Page 58 of Through Any Fire (Any x #1)

“ L eon?”

Leon practically rips my arm from its socket as he drags me through the crowd, his other arm keeping the gun pressed steadily against my side.

He’s wearing a dark sweatshirt with the hood up, but I know it’s him.

He tugs me up the stairs, and I nearly trip at the pace he sets, but I can’t care. Where is Mason?

“Leon, where are we going?”

“Shut up,” he growls, jabbing the gun harder into my side. Entering the main gym, he pulls me to the back, where an emergency exit is propped open. The chilly evening air rushes against my heated skin.

I shiver, goosebumps breaking over my skin. “Leon, what are you doing?”

“I said shut up! ”

Before I can block the attack, the back of his hand strikes my cheek. My head twists with the force of his blow, and I cradle my face. Heat scorches my cheek, and I’m positive it’s already red and welting.

“What the fuck?” My words wobble out of me in disbelief. The events of the past few months swirl in my brain, and I slot the puzzle pieces together. Hell, even last night, Mason said Leon was the one who put him up to the mission. But why?

Leon’s eyes are frantic as he drags me down the alley, auburn hair oily and shadows darkening under his eyes. His once full cheeks are hollow, and his pulse visibly thrums in his neck. He levels the gun at me.

The realization tumbles out of me. “You’re Peter’s partner?”

Leon laughs, and it’s so unlike the boy I used to know.

He’s younger than Mason by a few months, but something has aged him terribly.

Acid burns in my throat at the cruelty sparking in his eyes.

This man sent my baby brother to a certain death and killed Nathaniel, Andy, and so many more.

He got Alice abducted and raped. A red haze settles over me, and I plant my feet against the concrete.

“How did you know where I was?”

Leon bares his teeth in what I think is supposed to be a smile.

“Oh, Loren. You should’ve been more careful with how much detail you put in your planner.

It was all too easy to know when and where you’d be.

Plus, I had some help. Tonight, however, I knew you couldn’t resist the infamous fight night once you learned of it. ”

My stomach twists. “I guess I should’ve given Peter some more credit.”

Leon laughs incredulously. “Fuckin’ Pete?

He had his uses, but he was an idiot. A hotheaded idiot, but a fucking idiot.

” Something dark flashes behind his shadowed eyes.

“I told him we had to stop with those fucking fires.” He’s becoming distracted, his anger tangible.

“But no, he wanted to keep setting them. And I had to clean up his shit. I even left a note threatening Mason to make that fucking Keane strike first and ask questions later.” Leon grumbles, as if his threats against my brother were nothing more than a pesky letter from an unwanted suitor.

Fuck. Was Leon the one slitting their throats and killing the guards?

The thought sickens me, having known him since he was born, but I return to his earlier confession. He had more than one partner? Who is the second? As much as it plagues me, I shake it off; it doesn’t matter right now.

“Where is my brother?” My voice is steady, but fear still strikes through me.

Leon smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He extends an arm, and my eyes follow, mouth parting in horror. Mason lays on his side, trussed up in a hog tie. A startled gasps chokes me, and I rush toward him.

Leon blocks me. His face is gaunt but deadly, and I take a shaky step backward. The night chills my exposed skin, and I can’t help the shiver that grips me. Leon wets his bottom lip, and a memory surges to the front of my mind.

“Cal, I can’t.” I giggle into the phone. Butterflies spark in my belly as Cal’s laugh filters through the phone.

His dark chuckle does something to me, and I almost give in.

“Come on, Loren. Who am I gonna tell?”

He makes a good point, but it kind of defeats the point of telling him who my crush is when he’s my crush. A forbidden coil tightens around my chest, and I decide to deflect.

“How do you even know if I have a crush?”

“Because like it or not, I know you, Loren Catrone.”

The way he says my name has me floating on a cloud. Still, I’m not brave enough to say it out loud. Just daring to think it while living in the Bianchi estate is practically treason .

“So, who do you think my crush is, then?”

Cal pretends to think, humming into the phone. “Well, I think we might have something in common.”

“Oh, yeah?”

My eyes glance to my door, and I notice it’s open more than I’d thought. Leon stares at me from the crack, an unreadable expression contorting his round face. He didn’t hear me, right? No, there’s no way he knows who I’m talking to.

I cross to the door and stick my tongue out. Leon skitters away.

I shut the door. “And what do we have in common?”

The memory dissipates like smoke. Leon definitely heard, and who knows how long he spied on me?

Was Leon…jealous? Did he have feelings for me?

Was this all some sort of sick and twisted revenge plot because I didn’t return them?

He’s way too young for me to have even looked at twice, especially when I was sixteen. Leon would’ve barely been ten.

The questions swirl inside me, and my stomach clenches. Leon circles me, his footsteps crunching over the gravel. I flinch. Mason is unconscious, but how? There’s a red welt on his temple.

Leon pauses behind me, his gun trailing over my back. “It should’ve been me.”

“Leon, you know I care about you, but I’ve never seen you more than a friend. A brother, even.” Somehow, my words are steady as they tumble out, and Leon comes to a halt directly in front of me. The familiar scent of gin washes over me with each breath. It smells like my mother.

Shit, he’s drunk.

Strain cords his neck, his face flushed.

He scoffs. “I gave up on you when you chose to run back in that burning warehouse for Keane. Before then, I’d even packed your apartment to move you back into the house.

That’s how much I loved you.” His left eye twitches.

“When your little friend showed up, all she could do was lie and say that you’d never love me. I showed her just how wrong she was.”

His manic smile is gruesome, and he taps the barrel of the gun against my chest. “Pete tried to scare you away with those bombs.” Something humorous sparkles behind his dilated pupils.

“And even when he got the wrong car at the publishing house, he even chased after you all the way to the highway, shooting at you. All to show you just how dangerous Keane and his life was. Don’t you see?

I could’ve protected you from that. That would’ve never had to happen if you were with me.

You would’ve been safe with me . But you didn’t care.

No, you had to run into a burning building for him,” he growls, spittle flying as he hisses in fury.

For a split second, his attention slips from me, some invisible memory playing out before his eyes, and I make my move.

I dart toward him, hands ready to wrest the gun away, but he snaps back to attention, swinging the barrel at my head. The metal is icy against my forehead, and a cool calm settles over me, dampening my fear in a way I’ve never experienced before. I suck in a deep breath.

“You won’t shoot me.” My tone is incredulous, and Leon’s eyes widen infinitesimally. “Leon, I’ve known you since you were in diapers. You can’t shoot me.”

Leon sputters incredulously. Then he hardens, jaw clenching once again. “Loren, this had nothing to do with you until you chose to throw yourself into the middle of it.”

“You had to have known I was going to come after my brother. You think I’d just let him disappear? ”

The gun wavers, but I press it tighter against my forehead, calling his bluff. Or rather, what I’m fucking praying is a bluff. Leon scoffs, ripping the gun away, only to press it against my chest.

“Your brother?” He laughs, an unsettling noise that echoes against the empty alleyway. “Try our brother. I sent him to Keane, hoping he’d get snatched up. It would’ve been the perfect excuse to start a war.”

His words jumble around my brain, but I’m stuck on the fact that he said our brother. My brows furrow, trying to understand the implications, but it’s too much. That would mean…

“Your whore of a mother had an affair with my father, then passed off the pregnancy like it was Francis’s.

She did everything she could to escape, even if that meant finding the bottom of every bottle in the house.

I only found out a few months back when I found a letter from your mother in his desk, begging my father to not tell Francis.

Pete was already working on getting into the States, and now I had to get rid of two brothers instead of just one.

” He swears, as if killing two brothers—one of them mine—was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

The dots connect with rapid fire. The gin, the guilt, Leon’s deceitful ploys. Suddenly it makes sense. Why my mother couldn’t be bothered with raising us once Mason was born. Why their marriage drifted apart.

“Mason was born seven months before me, which makes him…” Leon trails off as he waits for me to put the pieces together.

Holy shit. Mason is technically the second son, then. With Elias in a coma and no guarantee he’ll wake up, Mason stands to inherit the entire Bianchi enterprise. My jaw falls to the floor as the information implodes in my brain.

“What the fuck? ”

Leon laughs cruelly. “Now do you get it? He has to die. This time, I won’t miss.”

Cal’s retelling of that night at the port flashes in my memory.

“Leon really didn’t know when to shut the fuck up,” he growls. His fingers trail circles over my body, goosebumps chasing after his touch.

I lean my head on his chest and nuzzle into his warmth. Cal was alive, relatively unharmed, and Alice was back safe. Not so sound, but safe, at least.

“Then what happened?”

My head bounces on Cal’s chest when he scoffs.

“Someone on the Bianchi side started shooting. It all happened so fast, and we dove for cover. By the time we got a few shots fired off, Elias was bleeding out on the ground, and the rest of their men fell back. I didn’t like the guy, but he was better than his father.

We dragged him to the car, and Matthias dumped him on the hospital’s front steps as Cohen brought Alice inside. ”

His own brother didn’t even try to save him?

Cal’s fingers trail lower, gathering the heat between my legs and swirling against my clit. Any thoughts of another man drift away as he works me higher and higher, whispering the filthiest praise against the shell of my ear.

“You tried to kill your own brother?” The implication is dangerous. That would mean Leon is much more dangerous than I’d thought. He’s not misguided—he’s homicidal. Suddenly, my previous bravado washes away.

Leon freezes, turning to face me with a sickening barbarism flashing in his bloodshot eyes.

I try to swallow over the knot thickening my throat.

Leon takes a solitary step forward, and I retreat backward a step.

Like a macabre dance, he steers me like cattle until my back presses against the concrete exterior of Strikers .

“As soon as I’m done here, I’ll make sure his coma is permanent.”

I tremble against the icy concrete, frozen with dread, as he presses the gun against my temple once again. This time, fear seizes my breath.

“You could’ve been my bride, Loren. Too bad you bet on the wrong man.”