40. What is Wrong with Leo?
Chapter forty
What is Wrong with Leo?
Moni
We climbed the stairs.
A gleeful laugh sounded and I knew who that was.
I calmed as I went up more stairs. “That’s TT.”
Lei looked at me. “Yeah?”
I nodded.
“Good. He’s making her laugh so that says she’s not in any danger.”
Alright. Everything will be fine. It’s just a psychotic maniac in the room with my little sister, but it will all be fine. They’re laughing.
When we reached the top of the stairs, the air felt heavy, thick with the residue of violence.
I skidded to a halt beside Lei and we both paused.
The scene in front of us was a battlefield frozen in the aftermath of chaos and we hadn’t heard one sound of it downstairs.
There had definitely been a fight.
A vicious, fast one.
The type that started and ended before most people even realized what was happening.
Several of Lei’s men kneeled on the floor with their heads bowed and the cold gleam of gun barrels pressed against their skulls.
Guns that the monks held.
And there was this eerie stillness that filled the hallway, punctuated only by the faint, distant sounds of the party outside—muffled music and distant laughter—which was all completely out of place in this new reality we’d stumbled into.
The rest of Lei's men lay crumpled on the floor, blood seeping from cuts across their faces.
They were definitely unconscious.
Or worse.
Their weapons were scattered, disarmed, their bodies contorted in awkward positions that told me the fight had been brutal but short.
Efficient.
A masterclass in violence.
Lei got in front of me, keeping his body between me and Leo’s men as they kept their guns on his men’s heads.
Rage laced his voice. “You pull out guns in Lotus Blossom?”
One of the monks spoke, but didn’t look up. “We apologize, Mountain Master, but the Grand Master ordered us to—”
“And you will die with him this evening.”
I swallowed hard, trying to process the scene.
“Mountain Master, your father would like you to come to the little girl’s bedroom for a discussion and then you can kill us afterwards.”
“Take your fucking guns off my men.”
They glanced at each other and then obliged, each putting the weapons up one at a time.
Lei kept that grip on my hand as he led us forward.
My eyes darted to the bodies sprawled across the floor.
Some of Leo’s monks were down too, their blue robes now darkened with streaks of blood. The sweet, metallic tang of it hung in the air.
Oh God.
I looked at Lei.
His whole body was coiled like a spring, ready to snap. Every muscle in his frame tensed with fury, but beneath it, I could see the sharpness of his mind working, trying to figure out the next move.
He was pissed, yes, but he wasn’t stupid.
They may have been outnumbered on the entire property with Four Aces down below and Rowe Street Mob.
However, up here, Leo’s men had the upper hand.
The blue-robed monks—maybe a dozen of them—stood silent and watched us.
While their guns were back in those holsters, I knew they could still kick my ass.
Enough is enough. After tonight, I’m keeping a gun on me. And I will be practicing every fucking day.
Never did I want to be in this position again, especially with my sisters now in the East.
Heading to TT’s new bedroom, we passed some of them and there was no fear in their eyes.
No hesitation.
They were waiting for their next order and that command would come from only one man.
Leo.
I could feel Lei’s rage simmering beside me, ready to boil over.
Please, don’t let anyone die tonight.
Lei was barely keeping it together and all it would take was one wrong move, one wrong word, for the situation to spiral out of control.
We get TT out of here and then we just. . .I don’t know after that.
We got closer and closer.
Jo had picked the room right next to the library due to the view showing her the corner of the garden where Mom had taken the picture.
Chloe grabbed the room further down and across due to it having the biggest bathroom, complete with a massive jacuzzi tub, big vanity table, and decked out shower near it.
However, TT chose the bedroom all the way at the end of the hallway because it was the only one that would fit this huge table for her puzzle pieces. It had the smallest bathroom with just a shower, sink, and toilet, yet these awesome gold and blue dragons were painted on the ceiling.
TT’s innocent little laugh filled the space again.
It was that sound, that beacon in the unknowing darkness, which kept me calmly moving forward.
Lei leaned my way and kept his voice low. “Do me a favor?”
“Okay.”
“Don’t look up at the ceiling.”
I pursed my lips.
Now why would he say that?
I had no fucking intention to look up, but now. . .all I wanted to do was lift my view that way.
What is up there? Shit. Shit. Shit.
I tried not to look up.
I swear I did.
Every fiber of my being screamed at me to keep my eyes straight ahead, to focus on TT’s laughter—the only thing that felt real in this moment.
But curiosity, or maybe fear, gnawed at me, pulling my gaze upward before I could stop myself.
And then I saw it.
OH MY GOD!
My breath hitched in my throat and I stumbled, nearly losing my balance.
Bodies.
Dead men.
Nailed.
Strung up like grotesque marionettes dangling from the very high ceiling.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, fighting the bile that rose up in my throat.
What is wrong with Leo?
The scene was a macabre masterpiece of brutal cruelty.
There were seven dead bodies up there, spread wide and nailed into the wooden beams overhead.
Some of them had ropes wrapped around their torsos, securing them in place.
Blood dripped down from their wounds, staining the ceiling in dark streaks, pooling in tiny drops on the floor beneath them.
What the hell?! Like. . .why did he do that?
The ropes cut into their skin, some of them so tight that their arms and legs looked twisted and contorted, like the last moments of their lives had been spent in agonizing pain.
My stomach lurched.
And these weren’t just random men. They were part of Aunt Suzi’s people who she had told to watch TT.
I recognized some of their faces, though now they were pale and bloodied, with empty-wide eyes.
And that wasn’t a metaphor.
Leo took the eyeballs out of their lids.
Oh God, oh God.
I trembled. “W-why?”
“He put them up there so TT wouldn’t see them.”
“He could have. . .put them in. . .a room.”
“Your sisters might have come up and went in a room.”
That still was insane, but I had nothing else to say. Lei knew his father and he’d said all of that so calm because he was used to the horror that Leo could bring.
Jesus Christ.
I tightened my hand around his, clinging to him like my life depended on it.
And maybe it did.
Because right now, in this house, surrounded by monsters in monk robes, it felt like we were standing on the edge of a precipice, one wrong step away from joining the dead men hanging above us.
Lei’s voice snapped me out of my horror. “It’s going to be fine, Moni.”
But I could hear the lie in his voice. He didn’t believe that. He was just saying it to keep me calm.
I should have never looked up.
Never would I make that mistake again.
Because now the image of those bodies was burned into my mind. Every blink brought it back in vivid detail—the nails, the blood, the empty eyelids.
I could barely breathe because my chest was tight with fear and disgust.
But I had to hold it together.
For TT.
For Lei.
For all of us.
Jo and Chloe can’t come in here until those bodies are gone.
We got further down turned the corner and TT’s laughter echoed again, closer this time, sweet and innocent, completely unaware of the death and destruction hanging just feet above her.
Okay. It’s going to all work out.
We reached TT’s room and got in front of the doorway.
And there they were.
TT sat cross-legged on the floor, her tiny fingers tracing the nearly completed wooden puzzle in front of her.
She’s done. Already?
The pieces formed the shape of an oddly produced map.
Only a few fragments were missing, gaps here and there, but the overall picture was almost complete.
An image of a large town within a forgotten valley.
I took it in.
The wooden daggers, which TT had methodically fit together, gleamed under the soft glow of the room's lighting.
No remaining ones were scattered around her as I would’ve expected.
No, she’d found a place for every single one Lei had given her, slotting them in perfectly.
She’d solved an old puzzle that no child her age should have been able to crack.
And with all the daggers now together, I could see that what was once odd markings and symbols, were more than that. They were boxes representing houses, a school, bank, market, church, the post office, and more.
Additionally, there were tiny, almost invisible writing scrawled across the surface.
Little, faint words and numbers wound their way along the curves and edges of the blades, so light they were nearly imperceptible unless you were right on top of them.
My heart skipped a beat.
So many questions hit me.
Was it a message from the Bandit?
Or clear instructions to the map holder?
But that didn’t matter right now because next to TT. . .was Leo scanning a large, opened Bible encased in blue leather.
He had a bunch of blue highlighters next to him and currently he was underlining some phrase on a Bible page.
I turned to the right.
Uncle Song sat in the corner munching on peach cobbler.
A dollop of green whipped cream sat on top of the cobbler and caught my eyes immediately.
That’s Banks’s cobbler. When did he sneak in the kitchen and get it out?
Seven years ago, Banks had claimed one Thanksgiving that white whip cream was too basic and didn’t match his swag.
The next Thanksgiving, he came up with his minty whip cream.
I thought it was going to be a disaster.
Peach and mint?
No.
But somehow, in that wild, Banks way, it actually worked.
People started talking about the green whip at family gatherings and it became Banks’s signature move.
Uncle Song forked up a big piece of cobbler with the cream on it and stuffed it in his mouth. A loud groan left him. “Mmmm.”
Realizing that we were in there, TT looked up at us. “Moni, I finished it!”
Leo lifted his view up from the Bible and put his gaze on Lei. “Just in time.”
What the fuck is going to happen now?!