I didn’t know how long I sat there, staring at his corpse. It could have been minutes; it could have been hours. If the sirens in the distance were any indication, it was only moments.
“Ciel,” a soft voice said before gentle hands cupped my cheeks and pulled me away.
I blinked. Red hair and sparkling brown eyes filled my vision. “Leona?”
“You did it,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to my lips. “But we have to go, babe.”
The world came hurtling back. Cas stared down at the two of us. Ryu, Wynn, Obi, and Makarov were missing.
“Where are the guys?” I asked, letting her pull me to my feet. Blood drenched my clothes.
“Obi and Ryu are downstairs with Makarov, talking to some detectives who got here early,” she replied, folding her hand into mine. She was warm. She was grounding.
“We need to leave,” Cas said, picking up my knife and gun from the floor and tucking them into his pockets.
I blinked away the haze from my vision. We had to get out of here before this place was crawling with cops. I had to wipe footage.
“Let’s go,” Leona encouraged, tugging my hand. I squeezed back, walking side by side out of the apartment, not even bothering to cast a final glance at the dead man’s body.
I’d killed him.
Arboleda was dead.
But all I felt was numb.
Obi and Ryu met us at the bottom of the stairs and ushered us out the back entrance, saying something about me being drenched in blood and how that wouldn’t sit right with the cops out front, even if they were dirty.
“Where’s Zoya?” Ryu asked.
“In the van with Wynn,” Leona responded.
“Makarov is still with the detectives,” Obi said as we made it back to the van. Zoya waited in the back, seemingly unharmed, but her eyes widened as they took in my bloodstained clothes. “He said to meet him at his house to regroup.”
I wiped my hands on my shirt, sat at the computer desk, and immediately began typing commands.
The evidence of everything that happened in that apartment was gone by the time we pulled into Makarov’s estate.
37
LEONA
Ciel showered off the blood covering his body while the rest of us talked in Makarov’s main living room. When the guys called me up there to talk with him, he had been completely dazed. But ever since snapping back to reality, he’d seemed completely fine.
Except for the part where he hadn’t spoken a word.
I’d offered to go with him. Iwantedto, just to make sure he was fine. But he brushed his thumb over my cheek and shook his head. I sat down on the couch to watch Konstantin Makarov lay into his sister. Ryuji lounged beside me, devouring a plate of little Russian cookies. Obi stood behind Ryu while on his phone. Cas was on my other side, trying yet failing to nurse his knee. Wynn was in the kitchen with the rest of the Russian men, helping them tend to their wounds.
It was fine. Everything was fine.
“Everything isfine, Kostya,” Zoya Makarova said to her brother, who paced the room in front of us. See? Zoya knew was she was talking about. “Can you please calm down?”
“Calm down?” Makarov whirled. “Volpe has gone after my businesses, my family. I’ve already taken over a half-a-million dollar hit just in the last two weeks from lost product and extrainjury pay to my men. I just paid more in hush money than your entire year’s allowance.”
“And how exactly is that my fault?” Zoya countered, standing from the couch.
“It’s your fault because you refused to livehere, where you’re safe.” Konstantin dragged his hand down his face, exasperated. His blond curls, the same shade as hers, were skewed in all directions. “What the fuck were you thinking, Zoya? If the Shadows hadn’t been paying attention, you would be dead!”
We had followed Makarov back to his house so we could debrief and strategize the next steps now that the Alacrán Cartel was hopefully eliminated in New York.Cut the head off the snake and the body dies, as the saying went. Whoever was left would have to return to Colombia, and Obi believed there’d be some sort of internal power struggle that would keep them busy, if they didn’t completely collapse. There were still tainted drugs we needed to clean up before more civilians got hurt, but the Alacrán Cartel was done. Max’s alliance with them was over. They’d no longer be a thorn in our sides.
