Max’s knife disappearing inside my father’s gut, his blood pouring down his starched white shirt.
The look in his eyes—terrified, confused—as he saw me watching.
The sound of the gun as the shot tore through my father’s head. The crumble of his body and the heavythunkit made as he slammed to the ground, lifeless.
I blinked, trying to catch my breath, as my vision darkened on the edges. I paused to wipe the sweat from my palms, so I didn’t drop my gun.
“Leona—” Ciel’s voice sliced through the memories. “—take a breath.”
I glanced up at the camera in the top left corner of the room like I could feel his ice-blue eyes locked on me. Slowly, I inhaled and exhaled. Once. Twice. Three times.
“Good girl. You okay?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed. Just re-triggering all my trauma, no big deal.
One breath at a time.
“We’re almost at the van,” Wynn said through the communication lines, a slight grunt to his voice. “We’re going to drop him off and come straight back.”
“This better be fucking worth it,” Ryuji grumbled.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, feeling a little more grounded with all three of their voices in my head.Don’t look at the blood stains, Leona.
Triggering memories aside, boxes and papers wereeverywhere. On the desk. On the floor. On the bookshelves. This was nowhere near what it looked like the night of my birthday. My father was never organized, but he wasn’t…this.
“It looks like Max has already gone through most of these files,” I murmured as I opened the nearest box and started rifling through it. Whatever was important to my father would have been kept in these papers, where he thought they were the most secure. Thishadto be where I’d find answers.
“What do you see?” Ciel asked in my ear.
I frowned, lifting a commercial invoice for a port in New York. My eyes scanned the paper. “Um. This is a shipping list? This document confirms this port received the goods. I don’t understand.”
“What’s it say?”
“It lists a ton of different random items. Baby powder, flour, skittles, fire, shoes, erasers, bananas.” I shook my head, trying to make sense of the random items and how they might be connected to my father’s work. “Know what it means?”
“Those are street names for drugs and some common names for additives. What’s the name of the port?” The keyboard clicked in the background.
“Port Elizabeth.” My father dealt in drugs, as did the other four Italian families. Not entirely surprising.
“Does it have a date? Or the name of the shipping company?”
“March 5th. Velko Shipping & Logistics.”
Click, click, click.“That’s a Russian company. Connection to the Makarovs.”
Ryuji swore in the earpiece.
“Russians? Why does my father have a shipping manifest on Russian drugs?” I picked up a few more papers only to see similar invoices, all the paperwork pointing to one of the shell companies I’d heard my father’scaposmention. Ciel had found Italians stealing drugs from the Russians before. Was this connected?
“We already know Max was stealing from the Russians. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“But March 5th… That’s two months before he killed my father.”
“What are you thinking?”
“This paper is from before my father died, and it’sinmy father’s files,” I murmured, eyes roving over this paper and three others just like it from the last few months. “Do you think he knew what Max was doing and caught him?”
“And that’s why Max killed him?”
