Page 26

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CIEL

I stared at the photo Wynn texted me.

I’d blown it up on my computer screen, examining every detail in painstaking 8K clarity.

The tattoo .

The scorpion. The skull.

It was them.

I’d barely allowed myself to believe it when Ryuji said the Alacrán Cartel had allied with Max and the Italians. The Alacrán were slippery fuckers, and they were rarely seen outside of Colombia—if they were seen at all.

Leona had noticed my discomfort during that meeting. She’d seen how I clammed up, but I couldn’t get the words to form. I couldn’t explain what it meant to me that they might be underneath my nose after all this time.

My fingers flew across my keyboard, calling up all the images I had of the Alacrán Cartel. Dozens of pictures loaded, fanning across all six of my computer monitors.

The tattoo belonged to seasoned members. The skull with the deadly scorpion was the distinct marker, but the lettering that read muerte was what really sealed the deal for me .

Death.

Unoriginal for a tattoo, but effective.

When members were initiated, they got the skull and scorpion. That was the easy part. Members only got the muerte lettering after they’d been raised to the higher ranks. After they’d killed enough people.

I chewed on my thumbnail while I swiveled in my chair, trying to get my brain to focus.

They were here.

The Alacrán Cartel was the most notorious cartel in Colombia. They’d started small in the south, planting thousands of hectares of coca bushes near the border of Ecuador, but they’d pushed their way north when I was a kid, right around the time my parents died.

The Alacrán takeover eventually eliminated the cartel I grew up with. They were the ones who shot me in the thigh and left me bleeding out in a ditch before Obi found me.

But that wasn’t even the reason I’d been on high alert since I heard they were in New York.

I’d suspected for years that their leader was the one who killed my parents.

Rafael Arboleda .

I’d never been able to prove it. I’d never even had a shred of evidence that proved the Alacrán Cartel was there the night they were murdered. The only real connection I had was that their aggressive expansion happened at the same time my parents had died. They’d since overtaken control of most coca cultivation across the country, with only a few competitors still surviving.

But ever since I was a boy, flashes of a memory had invaded my dreams—a scorpion crawling over a skull. Shortly after, a voice. A bone-chilling laugh, echoing over and over.

Ice trickled through my veins, not from fear but from the chilling desire for vengeance.

I pulled up my search programs, trying to locate any other information on the cartel besides the periodic images I’d captured over the years. I’d previously tried to track the cartel, but they were so good at flying under the radar that it was almost impossible to get data for longer than ten minutes at a time—if a member surfaced at all. They almost exclusively used cheap ass burner phones, and they stayed off the internet as much as possible. I’d even known them to use fucking carrier pigeons in Colombia. They’d structured all their business to run off the grid, which meant I struggled to get a lock on anything they did.

We had to stop the Alacrán for our alliance with the Russians. We had to take them out to take power away from Max.

But I had a vendetta to settle.

I needed answers.

I cross-referenced images of the men who’d attacked the Russians tonight with the images I had of the Alacrán members. While the computer ran to pick up similarities, another thought struck me.

Leona’s father purchased drugs from multiple organizations while also stealing from the Russians. Had he been involved with the Alacrán prior to Volpe’s alliance with them?

Pulling up what I’d saved from his old laptop, I scanned through the material and receipts. There. Shipments from Barranquilla and Cartagena. But many cartels operated out of those cities. It wasn’t a sure conclusion. He could have been buying cocaine from someone else.

I dug a little deeper, tracing the shipment Luciano purchased back to an obviously fake tourism company by the name of Esmeralda Travel Agency.

My eyes locked on their logo. Three emeralds backed by a golden sun.

I pulled up one of the pictures I had collected on the Alacrán, only to see the exact same logo emblazoned on a transport van in the background.

Shit .

This picture came from my hometown. It was an image a friend of mine had taken of the Alacrán transporting product from the south to the north for shipment.

This image and this receipt proved Luciano Vero had been buying cocaine from the Alacrán Cartel for years. That was their door into New York. Together, they must have stolen the drugs from the Russians. That was how Luciano had gotten away with it.

That was how they connected to Volpe now.

A pop-up window flashed across my screen. Recognition confirmed. Two images loaded, side by side, confirming that two more of the men who attacked the Russians last night matched members of the Alacrán.

They were definitely here.

But now I had to determine—were they the ones who killed my parents? Was Rafael Arboleda in the city?

If he was, I would find him.

This time, I wouldn’t be a scared little boy, hiding under the floorboards, and listening to my mother scream.

This time, I had the full power of the Shadows and our Russian alliance to finish this.

I was going to find the leader, and I was going to cut his throat the same way he cut my mother’s and father’s.

My phone vibrated with Wynn’s number. “You guys all set?” I answered.

“We’re about to head home,” he responded. “The rest of them are done.”

Cas, Wynn, and I had been helping Makarov chase the rest of their attackers through the city. They’d cornered them in the manufacturing district and eliminated them, but a few of the Russian men had been injured. They’d been doing cleanup and triage for Makarov in the time I had been working.

“Good. I’m collecting more data on the Alacrán. Hopefully, we can track them to a source so we can take them out once and for all.”

“Makarov is still livid,” Wynn said. “He’s been ranting in Russian all night.”

“I bet.” I chuckled. Tonight’s attacks had felt like they were poking around, trying to find Makarov’s weak spots, and wear him down. Like throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping it stuck.

But still, they knew the location of Makarov’s warehouses and they knew the timing of his most recent drug deliveries. It was too much of a coincidence to come to any other conclusion other than they had help.

They must be using Max’s hacker.

“I called because Makarov wants to know how to keep his information safe,” Wynn said. “He thinks he has a security breach.”

I leaned back in my chair and drug my hand down my face. “Tell him I’ll send him a full evaluation of his security systems with a list of recommendations. I don’t have the bandwidth to make the changes for him, but it’ll be a start.”

Wynn’s voice came out as he relayed my message to the Russian. “He says thanks, Ciel.”

Another thing I had to do, but it was necessary.

If we hadn’t helped him tonight, he would have lost a lot more than he did. And if we lost him as an ally, this war would be impossible to win.

“You’re heading back now?” It was now almost dawn, but there was no way I was sleeping for another few hours at least.

“Yeah, we’re hopping in the SUV now,” he replied just as the engine turned over. Cas mumbled something in the background.

“What did Cas say?”

“He said that was a good distraction.”

I huffed a laugh. That was true. We were all missing her. “He has a really good point.”

“I know.” He chuckled. “All right. We’ll be home soon.”

We hung up, and I typed up a quick update and sent the report off to Leona, Ryuji, and Obi. They needed to know whether the Alacrán were pushing boundaries, creating a turf war. If we wanted to make headway here, weaken Volpe’s position, we needed to help Makarov take them out.

I picked up my phone. Leona’s last message stared back at me. I read it over and over. She’d secured the arms deal. I smiled at my phone with pride.

I had no doubts. All she needed was a clear path, and she would dominate our world. No question in my mind.

I missed her like crazy, though. She’d come to my room before she left and woke me up to give me a goodbye kiss, which made me so incredibly happy I could barely make my voice work. She’d just smiled and told me to get enough sleep, or she’d be pissed when she got back.

We hadn’t heard anything else from them since her message about securing the deal with Kofler, but I could guess what they were up to.

Ryuji had practically oozed with horniness.

I had watched him pack that bag of his rope. Longing filled me. Curiously, it wasn’t jealousy. Nor was it the fear of missing out I’d had before our night in the library. This was anticipation. For her to return home. For all of us…

I sighed, rubbing my eyes. My contacts were dry as fuck. “Shit.”

Think about something else. Work. Get back to work.

I quickly switched to my glasses, sat back down, and started typing.