Page 7 of Fall Before Her Throne

“Yes,” I replied as we headed back to the hallway. When we pushed our way past the door hanging off its hinges, we saw Leona trying to calm down the couple who lived in this apartment.

“Head downstairs,” she said. “Emergency services are waiting there. You can come back up once they’ve cleared the building after the fire.”

She ushered them into the stairwell, only turning around once she had pushed them inside and shut the door. “Whew. The police can deal with them later.” Her eyes locked onto my arm. “Obi, you got fucking shot.”

“Yes,” I said as Ryuji yanked the man forward. He stumbled over his own feet, his skin already pale from blood loss. “He got it worse.”

Her eyes raked over me, lips pressed together, before she stomped over and yanked my chest down to press a kiss to my lips.

“I’m fine,” I murmured. “I’ve had far worse.”

“I know,” she said, eyes burning into mine. “Now let’s go.”

Ciel tapped away on his tablet. “I got the security feeds back up. The elevator is running. No one else is here yet. I think the alarms and the call to emergency services spooked anyone else coming after us.”

I nodded, wiping the sweat from my brow with the sleeve of my forearm. “Down to the garage.”

Together, we walked halfway down the hallway to the elevator and stepped inside when the doors pinged open. The ride was cramped, exacerbated by the grunts of pain and desperate pleas of our assailant. He begged for his life, and we ignored him until his attention latched onto Leona. After he tried to speak to her, Wynn pressed a knife to his throat while Ryu held his arms behind his back, and then he went silent.

The doors pinged open on our private garage level, and we pulled the man forward.

Our collection of cars stretched before us. We couldn’t take everything with us, but we needed at least two options for the future in case one went wrong.

“SUV?” Caspian asked, still carrying Volpe while Leona supported Volpe’s other arm.

I pointed to our two most heavily armed vehicles. “We’ll take those two for now. Get our bags and the weapons inside. Bring the man to the back of the SUV.”

Ryu pulled the man near the trunk and dropped him to the ground. Leona followed, standing close to me while the operative curled inward into a little ball. “Is he coming with us?”

“Please, please,” the man whimpered.

“What are you?” I demanded of the man, my knife at his neck. “Tell me, and I’ll kill you quickly.”

“Mercenary,” he gasped, curling tighter. “My squad was just hired an hour ago.”

I exchanged a look with Ryu. Mercenaries meant contracts. The dark web. More men hunting us.

“We need to deal with that,” Ryu said. “Fucking quickly, too.”

“Tell Ciel to monitor the dark web and take down the contracts or buy them ourselves. We’ll put out a few of our own.”

“How much?”

I dragged my knife across the man’s throat. His blood spilled onto the concrete. “Fifty million.”

Leona’s eyes went wide. “That much?”

“I can easily go higher,” I said with a sigh as I stood. “It’s not about the money. It’s about showing that this is war, and if mercenaries or assassins want a piece, they’re choosing a side.”

“This is how it works, hanii,” Ryu said. “We need to show we’re serious, or else we’ll be under constant fire.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, looking down at the man’s body. “I get it. Don’t fuck with the Shadows.”

We’d leave his body here, in full view of the security feeds, which Lucia Greco—Piero Greco’s granddaughter and one of the consistent thorns in our side—would no doubt hack into shortly.

“Take a picture, Ryu,” I said, wiping the blood off the knife. “Post it to the dark web in warning.”

“What about Max?” Ryu asked while he snapped the photo.