Page 101 of Fall Before Her Throne

Her voice went low while she squeezed her legs together and stared at the floor. “What if he doesn’t tell me?”

“I will.”

Both our heads snapped to the door. Max peeked inside.

“Max,” she said as she straightened.

“Can I come in?”

I gave her an up to you look, and she turned back to him to nod tightly.

He shut the door behind him. “I have a lot to tell you, and I want you both to listen. If that’s okay.”

Her hand found mine, and she curled our fingers together. “Okay,” she said.

“One second,” I said as I dashed back to the bathroom to turn off the shower. This felt like it would take a while. I sat next to her on the bed, adjusting both of us so we could face him. “Okay.”

Max didn’t move away from the door. Instead, he ran a hand through his hair and started talking.

30

LEONA

“Iknow I said sorry out there, but I have to say it to both of you again.”

My heart thumped hard in my chest, and I was certain Cas could feel it through our clasped hands. I needed him right now. Whatever Max was about to say was going to shatter me and Cas had held me together for my entire life.

“I know it changes nothing about what I did, and I know I’ll never make up for it, but I swear I’ll try. I’ll spend my whole life, however long I have left, trying. You two, this…home, you’re all I have.”

Cas squeezed my fingers and spoke when I couldn’t. “We’ll listen.”

Max leaned against the door. He stared at his feet. A part of me ached to reach out to him, pull him to me, but I couldn’t move.

“Everything changed the night of my father’s funeral.”

And then he told us.

How that night he’d found his father’s journals and learned that my father had killed his. Massimo had figured out that my father had fallen into debt, and my father was about to lose the legitimate side of our construction business. Without VCI, we would have lost the gun smuggling business and a huge portion of our income—let alone the control it brought the mafia over New York City itself. So my father had made dangerous deals. He’d compromised whatever morals he’d had to make money on the sly. He’d started stealing other drugs and cutting our supply to extend it. He’d sold some drugs he’d stolen to the South American cartels, drawing them into this mess. He made a deal with the Albanians to give him a portion of their profit for access to the city, and he’d convinced all the other Heads to do the same.

Then, when things were at their worst, and the government came knocking down his door because of his debt and because of his crimes, he’d made a deal with them. He’d sold our guns to the CIA, and he’d worked with the FBI to build a case against the rest of the mafia.

That was how it was all connected. The guns, the shipping manifest I had found in his files months ago. He’d been doing all of this behind the scenes. He sold out our entire organization, our entire livelihood and legacy, and all the people who worked for us.

All of it for money. All of it because he felt trapped.

“So that’s why my father was snitching to the FBI.” The words tumbled from my lips in a whisper as all the puzzle pieces finally came together. “To get himself out of the hole he had created. To go after everyone else around him in order to hide it.”

“Yes,” Max said quietly. His hands clenched together. “My father’s journals explained how he would have tried to help Luciano. I don’t know what he would have done, but he felt so betrayed that Luciano didn’t go to him first.

“Max,” Cas said, a sad smile on his face. “Can’t you see?”

Max kicked off the wall and sat on the side of the bed next to ours. His back was half-turned, avoiding eye contact.

“I know,” he mumbled. “I did the same thing. I felt so trapped in this knowledge, and I could have asked for help, but I was too scared. I was blinded by how desperately I wanted to make him feel the pain I felt. I wanted him to suffer, and I think I knew the two of you wouldn’t want me to go down that path. So I told myself that I couldn’t trust either of you without putting you at risk, and it was up to me to fix everything.”

“Max—“

“There’s something else,” he gusted out. “Something even worse.”