Page 57 of Blood in the Water
I shook my head. “Teaching you how to defend yourself can be a personal agreement between us.” If my brothers reject the payment of her pendant, I could at least do this. Teach her in between contracts. It would give me an excuse to see her, and she’d benefit from it. Win-win.
Plus, if she knew how to handle weapons, shecouldhelp me with more efforts to take down traffickers in the future. Win-win-win.
“Oh my God,” she whispered as a huge smile broke over her face. Her smile made my heart soar. Why hadn’t Caspian already offered? If he hadn’t yet thought of it, he was an idiot, especially after seeing how damn happy it made her. He was missing out on an opportunity for this smile. “Yes. Yes, please.”
The corner of my mouth pulled up. “Done. When would you like to start?”
“Oh, um, whenever you’re available? I don’t have much else to do besides hide out here.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I stepped back from Leona to look at the screen quickly. Ciel.
“One moment. We’ll discuss schedule in a minute,” I said before excusing myself into the other room. I held the phone to my ear. “I was getting worried, Ciel.”
I could hear strange noises coming from the other side of the receiver. “Wynn—” his voice sounded strange. Slurred? “Think I need help!” The intonation at the end went up high like he was shouting a question.
My blood instantly went cold, and my body went rigid. Ciel hated talking on the phone, and he never, ever sounded likethat. “What’s wrong? Where are you? Why do you sound like that?”
“Drugs—” a cough, then a crash in the background. Ciel grunted. “Fire. I got fuckingstuck. Jeeeesus Christ, so stuuuupid.” A chortle echoed through the phone like he had moved it away from his face.
He was stuck in a fire, high on drugs? What the hell had happened?
“Ciel?” I stomped back to the kitchen, making eye contact with Leona and jerking my head toward the door. “Where are you?”
A silent pause, then a hugethunk. My phone pinged in my ear. “Sent you coordinates! Technology is cool.”
“If there’s a fire, get out of there, you idiot. I’ll be there soon, Ciel—” I covered the receiver with my hand to face Leona. “I have to go.”
Another crash and a gruntedfuckcame through the phone before it went dead.
“Damn it.” Adrenaline filtered through my veins. It calmed my body, just like I had been trained to do. “Are you going to be alright?”
Ciel was the calmest and most careful of our group. Whatever had happened to get him trapped in that situation had to have been bad.
But leaving to help Ciel also meant leaving Leona here, without Caspian, by herself. That thought had a shock of cold dread settling in the pit of my stomach.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, following me to the door. Ihatedleaving. This was the first time I felt so pulled in two directions.
I looked at her one last time, one hand on the doorknob, when the tiny words escaped so quietly I could barely hear them. “Can I come with you?”
I froze, the instantyestrapped on my lips.
If Ciel was in trouble, I could also be bringing her into trouble.
But if I left her here,shecould be at risk. Especially if that car I saw around the neighborhood earlierwasa red flag.
“Yes.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her with me.
It was probably a stupid decision. I knew that Obi would be livid if this went south. The likelihood of Leona getting in the way, or at the very least being a huge distraction, was extremely high. Everything about my training screamed at me to say no. She was a liability. The Shadows worked with each other, and that was it. Ciel needed my focus.
All the reasons forleave her behinddidn’t change anything. Already, I was planning how to justify the decision.
It would be easier to keep her safe if she was with me. Caspian would be pissed if he thought I’d left her here alone. I would never be able to live with myself if something happened and I wasn’t here.
As she climbed on the motorcycle behind me, hands slipping around my waist, I realized there was no reality where I would have made a different decision.
21
LEONA
