I exhaled, tightening my grip. “Thanks, Obi.”
Obi had lost his parents, too. When he found me dying in a ditch after my cartel had finally been wiped out by the Alacrán, the gunshot on my thigh bleeding out, he had promised me then that he’d help me.
He had. And here I was today. Finally facing the cartel that’d blown my life to pieces in more ways than one.
“Do you know who I am?” I shouted in Spanish. “Answer me!”
“Makarov, are there any windows in that room?” Obi asked.
Konstantin nodded. “Just one. My men are on the other side waiting.”
Glass shattered.
I didn’t wait any longer. Heart pounding, I kicked open the door.
“Arboleda!” I shouted, just as he tried to climb through the broken window.
I shot the back of his thigh, and he collapsed onto the jagged glass, stabbing through his other leg. Blood gushed down the wall as he painstakingly fell back inside. He whipped a hand out,firing his gun at us. The bullet narrowly avoided past my cheek before thudding into the wall behind us.
He didn’t have time to aim again before I kicked the gun from his grip. It slid across the room.
“Arboleda,” I hissed. He groaned as he tried to staunch the blood flowing from of his leg. The glass must have nicked an artery.
If I wasn’t already sure, I’d be certain it was him from his voice as he shouted curses in Spanish.
The sound echoed inside my head like a metal ball in a pinball machine.
“All yours, Ciel,” Ryu said from behind me, but his words barely registered.
I couldn’t help but stare at the blood pouring from his body.
I had been lucky that my foster father had taken me in. But how many children had died alone, without anyone to care for them, because of him?
I knew I wasn’t a good person. I never tried to be, not like Wynn. But the man bleeding out in front of me was despicable.
“Why did you agree to work with the Italians?”I asked in Spanish. The man’s eyes were wild, and his face was ghostly pale. He blinked up at me, as if trying to place how he knew me or why I was asking.“Answer me!”
“We’ve always worked with the Italians,”he hissed, his teeth stained red.
Luciano had been paying them for years. We’d confirmed that in the account numbers. But I still felt like we were missing something.
“Volpe was going to give you the Eastern Seaboard?”
Arboleda’s head rolled back, and I kicked his leg. He groaned.“Not Volpe. La Camorra.”
I frowned. The Camorra?
“End it, Ciel,” Obi said. “He doesn’t have long.”
Blood gurgled from his mouth. Ineededthis. Vengeance for the little boy who sat in his parents’ blood for hours until daylight broke. I kneeled over Arboleda, digging my knee into his neck. I pulled a knife from the sheath on my thigh.
“Para mis padres.” I dragged my blade across his jugular. He jerked and struggled against my weight, but the life drained from his eyes as his blood gushed over my pant leg and dripped to the ground.
It was finally over.
A weight seemed to dissolve from my shoulders as I stared down at his body. Years of work finally completed.
I won. I did it.
