Page 143 of Blood in the Water

I squeezed her hand. “Do you think your father could have had any partners that helped him?”

“Accomplices?” She bit her lip in thought. “Well, he had to have foot soldiers. People on the ground that greased the wheels. Ciel said that Max killed four traitors who were processing the stolen Russian drugs, so he turned to some members of our Family. And then we know he was involved with the Albanians.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I said as I shook my head. “I mean allies. Powerful allies.”

“What are you thinking, Obi?”

“It seems unlikely that he could manage to hide all of this—the trafficking, the drugs, the sale of the weapons—without other powerful men who either looked the other way or directly supported him.”

She sucked in a breath as it clicked inside her head. “You think some other heads of the Five Families were helping my father?”

That had been my assumption, too. “Perhaps.”

“And maybe he was making payments to them through these accounts?”

I nodded. “It isn’t unusual to keep payment records encrypted or well-hidden, especially if they were trying to protect each other. Most payments we receive as the Shadows are filtered through at least two or three dummy accounts before they land in anything remotely tied to what we control.”

She untucked her legs from underneath her and stretched them out to rest against the coffee table. This time, I didn’t stop myself from drinking in her beautiful bare skin. My palm rested against her upper thigh, expecting her to pull away or shift, but she only leaned into my touch as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Is there a way we can trace the accounts?” She rubbed her eyes. “See who they belong to?”

“Ciel might be able to help,” I replied while she settled deeper against my body. Even I started to feel my body relax. “And I have several banking contacts around the world who can also help trace them. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“The deeper I get into this, the more questions I find. When is it going to stop?” A yawn overtook her. I smiled softly. Her exhaustion was apparent, and I relished how she relaxed beside me.

“Not until we’re the ones in charge.”

Her eyes closed while she leaned her head back against the cushion. “Soon.”

I matched her soft smile. “Soon indeed.”

We sat there, simply enjoying one another’s presence as my head continued to turn over all the tiny chess pieces I had moving on the board in my head. Some were mine to play; others were our opponents. Luciano. The Chinese. My men in Africa. The Italians. The Russians.

And now there was us, a new syndicate that would take New York by storm, with a strong Queen to take control.

I glanced at my computer and briefly considered pulling it back to my lap to do more work while she rested, but I would have had to jostle her and shift us too much. I didn’t want that at all. She needed the sleep.

The emails would have to wait.

Her head lolled against my shoulder within a few minutes as her breathing deepened. She was asleep.

I stared at her. At our arms, still linked around one another with hands clasped. At her thighs, pressed tightly together. At her head, resting on my shoulder.

A calmness I’d not felt in decades rolled through me. My eyes fluttered closed, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I slept without nightmares.

50

WYNN

It had been a week since Leona had gotten us all to agree to her partnership.

I was so proud of her for blowing us all away. I’d always assumed Ciel would agree quickly as I had, but Ryuji and Obi were wildcards. I don’t know why I was so surprised that she’d rapidly made allies of us all—she’d had my devotion from the second day I knew her.

While I hoped we’d spend more time together outside of our daily training sessions—where she was improving significantly at range weapons—we’d unfortunately all been busy.

It had been quiet until some traffickers had slipped up, and Ciel had caught wind of another den in what was previously Vero territory, which I spent two days casing and eventually eliminating. Leona had come with me to help manage the victims. She’d given a large portion of her own money to the fund Willow used to rehabilitate and stabilize the women, which only increased my loyalty to her.

The traffickers were suspected Albanians, and we knew now that the Albanians had access to New York because of Don Vero. The sooner we could get control of how this was happening, the better I’d feel. Plus, the sooner we could trace the bankaccounts Leona found on Don Vero’s hard drive, the more we’d understand why all of this happened and who else contributed.