Page 100 of Only Fools Rush

Well, if Felix didn’t work out, we’d just kill him.

“Send over the financials from the last year so we can review the details. I want no drop in business, Felix. If I see any weakness, you will end up like him.” I pointed the edge of the knife at Kofler’s lifeless body. “But know that trust will gain reward. If you do your job, you’ll be richer, and more powerful, than your wildest dreams. Do you believe that?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Welcome to the team, Felix.” I stood. “What about the rest of these guys?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can they be trusted? Or should we kill them?”

The others struggled, shouting into their gags. Felix blinked. His eyes traveled over each one. “Can you cut my restraints?”

I moved to do it with my knife, but Ryu put his hand on my shoulder to pull me back, away from him, before he let Felix free.

Felix stood, rubbing his wrists. He pointed at the rest, one by one. “Kill him. Kill him. But keep him alive. He’ll work with me.”

I nodded at Ryuji, and he slit their throats in quick succession before setting the last one free.

“All right, Felix.” I took in the mess of the basement. So much blood. So much death. I was no longer surprised to realize it didn’t bother me. I meant what I said to Obi. I belonged in the shadows with them. I always had. “Let’s start with cleaning this up.”

30

CIEL

There was too much to do and too little time.

The Alacrán Cartel still flooded into the city, testing boundaries with the Russians before retreating. They’d hit two more of Makarov’s business fronts, but then they’d disappeared from the cameras—exactly like Volpe did. Italian men had also hit him twice, so I knew that Volpe was still giving orders from somewhere.

The more Volpe’s hacker helped the Alacrán, the harder it was for me to find them, and I was getting so fucking tired of it.

The only good news was that Rafael Arboleda was in the city.

I’d gotten a snapshot of his face for half a second on a bridge camera and practically whooped with cheer.It was him.

I was so close to answers. I needed to know whether he was involved in my parents’ murders. It had kept me up late every night as I had combed through all the data I’d previously saved and anything I could remember from my childhood in Colombia. But so far, I’d had nothing new, nothing concrete, that could give me an idea of who he was or what he was doing.

IwishedI could talk to my foster father about this. After my mother taught me the basics, he had taken over, and taught me everything else I knew about hacking. He might have been ableto help me see whatever I was missing. But he’d been dead for years, and his son was nowhere to be found. After cutting ties with me when his father died, he’d disappeared.

Not that I really cared to look.

If I found Arboleda—killed him—I could finally put my parents to rest. I could, once and for all, prove to myself that I wasgoodat my job. That I deserved a place among the Shadows.

With Leona.

Even so, I’d not gotten any other images of Arboleda through any other security cameras across the city. I still had no idea where the Alacrán were coming from, or where they were going.

And it was driving me fucking crazy.

I’d sent the Alacrán leader’s bridge cam picture to Makarov, in case the Russians caught a whiff of him anywhere, but right now we were playing a waiting game until he showed or one of us got hit elsewhere.

I had all my programs running. I had wired another server and added more processing power to my system to help with combing through the data. Hopefully, that would be enough. I needed to get ahead of Volpe and his hacker. If we were going to succeed at this, I could not let them beat me.

In the meantime, Wynn and Caspian were still waiting to hear back from Giulio. I’d sent the message to our underground communication channels, but I’d not heard any chatter in response. If we couldn’t get more people on our side, there was no way we could keep up with the Italians and the Alacrán.

On top of that, Leona had texted me that Chiara sent her a random date and time.

Staring at it on my computer had done nothing to give me any idea what it could mean.