Page 92 of Blood in the Water

And now this woman wanted to come in here and fuck it all up. As if she wasowedthat right.

Not if I could help it.

34

CIEL

Well, that was a shit show.

Ryuji had only come out of his room three hours later to go straight to the gym, and it was pointless to follow him. Wynn and I knew how stubborn of a bastard he could be, so we convinced Leona to stay upstairs until he had time to get his anger out.

To distract her, Leona was helping me monitor the camera feeds and keep an eye on the tracker she planted on the Italian foot soldier.

This morning, when she had told us what she’d done the night before—going down to the club by herself—anger and shame made my fists clench on my computer desk. I had been a total asshole.

Wynn had left her at the penthouse with me, and I had retreated into my room like a coward because I was so nervous around her. I had flipped through video feeds all night, trying to run facial ID software that got me nowhere because I thought she was peacefully sleeping on the other side of the apartment. I had been way more concerned about what she thought about me than about doing my fucking job and protecting her.

Because of that, she was able to sneak downstairs and put herself in harm’s way.

I’d been beating myself up for it all day. What if she had gotten hurt? What if I had failed?

But then the tracker started moving throughout the city, stopping at multiple locations, and I was able to get so much more data on the movements of the Italians. With the street cameras Wynn and Leona had installed the night before, paired with the data from the tracker, I had an excellent idea of the top three potential locations Caspian might be.

The anger I felt at myself started shifting toawe at Leona.

Honestly, I was impressed. She armed herself, took matters into her own hands, and it paid off. Sure, I still felt like an asshole, and maybe I was a little pissed at her as well for taking such a risk, but there was a growing pride in my chest that rewrote those thoughts. It was clear she could handle herself. Why be mad at both of us when I could be proud of her instead?

When I told her so, a smile so brilliant it had taken my breath away stretched across her face.

Definitely worth it.

It wasn’t my job to keep her in a cage; it was my job to help her. So I’d been trying to do that ever since.

I hadn’t yet landed a visual on Volpe, but I did get a crystal clear image of his consigliere, Elio—the man I saw with Volpe at the warehouse. Elio had made multiple stops at a building in Brooklyn, one of the same locations the tracker had briefly stopped at. It appeared to be a simple office building from the street, but I’d learned that beneath the property was one of the gambling dens and fighting arenas the Vero Family ran.

Even if Caspian wasn’t there, this was likely an essential location for the mafia. My current theory was that Volpe had set up temporary headquarters there since the location was centrally located within the Vero territory.

I had satellite watching that building now. It was only a matter of time before someone slipped up. I hadn’t met this Caspian yet, but from what Wynn told me, he would do hisdamndestto stay alive to get back to Leona no matter what.

I hoped he was strong enough to do so.

Leona sighed as she scanned more video footage, looking for familiar faces that we could follow through the city. We’d been working in companionable silence for about thirty minutes, but her sighs were increasingly heavy and frequent.

“So, you didn’t tell us you met Ryu last night,” I said quietly.

Legs spread wide and feasting.

Damn. No matter how hard I tried, I hadn’t been able to get that image out of my head. Add that to what I saw between her and Wynn yesterday, and my imagination was running wild.

Her shorts dangerously low, just enough to give me a flash of light curls. Her flushed cheeks and swollen lips, thoroughly kissed. Wynn nestled comfortably between her legs, his lips on her neck. The way they both looked, brazenly aroused. How Wynn pressed his lips to hers before standing up, that breathy little moan that formed in the low of her throat.

No matter how hard I tried to erase the mental image, it kept coming back up. When I slept. When I showered. When I went to the gym to use the bag and run sprints. As soon as my eyes closed, she was there. I couldn’t control it.

I also couldn’t control how my heart beat erratically when she was near, how my throat threatened to close when I tried to speak to her, or how my eyes followed her no matter where she moved throughout the apartment.

I wanted to watch. Her, them, all of them.

Yet as much as I liked watching, I still wished she’d look at me the way she looked at Wynn. Right now, she barely looked at me at all.