Page 17 of Only Fools Rush

OBI

Ciel looked terrible. His eyes were sunken and red-rimmed. His leg bounced uncontrollably as we all sat in the living room. Both he and Leona looked like they were about to burst out of their skins.

I took a deep, steadying breath. In this moment, we needed leadership.

The club explosion was a complete failure. Not only due to Leona’s temper but also due to my own errors. I let my emotion cloud my judgment, change my focus away from the danger at hand, and Volpe had almost succeeded.

No more.

I was the leader of the Shadows. I needed to remain in control—of myself and of us—for our partnership to succeed.

I rested my elbows on my knees. “Ciel, where have you found Volpe?”

He exhaled a heavy breath, looking at Leona. “You’re not going to like this, but he’s with the Tommasos.”

Don Vincenzo Tommaso. The only other Italian Family that could rival the Vero Family. The Veros and the Tommasos had been jostling control of the Five Families back and forth for over a generation.

She jerked back in surprise, glancing to Caspian. “Don Vincenzo? Why?”

Why, indeed. My conversation with Leona the other night—about her father having help in high places in order to have been trafficking and stealing drugs for so long—flashed through my mind. Her eyes slid my way, and I knew she had the same thought.

“I don’t remember Max being particularly close to Vincenzo,” Caspian responded, frowning. “But we do know that the other Dons approved the coup. Maybe they knew what Luciano was doing, too.”

I did believe they knew what he was doing, but it seemed unlikely that none of them were also involved. What Luciano was doing was far too lucrative for them to turn away.

“But he could have gone anywhere,” Leona said, confusion etched on her face. “Back to the casinos, to his own house, tomine. Hell, he could have stayed underground forever, especially now that he knows we’ve teamed up against him. But why’d he go to Don Vincenzo?”

Leona had said that Tommaso and her father were close. When I’d snuck into her birthday party, I’d seen her dancing and celebrating with Tommaso’s daughter, Chiara. Leona had spoken about how the two of them were best friends on more than one occasion.

There was something deeper going on here. We had to find out what before Volpe got the upper hand. Prior to the club explosion, I had believed us to be on even playing fields. But now, we were fighting an uphill battle—one that I did not intend to lose.

“Ciel, what exactly did you see?” I asked. We could postulate forever, but we needed information, and a plan. “Do we have footage? Access to the security? What are we working with?”

Ciel glanced at Leona. “I took your advice, and I looked where he might eventually show up. I cross-referenced it with all the other data I could find from our previous camera feeds and GPS tracking. There was increased movement within Tommaso territory. It was a hunch that he might have run to some of the other Heads, so I tapped into their security feeds. The software pinged him immediately.”

“You have a lock on him? Right now, you can see him there?” she asked, excitement lifting the tenor of her voice.

He shook his headnobefore he looked at the rest of us. His jaw clenched before he looked down. “There’s more. Someon—Someone is covering Volpe’s trail.”

“What do you mean?” Wynn asked, leaning forward.

“The reason it took so long to find him was because someone wiped all the feeds within a significant radius of the club. Completely inaccessible, even to me.” Ciel sank deeper into the couch cushions, his leg bouncing faster. “As soon as I got into Tommaso’s system, someone kicked me out. It’s clear Volpe has a hacker on his side—and they’regood,too. The feed I connected to went dark, and then Tommaso’s entire system went down. I’m locked out. If we could get a phone or something inside the compound, I might be able to bust my way through, but—” He swallowed, his throat working. After a moment, he shrugged. “I stopped for now.”

“Well, fuck,” Ryuji said from his place next to me. He spun his phone around in his lap. “Never thought someone could be better than Ciel.”

Ciel’s eyes went hard, his fingers clenching into the fabric of his jeans. “Nobody is fucking better than me. Two steps ahead, maybe, but not better.”

Ryuji opened his mouth to retort, but I raised a hand. “Ryu, that’s enough.” Ciel was a skilled and valued member of our team—everyone knew that, including Ryu. I looked back atLeona and Caspian. “Do you have any idea who could be working with Volpe?”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “I don’t know anyone from my father’s organization that might be able to stand up to Ciel. Most of the men I knew were agingcaposwho could barely operate their smartphones, let alone be prepared to hack into city security feeds faster than Ciel could and then shut him down.”

Caspian rubbed his chin. “I can’t think of anyone, even in the younger generation of up-and-coming guys, that could be that good. But Max spent a fair amount of time in Italy over the last two years. I stayed back to protect Leona. Maybe he found someone there.”

Hmm. Volpe may have brought in someone from outside.

In my younger years, after I’d left Nigeria, I’d gone to the mafia in Italy. I had even lived in Campania while I trained there. I clasped my hands together. “I might be able to find out. I have some contacts with the Camorra. If one of their people is helping Volpe, they would know.”

Leona’s eyes widened. “You know the Camorra?”