Page 106 of Blood in the Water

“Guys? Wynn?”

“You know what it means, Leona,” Ryuji finally snapped.

Nausea rolled through me as the thought formed against my will. Were all of these documents my father’s?

“It can’t be.” A measure of confidence returned to my voice. “My father would never. He had told me time andtime again: Italians don’t do skin. We do drugs, guns, and gambling. Stealing drugs from Russians? I’d believe it. But skin? Absolutely not.”

The three of them were silent.

“Ciel?” He’d know. He’d confirm that Max had been a giant steaming pile of shit for way longer than I’d believed.

He inhaled heavily. “I don’t know, Leona.”

I bit my lip, hard. Hard enough to fill my mouth with the coppery taste of blood. “No. I refuse to consider any other option. There has to be more.”

I pushed this box to the ground and pulled out the next one. I relaxed a little when I started to read the names of guns. Huge shipments of them. “Bills of sale. My father was in the gun trade. All of the Italian families are. This is normal. Expected.”

We sold guns all across the nation to different criminal families in LA, Chicago, and Seattle. It was one of the largest pieces of our criminal empire, with the most moving parts. We used our legitimate construction companies to hide the shipments. I knew that much.

These documents were more proof that my father’s record-keeping was terrible, but not that he was involved in things he shouldn’t have been. Things he promised me he wasn’t.

I relaxed for a moment, feeling returning to the tips of my fingers. I pulled out another stack of documents from the same file. Normal. Nothing I wouldn’t want to see.

But then my eyes narrowed on the buyer, and all over again, my world tilted.

“No,” I whispered as I ran my thumb over the address, like I could somehow blot it out and forget I’d ever seen any of this.

“What is it?” Wynn asked.

“These guns were shipped to Langley, Virginia,” I whispered.

“The fuck? The CIA?” Ryuji said.

“It could be someone else,” Ciel reasoned as I wiped the sweat from my temple.

“Really?” Ryuji replied. “Another criminal organization operating out of the CIA’s backyard? Sure.”

“Oh my God, was my father a traitor?” The question slipped out of my mouth before I could choke back the words. There was zero reason for my father to sell guns to the fucking United States government. What the actual hell was this?

“This can’t be real.” A nervous laugh bubbled up my throat. I shook my head. “Absolutely not. It’s fake. It has to be. My father would never sell guns to the CIA. That would be a death sentence. Not just for him but for our entire Family. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Leona, wait, someone’s there,” Ciel said, the sound of his keyboard again echoing in the background.

I barely registered the sound in my ears. All I could hear was the roaring sound of my heartbeat.

“Get out of there, right now,” Wynn urged. “Ryuji, hurry up.”

“What?” My brain was playing catch up, still stuck on the address of the fucking CIA headquarters. Was the head of one of North America’s most powerful mafia families working with the Feds? It was a setup. Max was in my father’s files to incriminate him and ruin his reputation.

“Leona! He’s—” The earpiece cut out.

“Ciel?” I gently flicked the transmitter as my world finally came rushing back to the present.

Shit. Someone was coming. I picked up the gun from the desk.

Atskingsound came from behind me. I whirled around to find Max leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. My heart stuttered at how goddamn good he looked in that dark suit, contrasting his light hair. Turns out, no matterhow much I fucking hated him, I couldn’t stop my body’s reaction to his presence.

“You found it, then,” he said softly, those titanium eyes shifting between all the open boxes. “Pretty shitty, isn’t it?”