Page 22

22

WYNN

M y hands tightened on the steering wheel.

Marriage. To Caspian.

He was making a mistake not telling her. But I was also selfish in my own desires of not wanting her to know.

Of course, she’d say yes.

As she should. It would secure her an army of loyal men to fight Max. It would be foolish to say no to that.

But then she would be married—and what effect would that have on the six of us?

My thoughts trailed back to that night in the library, when Ciel and I had taken her together. It was the most incredible experience of my life.

If Caspian and Leona were married, things could change. What if she wanted to stay true to her marriage vows?

It wasn’t just physical. Helping Leona build our empire, remove trafficking from the city, was my path to redemption. It was how I would wipe my slate clean. A change in our dynamic could jeopardize everything. And I wasn’t ready to take that risk.

So, for now, I’d let Caspian decide when he wanted to tell her about that part of the conversation. He promised he would. Maybe once the six of us were closer…maybe then, even if she did say yes, things wouldn’t have to change.

I sighed, keeping an eye on the road and readjusting the transmitter in my ear. We’d agreed not to fill in Ciel until it was necessary. He was already nervous enough around Leona as it was. If he found out that she might need to marry Caspian, he would pull back.

Caspian could hide it for a few days, but if we didn’t secure the men, we needed to rival Max, we’d have to tell her.

“I’m seeing something on the cameras,” Ciel said in our ears as I turned down a street in Italian territory. We weren’t far from the penthouse, but we still had to drive through at least ten blocks.

“What is it?” I frowned, looking at Caspian. “Max’s men? Did Giulio betray us already?”

New York was busy—it’s not like these streets were abandoned. But if Ciel thought something looked off, then he was most likely right.

“No, I don’t think so,” Ciel replied. His keyboard clicked in the background. “I think it’s South Americans. Might be the Alacrán Cartel. A group of four motorcycles and a car.”

“Fuck. Really?” Caspian looked out the side and back windows. “What are they doing here?”

“It looks like they’re headed back where you came from. Toward Russian territory.”

Caspian and I exchanged a glance. We were both eager to get home, but the Russians were our allies now.

“Goddamnit,” Caspian grumbled, rubbing a hand down his chin. “Can you get a message to Makarov?”

“Yeah, I’m updating him now.”

“Ask him what’s nearby,” I added. “Maybe they’re headed to hit a warehouse or something.”

“Wynn, I’m patching Makarov through to you.” With that, my phone vibrated. I swiped over the screen.

“Makarov? It’s Wynn.”

“What is it?” he asked, voice hard.

“We’ve got eyes on some South Americans headed to your territory.” I read him the closest cross streets. “Do you have anything nearby? Anything they’re looking for?”

“Fuck. Yes, I have a business front we use for processing drugs a few blocks from there. A laundromat.” He started barking orders in Russian in the background. “Are they Alacrán fuckers coming after me again?”

“It seems highly likely, but we’re not certain.”

Makarov swore. “We just got a new shipment in. Delivered there less than an hour ago.”

I relayed the information to Caspian. He raised an eyebrow in question before pulling his guns from his shoulder holsters. My hand gripped the steering wheel tighter as a smile turned up the corner of my mouth. It had been a few days since I’d seen some action.

“Now how exactly would they know a shipment had been delivered? In less than an hour?” Caspian asked.

“Shit,” Ciel hissed. “Could be Volpe’s hacker.”

I exchanged a glance with Cas before I spoke into the phone. “We can get there first. Give me the address.”

My phone dinged in my ear. “Just texted it to you.”

“Meet us there.” I turned the car around, following the map’s directions. “And Makarov? You need to double-check all your tech. We know Volpe is working with an elite hacker.”

He cursed in Russian. “Thanks for the heads-up. We’ll clean everything out.” He shouted more as car doors slammed. “I’m at least twenty minutes away. Worse, with traffic. But we’ll be there.” He grunted. “Hey, at least this alliance is coming in handy already.”

I chuckled. “The start of a valuable relationship.”

I hung up the phone, tucking it back into the pocket of my jeans. “Ciel, keep an eye on those motorcycles. I want to know exactly where they are and what they’re doing.”

“I’m following them through the feeds. Here, take this route instead,” he replied, my phone dinging again. I tapped the screen. “If you follow that, you’ll miss some traffic, and catch up quicker. You’re only a few minutes apart.”

When we pulled up to the address, the South Americans already had it surrounded.

A dingy Laundromat sign hung above the entrance door, its light barely shining more than a candle. Dark paint covered the windows with fake specials and prices painted in white overtop. It was impossible to see inside. The front door’s glass was already shot out, with the metal frame hanging off its hinges.

“A fucking shootout on a city street,” Cas growled, cocking his guns. “The cops are probably already on their way.”

“Ciel?” I pulled back the hammer of my own gun, double-checked the extra magazines I had in my pockets, and made sure the knife on my thigh was secure.

“Already monitoring the police feeds,” he responded. “Ten minutes out. They’ll beat the Russians here.”

“Well, fuck,” Cas said. Then we both opened our doors and slipped out of the car. “Let’s hurry the fuck up.”

The South Americans’ car was parked haphazardly in front, partially mounted over the curb. Motorcycles fanned out around it. It looked like a mini assault on the Russian business.

“That style of motorcycle is frequently used by the Alacrán in Colombia. Stay on alert,” Ciel warned. When Obi found Ciel, he’d been left for dead after being attacked by a cartel in his hometown. Was this the same one? Is that how he knew who they were?

“Copy.”

The whole street looked run-down. The shops on the ground floor next door were closed and boarded up. Apartments sat above the entire strip, but even those looked abandoned. A bodega sat on the corner, and I could see patrons hiding inside.

The street was darker than it should be. Even the streetlights had been shot out.

I looked over to where Cas had ducked behind the open door of our armored vehicle. For a moment, I considered leaving. We could let the cops show up to handle them.

No. We were part of the alliance. This was the time to send a message and show the South Americans they’d face the consequences for coming after us.

“Cops are eight minutes out,” Ciel said in my ear.

We didn’t have time to hesitate.

“I see two guys hiding behind those motorcycles,” said Caspian.

“The rest must be inside.”

I jerked my head toward the two we could see. “Take out them first. Then we’ll head inside the building and finish the rest of them. We’ll bolt after that.”

We couldn’t protect the Makarov’s product from being confiscated by the police, but we could eliminate the threats.

Caspian nodded. “I’ll take the one on the right; you take the one on the left.”

Together, we crept around our SUV. Shots rang out as we simultaneously took out the two men hanging outside. They didn’t even turn around before they dropped.

But attacking them drew the attention of some who must have been hiding right inside the laundromat’s doors. Two heads poked out, and gunshots rang out. Caspian and I ducked behind another car while shots slammed into the metal.

They started shouting at each other in Spanish. I peeked around. All it took was a moment of being distracted for me to find my shot.

One dropped, and the other retreated farther inside.

I sprinted after him. My boots crunched broken glass.

More gunshots, and I jerked backward, pressing my back against the outer brick wall. Caspian still crouched behind the car, but he had a better view than me. He held up two fingers and then pointed to the left of the entrance.

More yelling in Spanish.

“Ciel? Are you picking anything up?”

“They’re saying to grab what product they can and get out of there,” he responded. “They’re going out the back.”

“Shit.” Caspian hopped over one of the fallen motorcycles. “Tell Makarov to come around the back. We’ll follow them.”

“Done.”

Caspian approached from the other side. I ducked inside the broken door, stepping carefully over the glass so I didn’t make too much noise. Covering my back, the two of us cleared the entryway.

The front of the business was indeed a laundromat. Rows of washers and dryers covered the left and right walls, with a counter, and a register against the back wall.

Lights flickered. Blood splattered the walls. It looked like a bloodbath had happened in here. The South Americans must have come in guns blazing, a total ambush.

How many Russians had been here? Surely Makarov had enough people on-site to protect his investment?

“There,” Cas jerked his head to a door behind the register and to the right. It had been kicked open.

“Five minutes on the cops,” Ciel said.

“Let’s go.” Side by side, we approached the door. “I’ll go first and fan right. You follow and go left.”

“Got it.”

Caspian was competent. For a moment, I took a breath in relief that he knew what he was doing. We worked well together.

I stepped through the door, finger on the trigger. It was eerily quiet. Movement to my right had my head snapping in that direction. Instead of firing my gun, which would draw attention, I yanked my knife from its sheath and threw it. It sunk into a man’s chest. He looked down at it, confused, before dropping to his knees. Before he could scream, I punched him in the throat, collapsing his windpipe. He fell to the ground, gasping.

“Wynn!” Caspian shouted.

I looked up, and a man had a gun pointed directly at my face. Without thinking, I dove to the side as the bullet thunked into the ground right where I had been standing. Cas fired his gun, and the man dropped.

I stood, taking two heavy breaths. Yes, we worked well together. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he said as he stepped forward, gun raised. We pushed further into the back room. My boot almost slipped on a pool of blood. I looked down to see drag marks. Shit.

The lights still flickered, casting the room in alternating light and darkness, but tables lined the length of the room. A half-split kilo was cut open on one of the tables, its powder spilling to the floor. This was where the drugs were processed into smaller, sellable quantities. Overturned crates littered the floor, along with cling wrap and tape rolls.

The blood marks on the floor led to three dead Russians piled on top of one another in the corner, gunshot wounds to their chest and head.

“Damn,” Cas breathed.

A body jumped out from behind a piled of crates, tackling me to the ground. My body responded on instinct, using my training to grapple and jostle for position. I hooked a leg around the man’s body but hissed when the blade of a knife sliced across my side.

I shifted my hips, got control over the attacker’s body with my own, and used my leverage to flip us over. My knife was still in the other guy’s chest, where I had thrown it earlier, and I had dropped my gun when he tackled me. The attacker tried to swipe the blade at me again, but I closed my hand around his and squeezed. He dropped the knife. I caught it, drove it through his ribs, and up into his heart. He stopped fighting.

Caspian was locked in a fight with another one of them, the two men circling each other. Blood dripped from a cut on Cas’s lip, but he looked otherwise fine.

I yanked the knife free, stalked over to them, grabbed hold of the man’s shoulder, and slammed the knife between his shoulder blades. He dropped.

Quiet fell over the room. I sucked in a deep breath, trying to get my heart rate under control.

“You all right?” I asked, looking down at the two South Americans who had jumped us.

In the struggle, his shirt tore to reveal a giant expanse of tattoos across his chest. There was some lettering in Spanish. Muerte . A skull with a scorpion crawling through it, its tail raised high, and poking through the eye cavity. A few other filler pieces surrounded it.

A cartel tattoo.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Cas grunted. He rolled his shoulder and grimaced. His injuries were still healing, but he still held his own.

Police sirens sounded in the distance.

I stared down at the dead man’s tattoo. If Ciel knew the Alacrán Cartel, maybe he’d be able to use this. I quickly snapped a picture on my phone and texted it to him.

“You’re bleeding,” Cas said.

I looked down at my chest. Blood seeped through my shirt, but after inspection, the wound didn’t look that deep. I’d be fine.

“I’m all right,” I told him. Cas scoped out the rest of the room. Meanwhile, I retrieved my knife, and reloaded my guns. The back door wasn’t open, and it didn’t look like any others were hiding or had run. The place was trashed. “Ciel, ETA on the police?”

There couldn’t be many left.

“Almost there. They got caught up in some traffic. Pesky stop lights causing all sorts of havoc.” I held back a smile. Ciel was trying to buy us time. “You have to leave. Now.”

“The rest of this place is empty,” Cas announced, breathing heavily. A sheet of sweat covered his forehead. “Tons of drugs, but looks like the South Americans wrecked the equipment. If any left, they’ve already gotten out through the back door.”

“All right, let’s get back to the car,” I said. My chest throbbed, but I just needed some bandages.

We ran back the way we came, got in the SUV, and peeled out just when the cops were turning onto the street.

“I’ll wipe your traces from the other security cameras in the area,” Ciel said. “Looks like, for now, you can head back to the penthouse. Cops aren’t following you.”

Law enforcement would have more than enough to deal with inside that business.

“Where’s Makarov?”

“Got hung up,” Ciel responded. “Two of his other businesses got hit at the same time.”

I glanced at Cas and the way he favored his injured arm. “Does he need any more help?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t have eyes, but I know he’s at this location.” My phone dinged with the coordinates.

Cas raised an eyebrow. He might be in pain, but his eyes also shined. He enjoyed the fight. “We should check it out. Because of the alliance and all.”

I grinned. Neither of us wanted to sit at the penthouse to think about Leona’s marriage or the fact she was hundreds of miles away. A hunt with the Russians sounded much better.

“Heading there now.”