He exhaled a long breath. “I was just a kid. We lived on the edge of the cartel compound. Since my mother wasn’t Colombian, and I had a speech disorder, our family was often ostracized, so we felt most comfortable on the outside. It wasthe middle of the night when men broke into our home. I was sleeping in my parent’s bed. We heard glass break, and they pushed me inside the hole in the floorboards underneath their bed.” He paused, throat bobbing. I grabbed his hand and rubbed my thumb across the back of it. “I listened as my father was overpowered. My parents begged for their lives, my mother screaming at me in French to stay put, before their throats were cut.”
“Holy shit, Ciel,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t come out from under the bed until morning and by then, they were long gone.” He slowed down, like he needed to consider each word before he spoke. “They had hit our house and another house before our cartel chased them off. Our leader never told me who attacked us, and by the time I was old enough to look, he was dead, and the trail was cold. I’m not even sure ifheknew who attacked us.”
“But you still think it was the Alacrán?”
“It was the only opposing cartel at the same time. They’re aggressive, pushing north over the span of the last fifteen years. Arboleda is known to be incredibly cruel, and he frequently targets women. When I heard the stories of what he does to his victims, it lined up almost perfectly with what happened to my parents. I just don’t have proof.”
“I hope we find him and do the same fucking thing to him, then,” I said, cupping his cheek. Ciel deserved the truth. He deserved peace. I’d already promised him I would do everything I could to help him get it. “Can we use your facial recognition software with that image you have?”
He shook his head. “This image isn’t the best, so I don’t have a lot of markers to work with. I’d also guess he’s doing something to beat the software, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got two main suspicions right now. One, Volpe’s hacker is covering his tracks. Two, he’s taking physical preventive measures, like hats, glasses, or even makeup.”
“Hmm.”
Max allied with the Alacrán to stand against my connection with the Russians. Their focus was drugs; the Russian focus was drugs. So far, they’d been targeting the Russian drug business.
Was Max in charge, telling them what to do? Or had he released them on the city, with only a directive to cause chaos and wear us down?
Regardless of what Max was doing or not, my gut said if we followed the drugs, we’d be able to locate them and take them out. But obviously, it wasn’t that easy, or Ciel would have done it already.
“If we find him, do you think we can tie him back to your parents?”
Ciel exhaled heavily. “I don’t know. I just have a gut feeling.”
Ciel was brilliant. I trusted his gut.
We needed to find this guy, not just for our war against Max. But for Ciel.
“All right,” I said as I stood from his lap. “Catch me up on everything and let me help. Tell me what to do.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You ready to help?”
I nodded, a smile pulling up one corner of my mouth. “I’m your tech trainee. Put me to work.”
Ciel’s deskwas covered in papers to the point I couldn’t see the wood anymore.
After diving through everything, we’d printed images of every cartel member we could, along with maps of the city. Anypiece of data we had—sightings, run-ins with the Russians, and more—we were marking it down on the maps.
Ciel stood next to me, arms crossed over his chest.
I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. His hair was extra fluffy, curling at the back of his neck. My head barely came to the top of his shoulders. He stared at the papers with a crease between his eyebrows and oh,how I wanted to reach over to smooth it.
He needed answers.
It was apparent in the way he poured over this problem without rest. I’d barely gotten him to agree to a snack break, but he was instantly right back at it.
The death of his parents had burdened him since he was a boy. If answers were hiding in the papers in front of us, we’d find them.
I promised him peace and closure. I would stop at nothing until he got it.
Gazing at all the maps we’d printed, something caught my eye. An idea formed.
I picked up a pen and circled a cluster of piers on the Hudson, near Hell’s Kitchen. “What if they’re hiding somewhere around here?”
