Page 132 of Auctioned to the Mafia Don
Chapter Eighteen
Maya
The FBI takes my weapon before I realize I am still holding it.
One of Raven’s agents touches my wrist, says my name twice, and waits until my fingers unlock around the grip. I watch him carry the gun away as though it belongs to someone else. The rain keeps sliding down the narrow walls. Leon lies beneath a black tarp now, but the shape of him is still there beneath it. So still. Too final.
Raven stands a few feet away with blood on one sleeve that does not belong to her.
“Talk to me,” she says.
I laugh once. It comes out warped and wrong.
“What would you like me to say? Shit, I can’t believe we survived?”
Her eyes narrow. “Maya.”
I look past her toward the service door Stefano disappeared through. The lock is still broken from the inside. Agents have already checked the alley, the roof access, and the adjoining building. Omar had a car waiting somewhere beyond the block. Of course he did. Stefano does not leave a room without knowing where every exit leads.
“He’s gone,” I say.
Raven follows my gaze.
Around us, the operation keeps moving. Agents photograph the scene. Someone bags Leon’s weapon. Another team takes his surviving guard into custody, one arm strapped into a sling, his face gray beneath the alley lights. The club is still loud with turmoil beyond the door—shouting, radios, glass under shoes, people demanding lawyers before they have even been asked a question.
It should feel akin to a victory. Instead, I feel hollowed out.
Raven steps closer. “Leon was reaching for a weapon.”
“He was already down.”
“Yes.”
“He was alive.”
“Yes.”
“You had him.”
Her mouth tightens.
I look at her then. “You had him.”
The silence stretches.
Raven has spent enough years in the Bureau to know when arguing would only make a person bleed harder. She does not tell me Stefano did what he had to do. She does not defend him. She does not offer the clean lie that Leon’s death somehow makes the world safer in a way his arrest could not.
“He cannot undo what he did,” she says quietly. “Neither can you.”
My throat closes.
“That isn’t the point.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” My voice rises before I can stop it. “He took the choice from me. Again. Leon spent years making choices forAlice. He made choices for Erin and Heath. He decided what they could survive and what they were allowed to lose.” I press a hand against my chest because something there has started to ache too sharply. “And Stefano looked at me, heard exactly what I needed, and decided he knew better.”
“He said he promised Leon would not touch them again,” I continue. “As if that was enough. As if I should be grateful he gave me the version of justice he wanted to give.”
