Page 20 of Fall Before Her Throne

Ciel sat forward and cleared his throat. “What do we n—need to get the upper hand ourselves?”

“For starters, we need information.” My eyes flicked to Volpe. If he wanted to live, he’d give me his knowledge. Without it, we were fighting a losing fight from the start. “Greco’s last known whereabouts were at Volpe’s estate. We need to know what he’s doing, who he’s speaking to, and how he operates.”

“I can work on that,” Ciel offered. “I’ll find him.”

“I can help,” Wynn added. “If he’s at Max’s house, I can stake it out and follow him. I can try to get close enough to take him out.”

My lips pursed. “Watch and learn first. We don’t hit him until we’re ready.”

Information was the start. There was too much at stake to make mistakes by attacking Greco directly before we had the power to take him down.

“What will he do next?” Leona asked. “Do you have any guesses?”

“In Italy,” I began as I paced around the room, “the Camorra’s power comes from two main pillars. They’re untouchable because of their unlimited monetary resources. They also have all the important public officials bought and paid for, so there are rarely repercussions for their actions. My guess is that they’ll try to take control of the mafia’s economy—drug sales, money laundering, protection schemes, gun smuggling—in order to secure their financial power. They want the money to flow through them. They’ll try to buy the social elite so they can act without interference. Law enforcement, politicians, anyone who could oppose them through legal channels. If they control the law, they hold the power.”

“Money and power,” Leona said.

“Correct.”

“But this is why you did all those favors,” Ciel pointed out. “To have people in your pocket when the time came. That’s why we took the clients we took.”

“Yes,” I answered. “We have resources we can use. However, we don’t have as strong a hold across New York—or the world—as I had hoped for. We’ll just have to use what we have.”

We only had so many pieces on our board. They had to be enough. Once I took the Camorra down, once we’d eliminated them…then I would hold the power and safety I needed to keep my family safe.

“They came too fucking early,” Caspian griped. “We could have prepared better.”

“We should have just given them Arion Vokshi,” Wynn said.

“Too bad Max ruined that plan,” Ryuji sneered, flipping his knife over and over.

Leona stole a glance at Volpe. He stared at his clasped hands, but a tilt of his head showed his eyes snapping to hers for just a breath before he looked away. What was that look?

“So we tell our men to fight?” Caspian asked. “We can’t let the Camorra take over our territory; that’s where our money and power comes from⁠—”

“Max killed Arion Vokshi because he threatened and insulted me,” Leona interrupted.

Everyone went silent.

I braced my hands on the back of the couch. “Explain.”

She interlocked her fingers with Caspian, swallowing while she leaned against his shoulder. She again looked to Volpe, but he said nothing. My grip on the couch tightened.

“Vokshi said…disgusting things.” Her eyes went distant while her voice went low. “He saw my pictures. He was talking about how he jerked off to them, how all the Vokshi men had. Max shot him after that.”

My fingers dug into the fabric of the furniture while rage coiled in my chest, pushing against my ribs like magma trying to escape a volcano.

“Is that true?” Caspian asked Max. “You said it was unavoidable.”

Volpe’s mask slipped back into place. He shrugged, but said nothing.

“Speak, Volpe,” I commanded, voice corded with anger. “What happened with Vokshi?”

“Fine,” he said with a gust of breath. “What Leona said is the truth. It was necessary, and I’d kill him a thousand times over and again before I gave up that bastard to the Camorra. His death by my hand was the best decision I’d made in fucking years. What he said, the look in his eyes—” His voice cut off as he dropped his head and rubbed his eyes. “Would any of you have done something different?”

Ryuji and I exchanged a look first, and the same rage I felt simmered behind his eyes. Wynn and Ciel shared a similar glance full of emotion. Caspian put an arm around Leona while I stared back at Volpe unflinchingly.

“Would you?” Volpe demanded of each of us. His eyes burned, rimmed in red. “Now it’s your turn to tell the fucking truth. If you heard him insult her, degrade her, speak about her body that way, would you not have killed him where he stood?”