Page 63 of Leverage

A gun cocked and then what sounded like a hundred more. “Denis is pretty banged up. He’s going to want retribution when he wakes.”

“I don’t give a fuck about Denis. If you want her, you’ll have to kill me.”

My head swam. A lump formed in my throat as I wracked my brain. I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit back and let Matteo murder the both of us when this was all my father’s fault. It was his fault I was so fucked up, his fault I’d been kidnapped in the first place, and his fault that I was the cartel’s number one target.

Jameson Clark had fucked with my life long enough.

And it took the possibility of losing Yuri for me to realize just how far I was willing to go to make him stop.

“Wait!” I threw my hands up and darted around Yuri. “Wait, don’t shoot.”

“Darya,” Yuri growled and reached for me. I swatted him away and sucked in a deep breath, balling my hands into a fist against the pain in my sides. If I let him continue down this road, there was no surviving.

“Matteo,” I said, my eyes locked on Yuri’s, “what if I said I can help? I can get you everything you asked for.”

Yuri shook his head as I turned to face his terrifying brother.

“I’d say it’s quicker to kill you and be done with it.”

I swallowed hard, my blood running cold. “Kill me later, let me work for you first.”

Yuri ripped me back, his grip painful on my upper arm. “Darya, stop.”

“I can help. I have a plan!” I cried out, my voice cracking painfully with each word. “Take me to him with a gun to my head. Threaten him face to face. I can make him bend and do whatever you want.”

“No!” Yuri shouted.

“You want to work for us? You want to betray your own father?”

I scoffed, “after he betrayed me? My loyalties are different.”

Matteo gritted his teeth and shot a look at Yuri behind me. “You mean to say they lie with him?”

Yuri’s grip softened and I turned to him, reaching up to cup his cheek. He shook with anger but I touched him anyway, feeling his stubble prickle against my palm. “Yes.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Then you kill me— only me,” I said with a soft smile up at the man I was willing to risk my life for. He’d forever changed me and if it came down to dying beside him or sacrificing myself for him? I would choose the latter every time.

I stepped carefully toward Matteo, my eyes locked on the piece he held firmly in his hands. I stopped just feet from him, in limbo once again. “As you said, I’m a mistake. He shouldn’t have to pay for it.”

His eyes flicked behind me and after what felt like an hour, he nodded. When he shouted, the soldiers dropped their guns and I let out a sharp breath. And then, Yuri was there, his arms wrapping around me and pulling me into his chest. “You’re not doing this. I can take my brother. I’m not putting you at risk.”

“I am and you will, because it will be your gun pointed to my head and I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t,” his lips dragged across my forehead, “you’ll end up dead like the rest of them.”

He kept me close to his side as we walked to the car. With my execution put on temporary hold, there was no reason to stay hidden at the safe house. Plus, we had planning to do.

I had to figure out how in the hell I was going to deliver on my promises. Because this wasn’t just about saving myself, or Yuri— I wanted vengeance that only the brutality of the cartel could help deliver.

Chapter 18

Darya

Yuri's rage never abated. The silence in the car was stifling. Somehow, he convinced his brother not to keep me tied up on the way back to the house but neither man spared me a glance as we tore down the highway. When the motion beneath me slowed and the Zaragoza roof appeared over the hill, there were more cars in the driveway than I was expecting.

I craned my neck to count and soon realized it would be impossible, with vehicles double parked and wrapping in all directions across the property. No one walked the grounds, even the foot-soldiers strapped with their assault rifles were fewer and their bodies sagged in the late morning heat. Like someone’s extended family, the property was brimming with somber emotion. I guess when the cartel boss dies, everyone comes out of the woodwork to mourn.

---