Page 142 of Blood in the Water

At that, I laughed. The more time I spent with Leona, the more I enjoyed her sharp tongue.

For some reason, she set me at ease. I felt compelled to share. To perhaps finally take my advice and start opening up. We’d already chosen to venture into uncharted business territory together. What was one more step into the unknown?

“Perhaps, then, we should talk about them with each other,” I said slowly. “It will be our little secret.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“It’s settled then. Whenever we have nightmares, we tell each other. Even if we can’t share the details, we still confide.” I nudged her shoulder with my own. I’d always preferred to bury them, but it was time to try something new. “But you must go first. Tell me what happened.”

She leaned against my shoulder, and I savored the comfort and stability she drew from me. This little moment between us, a shared vulnerability in the middle of the night, was precious to me. I could easily see how she’d taken up residence within the hearts of my brothers. At her hesitation to begin, I nudged her again.

“I used to see him chase me through the house, trying to kill me. I’d watch my father die over and over. Or he’d be threatening me or Cas,” she began as she shook her head. “Butnow, it’s all of you. Some variation of all four of you dying. Tonight, he killed you all and left me there. Alone. He made me sit in the blood, and he told me it was my fault. That I’d gotten you involved in this, and I should have just died before anyone else got hurt.”

Her voice tapered off into a whisper, and I spotted the soft glistening of tears forming in her eyes. My hands clenched by my side as a deep rage overtook my body. Volpe had hurt her so deeply.

Now that she was ours, that would never happen again. Never. I would personally make him pay for every single nightmare she’d ever had.

Before I could stop myself, I reached out to wrap my hand around hers. Her fingers were warm as they curled against mine.

“He will never harm you again,” I whispered fiercely, squeezing her hand. “I will protect you. We all will.”

She squeezed back, and the simple touch thawed a little more of my heart, chasing away more of the darkness that had taken root there.

“I won’t let him hurt you either. All of you.” She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “Cas is still sleeping, but I don’t want to wake him up, and I don’t want to sit in my room in the dark. Can I stay out here for a while?”

“Of course.”

“I’m scared to be alone,” she murmured after a few more moments. A tear escaped her cheek. “I’m scared to die alone.”

“You are not alone, Leona,” I said as I wrapped her hand around my arm so we were linked. With my other hand, I brushed the pad of my thumb over the wetness on her cheek. “Not anymore. And you have five men right here in this apartment who would burn the world to ashes before they’d let anything happen to you.”

She leaned into my touch, and my heartbeat accelerated. The desire was there. To be with her. To claim her as my brothers had done.

“Can I ask you something else?” she said as she looked at our joined arms. If she wanted to pull back, I’d let her. But I had no desire to pull away myself.

“Anything.”

“Before I went to sleep, Ciel finally cracked the files on my father’s hard drive,” she said. “I found pages and pages worth of numbers. I’m not sure what they are. Do you have any ideas?”

“Just numbers?” I asked as I pursed my lips.

“Yeah, like rows of nine-digit numbers along with corresponding dates.”

“Hmm. Were they the same nine digits each time?”

She shook her head. “No. Some sequences repeated, but not often.”

“They may be account numbers.”

She cocked her head to the side to look at me. “Account numbers. Do you think they could be payment records?”

“Your father could have been making payments to those accounts.” There was far more to Luciano than any of us had discovered yet, of that I was sure. “Or those accounts to him.”

She huffed a breath as anger furrowed her brow. “What the fuck was he thinking, Obi? Why do any of this? We were happy. I thought we made tons of money. Why go rogue and get intothiskind of shit? Wasn’t an empire enough?”

“Men will do anything when fed by greed.” I knew personally. Those men were incredibly difficult to stop, once they’d gotten a taste of avarice and gluttony. Those had never been my sins. I fell more into the wrath category.

She sunk deeper on the couch, a frown marring her beautiful features. Something else had been on my mind since the nightmy brothers told me what Luciano Vero had done. This could be connected.