It doesn’t matter now, Iris told herself as she slid forward, resting her sweaty palms against the cold wood of the bench in front of her.
Justice always prevailed.
That was what her father had always taught her, anyway. In the end, justice ensured that the bad guys paid for their crimes, vindicating the good ones.
She just needed to hear the words.
“Has the jury reached a decision?” Judge Matthes asked, turning his eyes to the foreman who stood.
“We have, your honor.”
“If the defendant would rise …”
The foreman was a tall man, his stomach just starting to overlap the waistband of his creased pants. His white shirt starched to near cardboard, the black tie hanging around his neck was skewed just slightly to the left. Iris didn’t know why those details stood out to her at that moment, but he had her undivided attention. Even as the man she’d grown to hate with every fiber of her being stood and straightened his suit jacket.
The foreman unfolded a note he held, a bead of sweat trickling down his neck and dampening the collar of his shirt. “We, the jury, find the defendant, Ernest Rockly …”
Her breath caught in her throat, her gaze flickering to the table as Ernest smiled.
The foreman hesitated, his gaze drifting over to the man as well, his throat working as he swallowed. “We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty on the count of second degree …”
Whatever he said next was lost in the sudden chaos of the room as scores of people demanded answers on the side where the prosecution sat while unrest and downright giddy excitement came from everyone else.
It didn’t matter how many times the judge banged his gavel, silence was not to be had.
Ernest was smiling now, blatant and unashamed, as he shook the hands of his counsel, waving to the onlookers on his side of the court who cheered nearly as loudly as the other side complained.
Iris, watching it all unfold, didn’t utter a sound.
Not when the pain in her chest continued to grow until it felt like she couldn’t breathe. Nor when her hands started to shake as emotion flooded through every inch of her body.
She couldn’t bring herself to stay and hear the rest—she ran.
As she cleared the heavy double doors, she ran until her feet ached and tears threatened to overwhelm her.
She ran until she reached the storage facility where her father had rented a locker in her name.
“Only go there if something happens to me, yeah? No sooner.”
That was a year ago, back when she hadn’t worried about such things, and back before their world had turned upside down.
Now, she didn’t have a choice.
Entering the building, Iris drew the hood of her jacket up to cover her face, then dug into her pocket until she felt the metal of the key she always kept tucked away with 714 etched into the brass in the very center.
She didn’t look at anything or anyone until she was standing in front of the locker where a heavy padlock gleamed.
It took mere seconds to insert the key and remove it entirely, her heart rate quickening as she anticipated what might be inside. She expected a box of some sort, maybe even a gun for her own protection, but instead, she found a ratty old backpack with more than a dozen files bound together with a rubber band, along with a series of cassette tapes and a player tucked in the bottom. And as her confusion mounted, she didn’t know what to feel when she found at least seven bundles of cash.
Questions popped into her head one after another, but she couldn’t stand here and figure out what this all meant while she stood out in the open.
Shoving her arms into the straps of the bag, Iris closed the locker and replaced the lock before leaving the building entirely, this time out the back door.
She walked to the end of the block just as the city bus pulled to a stop. A swipe of her card later, she found a seat in the back and watched the city blur as the bus took off.
The man opposite her had his phone in his hand, watching the latest news report. Though she couldn’t hear what the news anchor was saying, she could still see her—and the man she was interviewing.
Ernest Rockly stood on the courthouse steps, smiling with genuine joy on his face.
Why wouldn’t he? He’d gotten away with murder.
Funny how quickly things had changed in the span of seven months.
Before, he’d only been a street rat, but someone, as her father would have said, had taken an interest in him. According to her father’s notes, he’d only been a dealer, not nearly high enough on the food chain to afford the suit he was wearing let alone the cost of the legal team he had that had managed to get him off a murder charge.
Iris hadn’t always believed in conspiracies … now, she wasn’t so sure.
As the interview came to an end, the camera panned away, and the feed switched to two anchors sitting behind a desk. A picture popped up in the left-hand corner of a man in a dark suit and red tie, his hand raised with a smile only a politician could manage.
According to the banner beneath, he was running for office.
Forty-five minutes later, Iris finally arrived at her motel in Queens. Her father had always complained about it, but for all his grievances, this was the best place for her now. Here, no one asked questions, and looking the other way was a custom.
Even the attendant standing behind the plexiglass didn’t blink an eye when Iris asked to get a room and slid over a hundred-dollar bill when he gave her the price.
That was what was wrong with the city—people stopped asking questions. No one was concerned about anything or anyone but themselves.
Her father had thought to change that. Organized crime was a battle he’d longed to win, even if it was one that would never see an end.
Inside her room, Iris set aside her bag. Frowning at the bed, she was a little apprehensive to sit on it, but this was all she could get for now, so there was no use in complaining.
Spreading out the files, she made sure they were all within easy reach before going back for the tapes.
Her hands shook as she lifted the headphones and placed them over her ears. She didn’t know what she would find once she held the gleaming silver player in her hands, or how she would feel as she pressed play on the first tape labeled “1,” but she couldn’t back out now.
First came crackling white noise, then her father’s familiar sigh that brought tears to her eyes.
“Iris, darling, if you’re listening to this, something went wrong. I don’t know how to explain what happened over these past six months … but I’m gonna try. I don’t think I have the right words to express how sorry I am for leaving you like this, but I … I can only hope that these tapes ease some of that for you. I hope that no matter what they say about me, you know the truth. That’s the only thing I care about.” He took a breath, a sound she wouldn’t be able to hear for a long time. “I stumbled across something … something they didn’t want me to find.”
For one hour and twenty-seven minutes, Iris didn’t move from the center of the bed where she sat and listened, absorbing every word her father spoke. It was only when the tape clicked off that she blinked and came back to the present, finally aware of everything around her.
Then she took a breath and played the second one.
She listened until the tapes ran out and the waxing moon hung heavy in the night sky. Vaguely, she felt the pinch in her stomach from going so long without eating, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.
Food took a back seat in her mind as she understood what she had to do.
For every name her father gave in his tapes, she would make them pay.
She didn’t know how, and she didn’t know when, but she would.
And none of them, not even one, would be safe from her.
Chapter 1
Eight years later …
Though his fingers ached from the repeated punches he’d been throwing for the past hour, it was a welcome feeling.
Synek had always gotten off on pain.
He liked the sharp bite of it, the way it swept through him in a wave. It didn’t matter if he was hitting bone, inflicting or receiving, it sent a rush through him he couldn’t adequately describe, though he was sure it was close to euphoria.
This … it felt good, and after the past few shit weeks he’d had, it was a much-needed relief.
Before the man strapped to the chair in one of the many interrogation rooms inside the compound—the Den’s center of operations—could right himself, blood spilling from his lips as he groaned, Synek flexed his left hand before hitting him again.
Blissful agony lit up his entire arm, and despite himself, he laughed as he reared back, shaking his hand out.
The man had a hard head.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered to himself, turning for the first time since he’d entered this space as he fished his smokes out of the back pocket of his jeans.
As he did so, he caught sight of the other man in the room who was standing against the back wall. A man who had yet to master keeping his emotions from reflecting on his face.
Synek might not have blinked an eye at a little torture, but the other man looked disgusted … and a bit green.
He scoffed as he tucked a cigarette between his lips, bloodied filter and all. “Come on, I’ve barely touched him.”
Which was partly true.
During the first ten minutes they’d been in this room, Synek hadn’t uttered a word. Instead, he’d merely sat in the chair opposite his target and stared at him, waiting for the moment his mask would crumple and his fear would peek through.
Some lasted longer than others, but he found they all broke eventually, whether they wanted to or not. Especially once he had his knife in his hand.
This was something he had learned to be good at long before now, even before the Wraiths ever dug their claws into him.
Because it wasn’t always about fists or weapons.
At times, neither would do much good if he was going up against someone bigger or stronger.
He’d learned to make his silence spark fear. His very presence.
What came after—when he inflicted physical pain—that was only for his benefit.
The man across from him, Roger Fitzpatrick, had been wary from the very beginning of their time together. He was older than most who wound up in Synek’s chair, but not old enough that he was fearful just because he knew how easily his bones could break.
As a former founder of an accounting firm that serviced elite criminals, Fitzpatrick was probably used to all sorts—those who used words to intimidate and others who chose brute force.
He hadn’t realized until it was too late that Synek was both.
It had been far too long since he’d felt the harshness of flesh-covered bone and how it resonated against his own for days after. And thinking of that last time … he wished the man he’d been punching then was the one sitting in front of him now, but unlike the man he was currently hitting, that one wasn’t able to vocalize his pain at all.
For now, he’d settle for Fitzpatrick.
“Are you ready to answer my questions?” Synek asked, looking back to the accountant as he flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette before dragging in a lungful of nicotine.
When the man nodded eagerly, eyes pinched shut as he breathed through his pain, Synek smirked back at the mercenary who really needed to let his bullocks drop if he ever intended to get anywhere in this profession. Then he reclaimed his seat and gave Fitzpatrick his undivided attention.
“Right, then. Tell us about the governor,” he said, giving an imperial wave of his hand.
Though Synek reminded him anyway, Fitzpatrick didn’t need to be told why he was here. If he were smart, he already knew the answer.
Of all the clients he’d kept while operating his accounting firm, there was only one profile—despite the more than dozen he’d handled himself—that would matter to anyone who peeked through his books.
A client by the name of Michael Spader.
Sometimes, even though he’d been working for the man for years, Synek still found the Kingmaker’s ability to predict people’s moves baffling. Though he had been in London for the better part of the past few years, he still kept up with the happenings in New York City between his handler and the other mercenaries of the Den.
Including the real reason the Kingmaker had made him that offer all those years ago.
This—Synek, the mercenaries, the very Den itself—had been crafted to avenge someone the man had lost and to take down whatever enemy had dared to take her from him in the first place.
At least, that had been the plan until he discovered his dead lover and his enemy were one in the same.
Synek didn’t have the first idea what to do with that information. He was curious as hell and had a number of questions, but that wasn’t his job.
His job was wet work—doing all the dirty, murderous things others with weak stomachs couldn’t. He went where the Kingmaker bade him, and up until a few weeks ago, that had mostly been thousands of miles away in London.
But that was before he’d been needed for another job—a job that had led him right to the man sitting in front of him.
Roger Fitzpatrick was merely another pawn in the grand scheme of things, but he had information. And information made him vastly more important.
“There’s not much to tell,” Fitzpatrick said as he dragged in a rattling breath. “I don’t have anything I can give you.”
“We both know that bit ain’t true, don’t we? Come now, Fitzy, you don’t want me to start removing your fingers, do you? Grisly business, that is. And I like to be thorough and all, so I’d start at your pinkies and clip away at them, knuckle by knuckle.”
He visibly paled at the threat, but that could have very well been from blood loss as well. “But—”
Synek shook his head before the man could finish, flicking his cigarette butt across the room. “Have you ever had your jaw broken?”
Synek had, and he knew all too well the agony that came when he’d tried to talk with it.
Stark fear had Fitzpatrick answering honestly. “No.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Would you like to?”
He swallowed before finally answering. “It was a separate account. He didn’t allow anyone else to use it or even look at it except for me. He never gave me any details as to what it was for … only that it was important for his business. I don’t make it a habit to question my clients.”
No, in their business, questions could get you killed.
And questions asked of a sitting governor? There would be no trace of your existence left once it was all over.
Though Synek had yet to find anything that said the governor had his hands in anything he shouldn’t, the Kingmaker wasn’t so easily convinced. Which was why he’d ordered Synek to interrogate Fitzpatrick until he spilled what he knew about the anonymous account the governor had.
On the surface, Michael Spader appeared to be just like any other boring politician, smiling for photo ops and assuring his constituents that everything he was doing in office was in their best interests, but for whatever reason, he’d wound up on the Kingmaker’s radar, and since then, more of his secrets had come to light.
Like his mysterious account that donated to a nonexistent charity.
That much they could find. Now what that money paid for was still beyond them.
“You have to know more than that,” Synek told the man, stretching one leg out in front of him, mindful of the blood spatter on the concrete. “We both know the good guv’na isn’t just protecting the people’s interests.”
Fitzpatrick fumbled for an answer but quickly found his words when Synek shifted. “Whatever he’s funneling the money for, it’s expensive. Millions move through that account, both in and out of it.”
Except Synek already knew all that.
They could trace the money back to the governor, but
beyond that, there wasn’t anything new for them to go on.
And it seemed the accountant was a dead end.
“Get him cleaned up,” Synek told the rookie without looking back at him. “We might need him later. Good chat there, mate. I’ll be seeing you.”
While neither the accountant nor the rookie looked thrilled at the prospect, Synek took off out of the room, plucking a new cigarette from the box in his pocket and tucking it behind his ear. It didn’t matter that he was still riding the momentary buzz of the one he’d had before. The high wouldn’t last forever.
It wasn’t until he had left the building entirely that Synek finally found the man he was looking for—the only one wearing an expensive suit.
The Kingmaker was no mercenary—that much he’d learned over the years since he’d started working for the man—so he rarely got his hands dirty in that sense. Instead, he was the bank behind those who were willing to die in his name.
At least, that was what most thought of the Den.
Most assumed the mercenaries—Synek included—were willing to kill anyone or be killed so long as the Kingmaker was wiring money into their accounts for every job they accepted. They didn’t know half the mercenaries could hardly stand the sight of the man, but personal feelings aside, money was a powerful motivator.
The mercenaries might not have been willing to die, but they were willing to do a hell of a lot more.
“Anything useful?” the Kingmaker asked, barely lifting his gaze long enough to acknowledge his presence.
Over the weeks, he had gone from a man in careful control of everything around him to one teetering on the edge of ruin. To say he was trying to put an end to the threat against his business was an understatement.
“Nothing worth noting.”
The Kingmaker was quiet a moment before saying, “Leaving town?”
It wasn’t a question he really needed to answer. He rarely came stateside as it was, and never for as long as he had been here. Though the majority of his problems began and ended in New York, the Wraiths’ reach was vast.
Den of Mercenaries [Volume Two] Page 25