Page 9 of Caught in the Crossfire

We were all each other had left. I couldn’t lose him, too.

“Do you understand me, son?”

I steeled myself. “I understand, Papa. What can I do to help?”

His gaze softened as his arm came around my back and he gave me a quick hug. An emotion shot to life inside my chest, stinging the corners of my eyes. When was the last time he hugged me? It was before Mamma had died, for sure.

I swallowed the emotion down. Feelings cannot dictate actions. Be careful and controlled.

“Be strong for Leona,” he said. “She needs you to keep her safe while Uncle and I are dealing with this. Then become strong, so no one can ever do this to our Family again.”

My eyes flicked up to the ceiling where I knew Leona slept only two floors above.

I would do exactly as Papa said. I’d protect Leona and Cas from everything. They’d never have to feel this kind of pain again.

I would keep them safe.

4

CIEL

It had been 14 hours.

It felt like a lifetime.

She’s gone.

The words sent chills down my spine. They played again and again inside my overactive brain.

As soon as I got Wynn’s phone call, I’d sprung from my bed and screamed for the rest of the guys. It had only taken us an extra three minutes to leave the penthouse. When we’d found him passed out in the street surrounded by the bodies of the men he’d killed, I thought…I thought my chest was going to cave in on itself. His pulse had been so fucking weak beneath my fingertips.

We’d gotten him to an underground clinic nearby the penthouse that we’d used before, and then immediately called Willow. She and Fallon helicoptered to the city, and as soon as she got here, she’d taken over his treatment. She gave him a blood transfusion and then performed surgery to remove the bullet from his abdomen. He was stable now—clearly fighting for his life to get back to Leona—but we’d just have to wait and see. When he woke up, we’d know more.

Willow was staying with him at the clinic until he was stable enough to move home.

I’d barely torn myself away from him—butLeona. It was torture trying to wait for him during surgery, but knowing she was gone?

We’d almost lost him.

We had lost her.

But we’d get them both back. As soon as I could find her, I’d make us whole again.

She needed us—she neededme.

The only thing keeping me on track was years of training for situations exactly like this. We were highly trained assassins. Emergencies were our daily lives. We could keep our heads on straight while the world literally blew up around us.

As soon as I was able, I’d followed her tracker through the city until it reached a shipyard. The signal cut out after that, and I’d been working ever since to pick it back up again. Onlyoncehad it resurfaced since, miles into the Atlantic, before it cut out again.

She was on a ship. That was all we knew.

It was fucking killing me. It was killing us all. My hand—still healing from Lucia Greco’s stab wound—screamed with every movement of my fingertips, but there was no way I could stop or slow down. The farther she got from us, the harder it would be to get her back.

Obi threatened the entire dark web, promising retribution if whoever took her did not return her to us immediately. He’d called contacts all over the city, trying to track down who took her. He’d set up his computer in my room so we could work together, and he hadn’t stopped pacing around my room. I’d be pacing right there with him, except I kept my fingers glued to my keyboard and my eyes glued to my screens. My bad hand throbbed in pain, but I had to push myself to the limit.

Ryu and Cas had been turning over every square inch of the shipyard, trying to find clues or information or even the name ofthe fucking ship she was on.Anythingthat could give me a trail. I’d tapped into the cameras there, but they were positioned so fucking weird, pointing at all the wrong angles. My guess was that someone had repositioned them to hide something.

“Anything, Ciel?” Obi asked from behind me after hanging up a phone call. He leaned over my shoulder and stared at my screens.