6: Leon

Leon ran briskly on the treadmill, his phone secured in the holder. His grey gym clothes were soaked with sweat, and a thin sheen of perspiration covered his forehead. He slowed down, picked up his water bottle filled with glucose water, and took a gulp.

His phone pinged.

He clicked on it, and photographs of Catalina Reyes flooded every local feed—blurry shots from outside a worn apartment building, ones with her serving a table at Verve and smiling, and many more with captions linking her to “the mysterious Verelli's woman at Verve” and “Leon Verelli’s latest interest.”

One clip from an old broadcast of him offering a thousand dollars for information about a silver filigree pendant played on a loop beneath the new images that captured her in a black maxi dress, the pendant catching the club light. The media had connected the dots he had never intended them to see this clearly. For the first time since he made that broadcast years ago, he regretted putting it out there.

He dropped the phone and finished his workout. Dante came to run through his schedule while Leon changed, but his mind remained on the clips and photographs he had seen that morning. He knew he had to find a way to help Catalina. This could turn bad real quick, especially if enemy cartels learned her identity.

By the time Leon left the estate, his morning was already packed. He had a meeting with one of his investors across town, a private lunch with a developer he was trying to bring into one of his real-estate projects, and a conference call with people handling his operations outside Miami.

He was halfway to his first meeting when Dante received a call.

Dante listened for several seconds, his expression changing slightly before he looked at Leon.

“Pedro’s people are waiting at the warehouse. Three of them. They’re asking to see you, Boss.”

Leon glanced at the time. “How long have they been waiting?”

“Twenty minutes.”

Leon looked out through the tinted window at the traffic crawling past them. His first meeting could be pushed. Pedro's people coming to him instead of waiting for a scheduled meeting meant the matter had already become urgent.

“Tell them I’m five minutes out.”

Dante relayed the message to the person on the other end of the call, then signaled the driver to turn the car around and head toward the warehouse on the outskirts of town.

The warehouse on the river was mostly empty, except for the men loading cargo onto the awaiting ship. Leon stepped out of the SUV alone, Dante and two men trailing at a distance. The three men from the supplier stood near a stack of empty pallets in expensive suits and polished Italian shoes.

Leon stopped a few feet away, hands in his pockets, and let the silence stretch until one of them finally spoke.

“We understand complications happen,” the man said. “But despite the other shipment you're still sorting out, Pedro released more product to you, and he is expecting it to have hit the market by now.” He hesitated.

“Pedro expected the product to move, but it’s been a week now. It hasn’t. He needs answers,” another finished, staring Leon in the eye.

Leon’s voice stayed level as he looked from man to man. “The product is moving again. He’ll have his share by Friday. Full amount, plus the inconvenience f*e we already agreed on.”

The man’s eyes flicked to Dante, then back. “And if customs decides to get curious a second time?”

“They won’t.” Leon’s tone left no room for debate. “You came here because you know who handles the ports. Friday. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

They left without further argument.

Leon watched the men disappear before turning back toward the warehouse. The seized container had arrived under a different manifest and a different set of customs seals. Recovering it had required three calls, one quiet visit to a mid-level official, and the removal of a dock supervisor who had grown too talkative after the seizure. The supervisor’s body would surface in a few days, if it surfaced at all. The product was back in his control, and that was the only outcome that mattered.

The politician was a different problem.

Congressman Hale had taken Leon’s money for months to keep certain shipments invisible. The container should never have been flagged. Hale had failed, then tried to negotiate new terms as if the failure was not his fault. Leon had him collected after a late-night fundraiser the night before and driven to a private marina where he was locked in a boat waiting.

Leon checked his watch.

He had already lost enough time.

“Back to the office,” he said.

Dante nodded, and the SUV pulled away from the warehouse.

The rest of the day belonged to business.

Meetings came and went. Numbers were reviewed, decisions were made, and problems that had been waiting for his attention were dealt with before they could become larger ones. Leon moved through them without allowing the morning's media storm to interfere with anything that required his full attention.

It was late evening when Leon got to the boat. From the dock, the boat looked like other fishing charters.

They motored out far enough that the city lights became a distant smear. Leon stood at the stern while two of his men held Hale steady. The congressman was still talking—explanations, apologies, and promises—when Leon nodded once.

They threw him over the side.

Leon timed it carefully. He let him flail for several minutes, leaving him there long enough for panic to set in and for the water to fill his lungs and strip away every arrogance from his body, but not long enough to kill him. When they hauled him back onto the deck, Hale coughed salt water and blood, gasping on his hands and knees.

Leon crouched so their faces were level. “You were paid to keep the authorities looking the other way. You looked the other way on the wrong people. That ends tonight. Starting tomorrow, every call that needs to be made gets made before my shipments even smell the docks. Every favor that needs to be called in gets called in. Do you understand me?”

Hale nodded, still coughing.

“Say it.”

“I understand.” He choked out, his heart racing.

Leon stood. “Good." He wiped his hands with the white handkerchief Dante had provided slowly.

"Next time I have to take you fishing, you don’t come back up breathing.”

They returned to the marina, and Leon left instructions for his men to release Hale later that night, unconscious and cold on the docks for his people to find.

By the time Leon returned to the estate after the day's work, the media coverage of Catalina had only grown. Photographers still camped outside her building, and they'd managed to get a picture of her peeking through a small opening in her curtains. Comment threads speculated about her connection to him, the old reward, and the pendant. She and her roommate were effectively trapped.

Leon stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the bay and considered the problem. He had caused part of this, and he needed to fix it, even if he couldn't fix everything yet. He needed to find a way to protect her and her roommate.

His gaze remained on the dark water.

Catalina wasn't his responsibility.

At least, she hadn't been until his name had been attached to hers.

He had investigated her. He had returned to Verve. He had known there was a possibility that the attention would eventually become inconvenient, but he had underestimated how quickly the media would turn a search into a spectacle.

And now she was trapped inside a cheap apartment because of it.

He could no longer simply watch from a distance.

Leon picked up his phone and called Dante. Dante appeared in the doorway a few minutes later.

“Ready an extra car and two security details. I need to go somewhere by morning.”

“Yes, Boss,” Dante replied and turned to go.

Leon stopped him.

“And I want the reporters outside her building identified. Not just the outlets. I want names.”

Dante nodded. “I'll have it before morning.”

Leon turned back toward the window.

He still did not have proof that Catalina Reyes was the girl from fifteen years ago. The pendant matched, her age matched, and there were gaps in what he could find about her childhood, but none of it was enough to prove anything.

Instinct was not evidence, and Leon Verelli did not build empires on instinct alone.

Still, the feeling remained.

He turned from the window. “And move things around on my schedule tomorrow. I’m going to fix the mess I created.”

Dante nodded once and left.

Leon returned to his phone, went to the site, and studied the photographs of Catalina one more time. The silver filigree pendant was visible in two of them, catching the light exactly as it had that night at Verve. Exactly as it had in the fragmented memory that tormented him.

He closed the phone.

Tomorrow, he would get her out of that apartment.