Page 164 of Fall Before Her Throne

Her systems were now my systems.

The line went quiet. My eyes flicked down to the phone, but she hadn’t hung up. She’d just gone silent.

“What do you want?” Her voice was clipped, her accent heavier than normal. “How much money?”

Leona shook her head. “This isn’t a typical ransom. We don’t want money. We want cooperation.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ciel has access to everything you have stored on your network. It’s all ours. We’re going to go through every single file.”

“Merda,” she hissed. “This is my entire life. You cannot take it from me. Give it back!”

“No, sorry,” Leona said. “But we’ll give it back if you help us.”

“With what?” Lucia spat.

Asking Lucia to do this was a colossal risk, but the alternative for her was losing every piece of electronic data she had ever had. I was betting on her agreement. I gave Leona a nod.

“First, you will stop protecting your grandfather from our attempts to track him. With our access to your systems, you won’t have much control over that anyway, but just in case. If you have any secondary systems or networks which protect him from us, we’ll wipe everything. We’ll destroy it all. You won’t be able to hide. Ciel will find out.”

She grunted. “What else?”

Leona let out a quiet breath. “You will kill all of Greco’s heirs.”

“What?” Lucia breathed. “You’d have me kill my cousins and uncles?”

“Yes,” Leona said. “You already know that if we were to kill your grandfather, the rest of your family will not rest until they get revenge. You will eliminate that problem for us before it exists.”

“And what about me?” Lucia gritted out. “You’ll then have me take my own life?”

“No,” I said. “You may live, and I will give you access back to all of your systems.”

Lucia’s heavy breathing crackled through the phone line while she considered. She cursed again in Italian, arguing with herself.

“Basta!” she finally said. “Fine. Yes. I will do this.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“You agree that easily?” Leona asked.

“Don’t you care about your grandfather?” I added.

“I don’t fucking care about my grandfather!” she spat. “I care about my computers! My mother is gone. I have nothing else.”

Leona looked backward at Obi, eyes wide. “You’re part of the largest criminal organization in the world, one that your own family operates. Forgive me if I am having a hard time believing you’ll come through for us.”

“The Camorra is no family of mine,” she replied harshly.

My chair creaked as I leaned forward. “Why?”

“I do what I am asked to do,” she responded. “I do what the Family requires of me. It is a vicious and demanding organization. Besides that, all I want is my privacy and my work. It’s not my fault I was born into this, and the only way I could get permission to learn was if I agreed to help my family. I will do whatever it takes to keep the one thing I’ve ever wanted in this life.”

“Fair enough,” Leona responded after a pause. “As soon as it’s done, Ciel will give you the password.”

“It goes without saying that you will not tell Greco about this,” I warned. “I will wipe everything if you do.”

“I won’t,” she said quietly, like the fight had deflated out of her. Then she seemed to regain some of her edge. “Give me your orders and I’ll get them done.”