CHAPTER 17
ALESSIA P.O.V.
I woke up in the dim master bedroom, the heavy velvet curtains suffocating the city light and trapping the stale air inside.
The first thing that registered wasn't the absurd thread count of Leon’s sheets, it was the sharp, grinding pain radiating from the professional gauze strapped to my right bicep the absolute second I shifted my weight.
The drive-by was still living in my muscles, a raw, burning reminder of how fast the board had flipped.
I stared at the ceiling for a long time, watching the dim blue glow of the digital clock bleed into the shadows.
I gingerly peeled back the edge of the medical tape to check for seepage.
The scent of antiseptic was sharp and clinical in the otherwise expensive-smelling room.
The skin around the graze was bruised an ugly, mottled purple.
"Still alive," I muttered to the empty room. "God, it burns."
For the first time in three years, my first instinct wasn't to blindly grope the nightstand for my FBI-issued burner phone to check in with my handler. Trenton Cross sold me out to the wolves, and now I was sleeping in the alpha’s bed.
The irony was so thick I could choke on it.
I threw the covers off and swung my legs out, ignoring the protest in my arm.
I didn't have time to be a patient. My mind was already a hundred miles an hour, compiling data, analyzing threats, running the logistics of a shadow war I was suddenly right in the middle of.
I walked into the massive walk-in closet and dressed quickly, pulling on charcoal tactical pants and a tight, long-sleeved black bodysuit that pressed firmly against the bandage, hiding the blood.
I avoided the full-length mirror until I was fully zipped up, and then I forced myself to look.
The reflection staring back at me was a stranger.
The pragmatic, rule-following federal agent who kept her chin-length auburn hair neatly tucked behind her ears was dead.
The woman in the glass had hollow, sharp eyes and looked like she was ready to catch a body.
I struggled with the zipper on my boot, my injured arm trembling like a useless piece of shit with the effort until I gritted my teeth, grabbed the tab, and yanked it shut.
"No more suits," I told my reflection, my voice flat. "They wouldn't even recognize me."
I walked out of the bedroom and stepped down into the main living area.
Leon had deadass turned the minimalist penthouse into a high-tech command center overnight.
Three encrypted laptops hummed on the massive marble dining table, their cooling fans working overtime, casting a pale blue light against the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Scattered dossiers, printed satellite maps, and burner phones covered the surface in a chaotic mess of criminal logistics.
The smell of cold espresso hit me immediately, mixed with the raw ozone of heated electronics.
I stopped at the edge of the marble table, my hand instinctively hovering over a stack of physical papers detailing Leon’s underground shipping routes.
"You've been busy," I said.
"Coffee's cold." Leon was standing by the window, staring down at the city like he owned every miserable brick of it.
He had his suit jacket off, his white dress shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows to reveal the perpetual, ugly bruising across his heavy knuckles.
He turned his head and watched me approach, his ice-blue eyes tracking instantly to my stiff right arm.
He didn't say a word. He just walked over and pulled out the heavy leather chair directly beside him at the head of the table.
The scrape of the chair legs against the marble floor echoed loud as hell in the quiet room.
It was an absolute power move. The boss doesn't pull a chair out for a hostage. He pulls it out for a partner.
He slid a fresh, steaming cup of black coffee toward the empty seat.
"Sit," he said. The heat radiating off his massive 6'3" frame was a physical wall as I passed him. "How is the arm?"
I sat down, deliberately ignoring the throb in my bicep as I reached for the coffee.
"It’s attached." I immediately pulled the raw surveillance files toward me, my fingers gliding over the trackpad.
I started sorting the disorganized data, my brain slipping effortlessly into the familiar, obsessive rhythm of a federal investigation, only this time the goal wasn't a subpoena.
It was a kill order. The sheer amount of unorganized garbage his crew had pulled from the streets was offensive to my analytical brain.
I clicked a heavy metal pen repeatedly against the marble, the rapid-fire sound grating in the silent room.
"This data is garbage," I said, tossing a printed manifest aside. "I can do better than this."
The private elevator dinged with a sharp chime before Leon could answer.
The heavy steel doors slid open and Sven Torv marched in.
He looked completely feral, his coat soaked with rain and smelling strongly of gunpowder and street trash.
He carried a handful of physical hard drives salvaged from the wreck of the armored SUV, his face dark red with unresolved rage from the hit we barely survived.
Sven represented the old guard of this syndicate.
He hated my guts on principle and thought his boss was thinking with his dick by keeping a federal rat breathing in his living room.
He slammed the drives onto the table so fucking hard the laptop screen in front of me flickered.
"The perimeter is set," Sven barked, glaring at Leon. He pointed a thick, calloused finger directly at my head without actually looking at me. "What is she doing here?"
I didn't blink. I didn't even look up. I reached out, grabbed one of the hard drives from the pile he just slammed down, and pulled it toward my laptop. I could hear Sven’s heavy, aggressive breathing, the silent, volatile tension vibrating between the three of us like a live wire.
If I flinched, I was dead. These men operated on absolute dominance and weakness was a blood in the water scenario.
I had to be colder than the both of them.
"This is internal business, Leon," Sven growled, stepping closer to the table, his hand twitching near the holster at his hip. "Get her out of that chair."
Leon didn't move, but the air in the room suddenly felt twenty degrees colder.
"She's a liability," Sven pushed, his voice raising a decibel. "The boys are asking why she's still breathing. We took a massive hit today and you've got a fed running the computers."
Leon slowly set his coffee cup down. The delicate clink of the porcelain against the marble sounded like a goddamn gunshot.
He stood up slowly, unfolding his massive height until he towered over his enforcer.
He stepped around the table, placing a hand flat on the marble right next to Sven's twitching fingers.
His knuckles were white with tension. When he spoke, he didn't yell.
His voice dropped into a low, vibrating growl that was infinitely more terrifying than a scream.
"Careful, Sven," Leon said softly. "You’re forgetting whose floor this is."
Sven’s face went pale, but he held his ground for a second too long.
Leon leaned in, the silk of his shirt rustling.
He wasn't just protecting me from his crew.
He was actively claiming me as an extension of his own violent authority.
The psychology of it was totally unhinged but I couldn't deny the massive spike of adrenaline it sent straight into my bloodstream.
"Her orders are my orders," Leon stated, looking Sven dead in the eye.
"If she tells you to burn the city, you bring the gasoline.
You answer to her now." He glanced back at me, a dark, fleeting look of pride crossing his sharp features before he locked his cold eyes back on his enforcer.
"She is the brain. You are the hands. Don't make me say it again. "
I maintained my mask of icy indifference.
Inside, my heart was hammering against my ribs like a caged animal.
I just became the second most powerful criminal in this city and I hadn't even had to pull a trigger to do it.
The absolute audacity of this setup. While Sven swallowed his pride, nodding stiffly and taking a physical step back from the table, I plugged the drive into the USB port and began the decryption process.
I tapped a rhythmic sequence into the keyboard without looking down.
"Get me the traffic logs from the 5th Street bridge," I commanded, my voice flat and authoritative. "Now, Sven."
He stared at me for a split second, smelling of cheap cologne and fresh fear, before he turned on his heel and pulled out his phone to make the call. Power isn't given in this world. It's violently taken. And I was taking it.
I turned back to the screen and connected Leon's secure, high-speed network. I bypassed the standard encryption layers in under ten seconds and went straight for the federal firewall. I exploited a backdoor in the FBI’s regional database—a backdoor I deadass designed myself three years ago to 'improve efficiency' when I was a naive rookie who thought the system actually worked.
My reflection in the monitor showed the ghost of a smile as the progress bar flashed green and read ACCESS GRANTED.
I spent ten years of my life building those bureaucratic walls and swearing an oath to protect them, and it took me exactly thirty seconds to tear them all down for a crime boss.
"I knew they wouldn't change the protocols," I murmured, my fingers flying over the keys. "Stupid. Arrogant."
"What are you looking for?" Leon asked, stepping up right behind my chair. The heavy, warm weight of his presence was a grounding anchor in the chaos.