn useful, I might have wrung his neck then and there.
“You’ve been talking to Dante.”
“Nope,” he says, putting emphasis on the “p”. “I’m just observant. I wasn’t sure if I was right until just now, though.”
“Asshole.”
“So is it like a thing then?” he presses. “I mean, I get it, she’s?—”
I cut him off. “She’s my wife.”
His mouth forms a perfect “O” shape, and he is suddenly looking very sheepish indeed.
“You may as well know,” I sigh out. “But we’re keeping things…discreet for now.”
“Roger that,” Max straightens and nods toward the factory doors. “Heads up.”
Eyes to the front, we both squint through the rain as a figure spills out. He’s hunched and muttering into his phone, and his hand is in his pocket—probably gripping his weapon.
Max shifts beside me, suddenly poised. “He’s packing,” he murmurs.
Silently, we both exit the car, the hammering rain covering the sound of our movements. The shadows swallow us as we close the distance, boots silent on the rain-slick concrete.
He approaches his car, and his back turns to us. We might be able to subdue him without complications.
Then it happens—his head snaps up, his hand flying from his pocket, the dull gleam of a gun catching the streetlight.
He doesn’t hesitate. Neither do I.
The first shot cracks through the night. I pivot, almost imagining that I can feel the rush of air as the bullet grazes past me. My own gun is already in my hand, and its weight is as natural as breathing.
I fire once.
Ivan dives behind his car, swearing violently and scrambling for cover. Max flanks left, his weapon barking twice, warning him that he’s outnumbered.
Max and I have him pinned. He’s boxed in like an animal.
“How about you come out here and have a little chat with us, Ivan.”
Ivan doesn’t reply. He knows he’s trapped. Max moves silently to the back of the car, waiting for my signal. I see the desperation in Ivan’s movements, hear it in the ragged breaths he thinks the rain conceals.
I fire again, the shot deliberate. It ricochets off the hood of the car, inches from his head.
“I don’t have all day,” I say, my voice cold, lethal. “Come out and face me, you bastard.”
Suddenly, Ivan bolts—his last, desperate gamble. He barrels toward the factory, his gun swinging wildly.
“Max,” I bark.
Max moves like lightning, slamming into Ivan before he can get far. The two crash to the ground, a tangle of limbs and curses. Before Ivan can recover, I’m there, kicking his weapon out of reach and dragging him up by his collar.
Blood streaks his face, his eyes wide with fear now.
Good. He should be afraid.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I say, slamming him against the factory wall. “Now, let's talk a bit about debutantes and tech bros, shall we?”
“I don’t know what—” he chokes, trying to find his bravado, but it’s gone, “what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Bit heartless of Rubio, isn’t it? Shoving his only daughter out into the field without any proper training. I wonder what he was thinking.”
Something akin to recognition seems to flood his expression. “I knew that fucking ginger?—”
My fist connects with his jaw, a sickening crack echoing through the rain.
He crumples to the ground, gasping, bleeding. I crouch, gripping his chin and forcing him to look at me.
“You don’t talk about her. You don’t think about her,” I hiss.
“I’m…n-not tellin’ you a thing.”
I laugh at this. “Oh, I don’t need information from you. That’s not what this is. It was your biggest mistake, threatening her, you know? I might have let you live otherwise.”
His pupils dilate in realization only a millisecond before I plunge my knife between his ribs.
I lean into his ear as blood begins to gurgle in his mouth. “When I send Amos Rubio to hell after you, tell him it was because he fucked with my family.”