24. Leona
LEONA
The car ride was…tense.
Max was clearly on edge. Probably had nothing to do with him walking in on me naked from the waist down and Obi’s head between my legs. Nope.
Obi was pissed that we got interrupted. Ryuji was ready to pick a fight, per usual, but that was probably going to benefit us since we were literally about to walk in on one.
Ciel was frustrated to be taken away from his computers even though we’d made great headway.
Cas was acting weird because of Max, though he’d laughed out loud when I whispered Max had interrupted me and Obi.
Wynn was annoyed because he was in the middle of making dinner—which was now ruined.
That left me. Worried about all of this going sideways and someone getting hurt.
I just wanted Greco to be fucking dead already.
Cas’s palm squeezed my leg while he gave me a knowing look. I let out a sigh and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. Time for business.
We all needed to be thinking straight. We were about to jump into a battle, and if we were going to kill Greco’s men before they could kill ours, I had to focus.
“How did you find out about this?” Cas asked, breaking the silence.
“The waitresses,” Max said without turning around. He had surprised everyone and sat next to Obi in the front passenger seat. Ryuji’s death glare could have killed a lesser man. “As soon as the Camorra arrived, they reached out to me. They’re my eyes and ears in that place.”
“Waitresses?” I didn’t know much about my father’s casinos.
Just that he had put Max in charge a couple of years ago, and then Max had run with them.
They were a very successful part of the Family business, expanding to multiple locations under Max’s purview.
Diamonds, the one under attack, was the largest.
“They serve the high-stakes games and keep the gamblers happy,” he explained. “The casinos make so much money because they’re excellent at their jobs.”
Wynn narrowed his eyes. “What kind of ‘serving?’”
Max shook his head. “Not like that. These women are trained in gathering intel. They serve drinks, but they also make friends with the customers and keep them happy enough to keep playing. Most of the people in these casinos are blacklisted from other places like Atlantic City, so they come to my casinos because we have no limits and we’ll back them with extra cash. ”
“The interest rates are exorbitantly high,” Cas said. “We’d always follow up on the debtors and make sure they paid.”
Wynn relaxed. He gave me a tight nod, and I folded my hand into his.
“Explain the layout of the casino,” Obi said to Max. “So we know what we’re walking into.”
“The vault is in the back office,” Max said.
“The regular tables are up front. Most of our customers play those. The high-stakes games are in three separate rooms in the back. The staff bolted, but a few of the waitresses barricaded themselves in the bathroom. They said Greco’s men are trashing the place while trying to get at the vault. ”
“How much money is in there?” I asked. “Would it be safer to let them have it?”
Max shook his head. “There’s a metric fuckton of money at that casino.
But it’s not just the money. We’ve always been able to protect our assets.
Even when the Albanians bombed the casino a month ago, they didn’t get close to the vault.
Our customers trust us. If we lose that money, we lose the whole operation. ”
Well, at least the stakes of this evening were clear. It would be an enormous blow to Max’s bottom line—our bottom line now—if Greco took that money. Plus, there was the pride of it all. Greco was hitting us where we were vulnerable.
“Why didn’t you tell us about the casinos before?” Frustration curled around my belly like a snake. “We could have had our men protecting it.”
Max looked out his window, a muscle feathering in his jaw. “I…I didn’t think he’d come after them. They make substantial money, but they’re no threat to him. Frankly, I thought he’d have bigger fish to fry.”
“Guess you were wrong,” Ryuji said from the third row, next to Ciel. “Another thing you kept to yourself, and now we’re paying the price.”
“Down here,” Max said, pointing at a small street while he ignored Ryuji’s barb. Obi followed his directions until he pulled up in front of a nondescript building shoved between two other multi-story complexes.
I’d only been to Diamonds once before, and only because I was driving to an event with my father and he stopped here for ten minutes to conduct some kind of business. I didn’t even get out of the car; he wouldn’t let me go inside.
The building had a brick exterior with construction scaffolding covering one side, probably repairs from when the Vokshi bombed the club.
A large, singular black door was positioned in the center.
A velvet rope was knocked down to the ground right out front of the entrance—almost like a club, where a bouncer checked IDs and let people in.
No one stood there now, but I remembered two bouncers checking the door the last time I was here.
Obi parked within view of the building. Together, with guns drawn, we headed for the door.
“Sweep the rooms, kill the Camorra men, and get to the vault,” Max said. “Cas and Obi, come with me. Ciel and Wynn, there’s an exit to the back. Make sure no one escapes.”
The guys immediately turned to me and Obi for confirmation of his orders. I shrugged right as Obi gave a nod. We didn’t have time to debate orders.
“What about me, Mr. Mastermind?” Ryu raised an eyebrow while he adjusted the straps on his backpack filled with extra ammo and supplies.
“Or me?” I asked.
“You two stick together,” Max said quickly, gripping his gun and creeping forward. “Leona, you were excellent with the survivors in the abandoned subway tunnels. Make sure the girls are safe?”
“Okay,” I said. After we swept the place and cleared it, I’d head to the bathroom to find them. “Stay safe, everyone. Check in on the ear comms if anything goes wrong.”
Wynn and Ciel peeled off to slip around the building. Obi and Max breached the door while Cas followed right behind. Ryu yanked my shoulder backward so he could enter the building first, and as soon as we stepped inside, the harsh scent of gunfire stung my nostrils.
The inside was bigger than I expected, but the casino was trashed. Tables were flipped and broken. Chairs were slashed. Glass was everywhere. Chips littered the ground, making every step just slightly uneven.
“Shit,” Cas hissed. “Men down. They need medical attention.”
My eyes scanned the casino, snagging on two groaning figures dressed in black suits, huddled near the wall. “Are they ours?”
“Yes. The bouncers,” Max answered while he and Obi scoped out the main hall. “Leona, can you—”
“I got it,” I said, reaching for the backpack that Ryu handed me. “Ryu?”
“Got your back, Leona dear,” he murmured as he followed me, gun raised, to the men. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Obi, Cas, and Max work in tandem to sweep through the building room by room. I thought we’d be rushing into a battle, but it seemed like we’d already missed the worst of it.
“Help,” one of the injured men cried, grabbing his thigh.
I knelt by his side and started rifling through the backpack until I found the med kit. “What happened?”
“They ambushed us,” he groaned, sweat dripping down his brow. I started examining his leg—definitely a gunshot wound—and he hissed in pain. “Hit us hard, stole the money, and left. Hard and fast, before we could even realize what was happening.”
Ryu pressed a finger to his ear comms. “The money is gone. Bouncer says they left, but keep alert.”
“Copy,” Obi said while Max cursed in the background. “We’re still clearing and will converge on the vault last.”
Ryu kneeled next to me and started working on the second injured man beside us.
“Where are the rest of the men who were supposed to be here?” I asked the bouncer while I prepped the wound irrigation syringe.
“A couple of guys ran for help with the crowd,” he said before he shouted in pain when I flushed his injury. “Fuck!”
“Sorry,” I murmured once it was clean. I unraveled a gauze pack and started bandaging the wound. “We’ll get you stable, but you’ll need to go to the hospital.”
His bleary eyes locked onto me. “You’re Leona Vero, right?”
I nodded. “We’re the Shadows. Max is with us. We got here as soon as we could.”
“This was supposed to be our slow night,” he said, gritting his teeth while I made the bandages tight, “but it all happened so fast. I blacked out. When I came to, everything was quiet. Those fuckers must have thought we were dead when they left us.”
“You did well,” I said. I put the finishing touches on the bandage and then looked over at Ryu. His patient had a gunshot wound to the shoulder, but it wasn’t bleeding terribly. “We’ll get you to a hospital. You should both be fine with treatment.”
“There’s a clinic not far from here,” Ryu said. “Might be faster.”
The bouncer let out a wobbly breath. He grabbed my hand. “Thank you, Miss Vero.”
I squeezed his fingers. “You’re welcome.”
“Bathroom is empty,” Cas announced through our ear comms. I chewed my lip. Hopefully, the women were okay. “The rest of the casino is clear. Only room left is the office with the vault.”
“Back of the building is clear, too,” Wynn added. “We’ll head inside.”
I let out a sigh of relief and gripped Ryu’s shoulder. Besides these two guys, everyone else seemed to have gotten out of here without getting hurt.
But we lost the money.
“Be careful of any booby traps they left behind,” Max said.
My finger pressed to my ear comms. “Has anyone seen the waitresses yet?”
“Checking now,” Obi said. I stood, trying to get an eye on the three of them in the back of the casino.
Handgun raised, Obi slowly opened the door to the back office.
We all braced for what we found inside, but no booby traps blew us to pieces.
Instead, five women clustered within it. I quickly jogged over.