If only he hadn’t argued …
Moving as quietly as possible, Luna removed the Taser she had on her, lighting him up for a few seconds until he slumped to the ground unconscious. She stepped over his body, briefly glancing back at him one last time before she walked up the stone steps to the heavy wooden doors ahead of her.
He hadn’t come out of the front door, she now realized, but a side door off the three-car garage.
Inside was significantly warmer, with a number of weapons hung on either side of the door and a phone and still steaming cup of coffee on a workbench not too far away. He hadn’t been expecting her.
But if he was here, that undoubtedly meant others would be coming around to check their stations and would ultimately find him outside, if the Kingmaker’s usual routine was anything to go by. Which meant she didn’t have much time.
Luna slipped into the house, the weight of her daggers strapped to her forearms a discomfort as she slowly but quietly made her way deeper into the house. The scent of vanilla clung to the air, and despite its outward appearance, something was rather inviting about the space that she hadn’t expected.
She passed through the kitchen where a team of chefs was busy cooking a feast and paid very little attention to her as she walked past them.
Distantly, she was reminded of the old chateau where she’d lived with Kit. This place, too, had portraits hanging on the walls, the men and women depicted all sitting regally with their hands folded neatly in front of them.
They all looked … familiar.
But it wasn’t until she reached the very last one that Luna realized why they all looked familiar. Even though she had never gotten to meet the man, she had heard enough stories about him to last a lifetime.
Alexander Runehart.
Kit’s father.
The man who’d practically tortured him for years and had ultimately been the reason he had joined the Lotus Society and became who he was today. Luna didn’t have to know him to hate him, but what she did need to know was why his portrait was hanging on the wall.
Kit had always said the family portraits that had once hung in their chateau were the only ones left in existence.
His brother had burned the rest.
Her heart thumped even harder in her chest.
Voices drifted around the corner—a male’s deep timbre and a woman’s light laughter.
With the kinds of secrets he kept, Luna was expecting to find her mother around the corner—it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d made a deal with the man. And it wouldn’t be the first time that deal was a betrayal to her.
But as she palmed her dagger, ready to face whatever was waiting for her on the other side, she turned the corner. It wasn’t Carmen Sandiego sitting in the pretentious settee; it was a woman she had never seen before.
The woman had a head full of beautifully gray hair curled in a way that was timeless and suited the shape of her face. Deep set wrinkles forked out beside her eyes and lips, but other than that, her age was indeterminate. She wore a navy blue wrap dress, nude pumps on her feet, and sheer stockings on her legs.
She looked the proper lady and not like a threat at all.
The man she was speaking to wore the dark suit most butlers wore, and as Luna’s gaze swung to him, she did know his name.
Dominic Mantolo.
The Kingmaker’s butler.
As his eyes shifted to her, he hid his surprise well. “Mrs. —”
“Ah, you’re the wife, aren’t you?” the woman asked as she stood, picking up the glass of red wine from the table in front of her. “I didn’t expect to meet you.”
The woman might not have said much, but from what she had said, it was clear she meant it to be offensive.
“You’re familiar with Nix?” Luna asked, surprised anyone was familiar with her husband who she didn’t know.
“Oh dear, I’d forgotten that’s what he’s calling himself these days. Of course, I shouldn’t have expected anything better. He’s always had quite poor taste.” This was said with a once-over that was surprisingly cutting, considering Luna rarely got offended by what others thought of her.
It reminded her of her mother.
“Who are you?” Luna asked instead, turning her knife around in her hands, seeing the woman visibly swallow. Another insult and she wouldn’t be feeling quite so friendly.
“Silly girl, he’s never mentioned me? Not once? It’s a shame really the way a boy treats his—”
“Mother.”
Luna cringed, still staring straight ahead though Kit’s voice behind her came as a surprise. He had gotten here far sooner than she had anticipated. She hadn’t had enough time, but considering the words that hung in the air, she didn’t think there was much more to what Belladonna had led her to.
This was the secret.
Because the woman wearing the velvet dress and chandelier earrings, glaring at the man behind her, was supposed to be dead.
If the woman noticed the dark energy radiating from Kit, she didn’t care either way. Even as she was several inches shorter than either of them, she tilted her chin up in such a way that it looked as if she was trying to look down her nose at them.
“I was hoping we wouldn’t be seeing much of each other,” the woman said with a cluck of her tongue. “My dear boy assured me of this.”
Luna cringed, reaching out for Kit’s wrist as he took a step forward. She knew there was nothing but bad blood between them. She knew all about how the woman in front of him had hurt him in ways no mother should.
And as far as he had known, the woman was dead—courtesy of the Kingmaker.
“It makes sense,” Kit said, his voice level and deceptively calm, “why he would hide you from me.”
“Does it?” she asked, stepping around the small coffee table.
She didn’t realize—couldn’t realize the danger she was in with every bit of distance she closed between them.
Kit wasn’t the boy he once was. One who had to duck his head whenever his mother passed for fear of what she might do if he inadvertently angered her.
“Did he ever tell you what became of your husband?” Kit asked, a touch of a smile on his lips.
And it was that smile that made her angle her body in front of his. She had seen that smile on him more than a dozen occasions—one which involved a man having put his hand on her thigh without her permission.
The angrier Kit got, the calmer he appeared.
That was the trained assassin in him. Anyone who knew the tell would run as far as they could as quickly as they could.
Abigail only seemed to be coming closer.
Luna wasn’t sure what made her pause, though. Maybe it was Kit’s inquiry, or perhaps even because she was starting to recognize the danger she was in, but whichever it was made the woman acutely aware of who stood in front of her.
“Alexander always had a bad heart.”
“Perhaps so,” Kit returned, his body tense beneath Luna’s hands, “but my knife in his jugular would be more the culprit, I’m afraid.”
He achieved his desired reaction. Beneath carefully applied makeup, Abigail paled, her hand fluttering to her chest. The Kingmaker hadn’t told her the truth. Probably for the same reason he hadn’t mentioned to Kit that their mother was alive and well.
It was then, as Luna kept her hand on Kit’s chest, hoping it would be enough to prevent him from crossing the room fully and doing what she could see reflected in his gaze, she knew.
Belladonna was exposing the Kingmaker’s secrets.
Chapter 43
For their first meeting, Belladonna had taken her to her offices in the heart of Manhattan, but when she called to schedule a meeting a few days later, she didn’t ask to meet there again. Instead, she sent Iris an address to a small but trendy French bistro in the Village.
The building was a muted shade of yellow with ten white tables and complementing blue chairs along the sides of the building.
Iris couldn’t m
iss Belladonna as she approached the restaurant, her hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket. Not when she stood out among the sea of women in colorful dresses, and she was the only one wearing white.
This wasn’t the first time her choice in fashion had sparked Iris’s curiosity. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was tied to her image—whether it was just another part of the persona—or if the color held some significance and she just didn’t know it.
“Good evening, Iris. I trust you found this place okay?”
She arched a brow as she helped herself to one of the wrought-iron chairs before glancing around to catch any sight of the Jackal. It wasn’t necessarily what she had said that made her hesitate, but how she had said it. Now was the first time she thought she had ever heard the woman short with her.
“No problem at all,” she said with a shrug, thinking about the rather long cab ride she’d taken to get to this side of town. “Something wrong?”
Whatever she had been reading on her phone was forgotten as Belladonna turned the screen off and tucked the device away, forcing a smile though it didn’t reach her eyes. “As much as it possibly can be. Now, onto business.”
She plucked out a tiny thumb drive, extending it across the table. “I assumed you wouldn’t be dining with me and would want to get started right away,” Belladonna said before dropping the device into her hand.
This moment felt all too familiar. Very much like the first time they had ever crossed paths, Iris was being offered a job to find someone. The last one had changed her life in ways she had never expected, and a part of her worried that this one would do the same.
“Who am I looking for?” Iris asked, turning the device around in her hand.
Belladonna opened her mouth to respond but was cut short when the waitress returned, carrying a glass of bubbly pink wine. She set it in front of Belladonna before walking away again.
“You’re not looking for anyone.”
“No?”
“When I asked you whether you were willing to die for your father, I meant that quite literally.”
At this point, she really shouldn’t have been surprised by whatever came out of her mouth, but it was starting to feel as if everything she said was meant to top anything that came before it.
“I’ve already completed one suicide mission for you,” Iris said, dropping the thumb drive on the table and sliding it back over. “I don’t plan on doing another.”
For Synek, she’d had the element of surprise on her side. He had never seen her coming. It was something else entirely when the man she was looking for was family of a man like the Kingmaker. If the man had to have an entire team of mercenaries to make sure nothing happened to him, she couldn’t imagine the level of security provided for his family members.
Not to mention, she hadn’t known the Kingmaker even had any family other than the brooding assassin Iris had met a few times. She still remembered how difficult it had been to even find the smallest shred of evidence of who the Kingmaker was, and he was a rather prominent figure in the underworld.
“This particular job would be the easiest for you, I’d imagine.”
“Why? Because you already have my grave picked out?”
“Because I only need the world to think you’re dead. Everyone loves a martyr.”
Her brow furrowed, Iris said, “I don’t understand.”
“It will all make sense in the end. That, I promise,” Belladonna said with a lift of her glass.
“So what happens after I become your martyr?” she asked.
“Then it’s all over,” Belladonna said with such finality that Iris blinked, wondering if she had heard her correctly.
“And what? Everyone gets to walk away.”
“Precisely.”
* * *
Iris wasn’t sure how she had picked the one hotel in Manhattan that still used old-fashioned keys as opposed to electronic cards, but while she had been charmed by the idea at first, as she stood in front of the door, ready to put the key in the lock, she hesitated.
The door was still locked, that much she could tell with the slightest amount of pressure to the door handle, but something felt ... off, and she knew what would be waiting for her, even before she finally forced herself to unlock the door and let herself inside.
“You know, this breaking and entering thing you have going on is getting old.”
As she’d suspected, Synek was waiting for her, stretched out on the couch in the sitting room of the suite, one booted foot resting on top of the glass coffee table. In ripped jeans, a shirt that might have been new two decades ago, and his leather jacket tossed across the back of a chair, he didn’t look like he belonged in the suite that had a rather regal décor to it.
Iris couldn’t figure out why that made her smile.
“You were gone when I woke up,” he said calmly, flatly, lacking that hint of worry he’d had when they had spent the night together before.
He was, at a glance, upset with her.
As if he had any right.
“I didn’t make any promises that I would stay.”
A dark brow cocked up as Synek sat forward with exaggerated slowness. “You taking the fucking piss?”
“I’m assuming you wanted something?” she asked as she ventured farther into the room, dropping her bag on the table and going over to the mini bar.
This time, she wasn’t drinking because she wanted to forget any and everything. She drank because the day had been exhausting. It was all too much too soon, but this time, she at least grabbed one of the glasses sitting upside down on the counter and poured vodka into it before going in search of something to mix with it.
“You already know the answer to that,” came his response, his voice closer than she was expecting.
She remembered to breathe before she turned to face him, drink in hand. She had walked into Belladonna’s offices without blinking an eye, stared across the room at someone who was more than capable of murdering her with one hand, but only Synek managed to make her feel nervous.
Only he was able to get beneath her skin and make her feel things she never had before.
It should have been easy to quit him, to walk away from this complicated mess that they had between them, but instead, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to.
Some part of her had known that Synek would find her again. That if she didn’t outright tell him what new hotel she had moved into for the moment, he would go out of his way to find her and make it quite clear that there was no point in doing so.
She couldn’t hide from him.
Not now. Not ever.
She couldn’t quit him.
“Do I?” she asked, punctuating the question by sipping her drink to try to buy herself time.
To what, she wasn’t sure. She was only delaying the inevitable.
“I want you,” he answered.
No hesitation.
No stuttering.
He said it with absolute conviction.
And sitting right there on the tip of her tongue were four words that she shouldn’t say if she wanted to keep her focus. He spared her from answering by asking, “Where were you today?”
“I went to see my father.”
“After?”
“I don’t understand your question,” she answered, looking away.
But he didn’t let her evade him for long before he was turning her back to face him. As demanding as ever. “I know you went to see him, but where did you go after?”
“How could you have known that?”
Not only had she made sure to get out of the room without waking him, but she had made it a point to take the bus out to the prison rather than her own car. Unless he was superhuman, there was no way possible he could have caught up with her in enough time to know what she had been doing.
Unless ...
“Are you tracking me, Synek?”
“You’re bloody well right I am.”
She barely checked the urge to roll her ey
es. “So if you were tracking me, you should already know the answer to that question.”
“You went dark an hour after visitation hours were over. That tells me nothing.”
Iris glanced down at her drink, swirling the contents around in the glass before she put it to her lips and tipped it back. “That tells you everything.”
She had considered, on her way back to the hotel from her meeting with Belladonna, not telling him about it. She knew he wouldn’t like it, and judging from the darkening expression on his face, she hadn’t been wrong.
But whatever hunt Belladonna was sending her on, Synek was a part of it.
“Have you gone mad?” he asked, reaching up to pluck the glass from her hand and set it aside before pressing the back of his hand against her forehead. “Finally fucking lost it, have you?”
She swatted his hand away, attempting to step around him, but unable to move at all when he struck an arm out and flattened his palm against the wall, caging her in exactly where she was.
“What’s she asked you to do? Betray me in exchange for getting your father out, is that it?”
“Of course not,” she responded, glaring at him.
Betraying him had never been an option, but his boss, however, was another story.
“Which part?” he asked, knowingly. “Her aiding in releasing your father or betraying me?”
Now or never ... “I wouldn’t betray you.”
“Then who ... no.”
Iris attempted to speak, to explain as best she could, but the grip he had on her face shifted until his hand was cupping the nape of her neck, and she had no choice but to face him.
He might have been merely curious before, but now something was rather fierce about his expression. She couldn’t look away even if she wanted to.
“Iris, luv, you need to walk away.”
“I can’t. You know that.”
“Iris.”
“Synek,” she shot back, knowing that his name would get his attention. It always did. “Don’t ask me to do that,” she said, her voice low.
Because if he did, then she would be betraying him, and she hated the very idea of that.
But Synek wasn’t hearing her, even as he stared down at her with such an expression that she could almost feel what was reflected in his face. “You don’t know what he’ll do to you.”
Den of Mercenaries [Volume Two] Page 70