52. Obi
OBI
“Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” Leona asked as she followed me out of Ciel’s room.
“What is it?”
“Umm,” she started before she paused with a heavy sigh. We walked together through the halls until we reached the top of the stairs. “What happens when Lucia takes care of the heirs?”
“What do you mean?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s the next part of your plan? After Greco’s dead, after they’re dead. What do we do then?”
“Then we take over. We use the Camorra for our own protection and gain.” If we were the most powerful people in the world, we would be untouchable. That’s why I’d spent my life pursuing this ultimate end.
She pressed her lips together. “Are you sure that’s the right thing for us?”
My hand rested on the bannister. “What do you mean?”
Her head tilted to the side while she appraised me. “Is this about safety, or about power, or about control?”
“To me, they are all one and the same.” We wouldn’t be safe until we held the power.
My siblings wouldn’t sleep safely unless I knew no one would come after them.
I wanted a home where our children could grow, happy and peacefully.
I wanted Leona to walk down the street and know that she didn’t have to worry.
She let out a breath. “They aren’t, Obi.”
I curled some hair around her ear. “They are. Trust me on this. Once the criminal underworld is ours, no one will dare challenge us. We’ll have the resources to keep us all safe. We can live the rest of our lives in peace.”
She turned her cheek into my palm. “Do you want to be like they are?” Her voice was soft.
“How greedy they are? How their global enterprise preys on others? They’ve never cared about safety.
They only care about power. That’s what you’re trying to take over.
It’s not a legacy we want or need. We don’t have to become like them. ”
“Of course not,” I scoffed. “I do not want to be like Greco. Never. With us in charge, we make sure that no one ever will be again.”
“But we don’t have to take over the Camorra for that to be the case,” she argued.
If it wasn’t us, then who? Someone would fill that vacuum of power, and eventually, they’d come after us. “What do you propose, then?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know. Let Lucia do it? She clearly doesn’t care about her family’s organization. If she were in charge, I’d wager she’d do things differently.”
“Wagers are not guarantees that our family will survive.”
“I know, but—”
“Plus, she doesn’t want that leadership,” I said. “You heard her voice. She just wants to be left alone.”
Leona nodded. “I know. I’m not sure what the right thing to do is.
But I…I just don’t want you to get too deep into this.
” She grabbed my hands. “We keep each other safe. Our family does. Trusting each other does. Loving each other does. Leading the Camorra won’t solve the problems we face every day. It will just make them worse.”
“I…”
“Just think about other options, okay?” She squeezed my hand. Caspian called for her from downstairs, and she leaned over the bannister to shout back at him. “No matter what happens, though, I trust you.”
She headed downstairs, leaving me to contemplate the possibilities of our future.
I frowned while I listened to her chat with Caspian.
The first day we came to our new home, Leona had expressed something similar.
Max had even warned against trying to usurp the Camorra’s place of power—he’d called me greedy for not just trying to shut it all down.
But I wasn’t sure how to reconcile the opportunity their organization gave us with the caution they both expressed.
Could neither of them see what I could see?
Or was I the one missing something?