Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 11 - Chapitre 20

The first lead had taken Leon to Spain. He had gone to Gabriel's villa, only to discover that it had been sold to a Scottish couple just a few weeks ago. He followed new leads through three cities and half a dozen intermediaries who all claimed to have seen Gabriel or someone who looked like him. Each time, however, the trail thinned. By the last meeting, the man who was supposed to know something had already left the country, and the people around him suddenly developed convenient memory loss. Leon had closed the file after he shot the last man he had been interrogating for over an hour. Someone had either moved Gabriel just ahead of him or deliberately pointed him in the wrong direction, and he was not convinced it was a coincidence. The second lead brought him to Mexico. A major supplier connected to the cocaine flooding Miami operated out of a quiet coastal town outside Veracruz. The man used three different names and moved product on fishing boats. His name had also surfaced

Leon remained in the back seat of the car for a moment, looking up at the worn building through the tinted glass. He had seen photographs of the place before, along with the security reports, floor plan, entrance points, and surrounding streets. He knew exactly where Catalina lived even though he had never been inside the building. He had come straight from the tarmac to Catalina’s building without stopping at the estate or changing clothes. The moment Dante’s call had reached him in Mexico, Catalina had become the only thing on his mind. He had spent most of the return flight going over everything that had happened, every detail of the security failure, every point where his men had been outmaneuvered, and every possibility of what could have happened if the vehicle had not been intercepted when it was. Someone had gotten close enough to take her. That fact sat under his skin like a splinter he could not dig out. He huffed and stepped out of the car, approaching the building.

Leon had gotten a call that Brento was being taken to his warehouse on the south access road while he was in a meeting with some investors looking to invest in his clothing business. He quickly ended the meeting, grabbed his keys, and ignored the men who hurried after him. He climbed into his car and drove off, leaving them behind as they scrambled to catch up.The afternoon sun beat down on the asphalt as he accelerated. He had searched for Brento for over a month, and now the man who had run away with ten million dollars’ worth of his cocaine was being brought in by his men. Yet he still did not know what to say, and he was rushing toward him all the same.He had grown up with Brento. Brento’s parents had died when he was just three in a car crash, and being his mother’s sister’s son, Brento had been taken into the family without question. Leon, who was ten at the time, had taken him in as a brother. The Verelli family trained both boys in combat and street skills, as Leon’s father

Leon rode in the back of the black car, his phone lying face-down on his thigh as the city moved past. Outside, traffic crawled and the sun sat low enough to throw long shadows across the buildings, but none of it held his attention for long.He had not seen Catalina in two days.He had deliberately gone home late after their encounter in the kitchen. He’d stayed at the office longer than necessary, buried himself in Brento’s case files and interrogations, and still caught himself thinking about her more times than he cared to admit. The image kept finding its way in—Catalina standing there in that oversized sweatshirt and those tiny shorts, bare legs. Every time it surfaced, his body reacted before his mind could shut it down, heat pooling low in his gut, his pants tightening hard enough that he could not ignore it. He hated the lack of control more than almost anything else.He looked out the window and forced his attention back to the matter at hand.After Brento’s confession, he

He had abandoned the chess game hours ago. The board still sat in the study exactly as she had left it, the pieces unfinished, the white queen hanging two squares from the edge.He had rushed into the adjoining bathroom as soon as she left the room, his cock throbbing in his right hand. He leaned into the wall as he worked himself up and down, concentrating on the images of her in his head.“Fuck,” he groaned as he felt his load building at his tip.Images of her long legs in her bikini flashed through his mind, along with her scent and the way her lips had curved into a smile. He moaned as he came—thick cream splattered across the toilet bowl, hanging from his fingers in thick threads as he slowed down, groaning and cursing under his breath.He cleaned himself up, arranged himself, and went back into his study. As he crossed the study to his desk, her faint scent lingered in his nostrils, and his eyes moved to the chessboard and the chair she had just vacated almost on their own. His