Page 38 of Caught in the Crossfire

But the look in her haggard eyes was clear. It would bring her even greater pain to kill him, and I refused to give her any more.

I gave the signal to Edward to bring us into the city’s harbor.

If we were going to take Volpe out, we needed to be strong enough to get revenge on the Albaniansandwithstand the forces of the Camorra. We needed more power.

14

LEONA

As soon as we docked, Max disappeared. He slipped off the boat without saying goodbye, or thanking us for the transport, or letting me return his torn and filthy suit jacket, or even washing his hands of the blood that covered both of us from head to toe.

I didn’t care.

He’d slipped through my fingers long ago, and the only thing that remained between us was the bones of a fulfilled truce.

All bets were off now.

Comforting in a way. To see how easily we could forget everything that happened and go back to the way things were before.

The women we’d taken off the boat with us waited in the main salon, huddling around one another in a state of fear and disbelief. I felt the same.

What we’d been through in that cargo hold…I swallowed and pushed the memories down even further. It was behind us. It was at the bottom of the ocean, in a pile of wreckage. It was over.

I’d spoken to them briefly in the hours it took us to sail back to New York, but they weren’t too keen on speaking and neitherwas I. To be honest, ever since seeing my men, all I’d wanted to do was fall asleep. I was running on adrenaline, and even that was long gone.

But in our time speaking, I had learned a little about them. They were all American. They’d been taken from different points along the East Coast. Two from Boston, one from a college town in Connecticut, one from Maine, one from Virginia, and one from as far south as Florida. They were all between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three. Some were taken within the last two weeks; the Albanians had held some for months.

Six women. I watched them while they stood at the windows of the yacht.

There had been eight in the cargo hold.

No.

We were home now. It was fine. We’d done our best to get everyone out, and that was all that mattered.

Now, they seemed frozen in stasis, unsure what to do. While we waited for Willow’s crew to arrive, I tried to ease them by gathering at least a little more information.

From what I could gather through their brief answers and stories, they’d been kept together and moved together from location to location, and were being taken to Dürres for final sale. None of them had known each other, but they’d formed an intense bond and were protective of one another.

After another ten minutes, Ciel caught my attention, and I stepped away to speak with him at the door to the exterior deck.

“They’re here,” he whispered. “Should they come on board, or can the women walk off?”

I glanced behind me for a second. “Let me ask what they want to do.”

He rested his palm on the top of my shoulder. “We’ll be home soon. Are you sure you don’t need anything? Do you want them to take a look at you, too?”

I shook my head no, avoiding the kindness in his gaze. Theonly way I was dealing with things right now was to stomp them down into that tiny little box. If I didn’t think about it, it didn’t exist.

I was positive everything would burst from that box as soon as we got home, but for now, I had to deal with what was in front of me.

“Okay. We’re giving you some space, but we’re right outside if you need us.”

I squeezed his hand on my cheek before turning back to the survivors. “There is a group of women waiting to give you medical attention and safety. They can meet you outside or come in here.”

A woman with jagged-cut brown hair that hung in limp bangs over her eyes spoke first. Her name was Penny, and she’d been their natural leader since Max and I broke them out of their cages. “And then take us where?”

“Wherever you want to go,” I answered. Willow’s crew would take care of them, just like they had for that woman I’d met in Philadelphia, Claire, and all the other women that Wynn had saved.