Page 35 of Caught in the Crossfire

“The Albanians said there was war,” Leona interjected. “The Camorra and the Albanians are at war. They took Max to be a hostage. They took me to make up for the money they’d lost since he killed my father.”

War? My mind turned over all the explanations, all the possibilities. The Camorra had owned Europe, though they’d been at odds with the Albanians for generations. When I lived with them, they thought of the Albanians as annoyances at most. The Clans weren’t powerful enough to present a genuine threat to the Camorra. Unless…

“The Vokshi Clan. You know them,” I said to Volpe.

His unflinching gaze confirmed my statement.

No clans. Just Vokshi.

“Have the Albanian Clans consolidated power?” I asked him. “Is that how they’ve threatened the Camorra?”

His nostrils flared, then he sighed. “Yes.”

“How are you involved?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I will not answer.”

I cocked my pistol. “Now.”

“Obi,” Leona said. I turned, and tears wet her eyes. “I just want to go home.”

My heart churned inside my chest alongside the lava that threatened to erupt. Not at her, never at her. At the damage inflicted upon her. At the fact that Volpe had answers he was keeping from us.

I turned my back on Volpe, trusting my brothers would watch it, while I stood in front of her and ducked my head to whisper in her ear. “Please,ifunanya’m. We need to understand. Only a little longer.”

Her bottom lip wobbled, and my heart broke inside my chest before she closed her eyes and exhaled a long breath. I watched her steel herself. Her eyes went hard. Her shoulders went tight. She stepped around me and stared at Max herself.

“I know you’re working with the Camorra, or else the Albanians wouldn’t have interrogated you about their plans or how to hurt them,” she said. I gripped the back of her neck to steady her. “You wouldn’t be a valuable hostage unless you were valuable to them. You refused to tell me on the boat. Tell us now, or we won’t take you back.”

She was right. They wouldn’t have kidnapped him and held him for so long unless they expected the Camorra to react to his absence. They wouldn’t expect him to have answers unless they had reason to believe he had them.

What had Max Volpe been doing with the Camorra underneath our noses?

He huffed a breath. “I didn’t expect you to go back on your word.”

“If you remember, I only ever agreed to get you off the ship,” she countered. Volpe frowned, opened his mouth, and then closed it. I withheld a smile. She’d done the same trick to Ryuji once. “You’ll realize that meant I could have kicked you off this yacht, but I didn’t.”

“I should have,” Ryu muttered darkly. He’d quietly repositioned himself on Volpe’s other side.

Volpe’s face turned mocking, ignoring Ryu behind him. “And then you threatened me,piccola, that I’d face the queen’s wrath when I returned. Is that what I’m facing now?”

She grabbed the pistol from my hand and pointed it at him. Anger twisted her face. “Tell us about the Albanians and the Camorra. What are we caught in the middle of?”

He clenched his jaw, glancing at Ryuji—still with his gun targeting Volpe’s back—and then over to Caspian. He took a deep breath, jaw clenching, as he realized his defeat.

“The Albanians have been pushing into New York for years, courtesy of Luciano Vero.”

“That’s what you left in my father’s study for me to find,” Leona said. “We know that.”

“I’ve been trying to push them out of the city, but they’ve had a surge in power. The Clans agreed to unite under the Vokshi. It’s taken all our effort to quell their numbers. Lucia was helping us stay one step ahead, and we had made tremendous progress to push them down to Pennsylvania and New Jersey instead, but since you took her away, they’ve gotten even worse. Without her intel, they’re flooding into the city and all down the Eastern seaboard. They’ve already tried to kidnap me twice.”

“Why? What use are you to the Camorra?” I asked.

In my years with them, they’d taken a careful yet reservedapproach to their American counterparts. Business partners and distant cousins, perhaps, but not close enough to intervene in each other’s business unless it was necessary.

“What use are you to the Camorra?” I repeated.

He narrowed his eyes and said nothing while his fingers clenched his crossed arms.