The work was extensive, and Răzvan was sure it had been really fucking painful when he had it done. Sometimes, when he moved just right, the tattoos seemed to be alive.
“Where’d you disappear to yesterday?” Thanatos asked as he walked into the kitchen behind him, immediately going for the jug of orange juice in the refrigerator.
The peppy bastard didn’t believe in coffee like the rest of mankind.
—The Hall.—
And thoughts of the place immediately conjured images of Winter in his head.
Winter.
He hadn’t seen her since California, but it had felt like no time at all had passed when he saw her the night before.
She’d been just as beautiful as the day he’d met her, maybe more so because she wasn’t as much of a mystery as she had been then
But her sudden presence in New York had come as a surprise because in the months he’d been talking to her since California, she had never mentioned she was coming.
Then again, she’d disappeared on him about a week ago, and he hadn’t heard from her until she walked into The Hall.
The thought shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did.
He shouldn’t have been thinking of her like that at all. He wasn’t supposed to be interested because Nix had made it pointedly clear that she was off-limits.
Why? He didn’t know.
“While I couldn’t care less who you choose to spend your nights with,” Nix had said in that polished accent of his, “she’s not one you need to entertain.”
At the time, he hadn’t thought anything of it, or her, but that was before Aidra died.
Before Winter snared his attention.
He’d thought she’d only meant to pay her respects when she first reached out to him, and he’d been okay with that.
Until she’d texted him again.
WHY ARE YOUR EYES BLUE?
How the hell was he supposed to answer that question?
But he’d been baffled by her enough to try to give her an answer.
He hadn’t realized what she was doing until later—until he didn’t feel the weight of grief anymore.
Distracting him.
She asked questions he might have ignored before, but then, it was exactly what he needed.
Her curiosity had ultimately fed his own, and considering he didn’t care much about anyone outside those closest to him, even he was surprised at his curiosity about her.
But he’d yet to ask what he really wanted to know—why she worked for a man like The Kingmaker?
From what he knew about her, she wasn’t nearly jaded enough to do this and still be as sunny as she was.
“Anyone die?” Thanatos asked as he twisted off the top of the carton and poured the drink into his glass, drawing his attention back to him.
—No one has to die for it to be a good time, Vali.—
“Yeah, well, enjoy it for the both of us. Have you talked to Fang?”
—He’s alive.—
But that was about all he knew since he only ever managed to get a few words at a time from Fang.
“He’ll get through this,” Thanatos whispered as he came around the island. “We’ve suffered worse.”
That was the hope anyway.
Physical pain and emotional pain were vastly different, and oftentimes, the latter hurt the most.
“We’re going to one of Nicu’s spots tonight if you’re interested,” he threw out. “It’s boring as fuck, but you know, support and all that.”
When they robbed banks, they very rarely kept all the money for themselves. Invictus liked to visit churches and leave anonymous donations, but only to those he approved of.
Even Răzvan was a bit overdue for his, but he couldn’t tonight.
—I have plans.—
Thanatos frowned. “You never have plans.”
—Tonight, I do.—
And he had no intention of telling him what those plans were.
Chapter 5
Back at her apartment, Winter dropped her keys in the bowl, pulling out the laptop from her bag before dropping down onto her bed with a sigh.
Tonight had proven far more interesting than she’d thought it would be.
She hadn’t made any promises to Ollie after they’d left the meeting because she didn’t want to break it if things didn’t go the way she hoped.
And unlike the others who were jumping at the chance to find the money and become rich, she needed to do her research first.
She was nothing if not careful. Life with the Den had taught her that.
The mercenaries never did a job without having as many of the facts as possible—something she could attest to, considering she did most of it for them.
Some targets were easier to find than others, especially those that were careless on the web. They didn’t double-check to make sure they were using a private browser or picking a password that wasn’t easily guessed—those were the ones that took her minutes to find.
Sylvain Richards was practically a ghost.
He had a profile on his company’s website—a profile she’d had to hunt for —but beyond that, he had no social media presence whatsoever.
Smart, because it made it harder to find anything on him, but annoying because it made her job harder.
But no matter how careful he was on his end, articles written on him provided far more than she could have hoped for.
Piston hadn’t lied when he’d said the man worked for the underbelly of society. The majority of his clients were suspected cartel leaders, drug dealers, and even a few arms traffickers—she wouldn’t have been surprised if half the men who frequented The Hall were clients of his.
They had all managed to get off on some technicality.
But she guessed that wouldn’t matter if he was stealing money from them.
Funny, just reading up on him, he sounded like the sort of man The Kingmaker would have had one of the mercenaries go after.
Twenty minutes later, she still wasn’t sure whether the job was worth it, but she couldn’t shake her interest in it now.
There was nothing more fun that uncovering the untraceable.
Plus, a part of her was excited at the idea of leading her own mission—to be the one calling the shots for a change instead of sitting in the background.
And the money would be a bonus.
But that didn’t change the fact that they couldn’t do it by themselves. They might have been some of the best hackers in the world, but actually breaking into a place was not part of her repertoire.
She knew plenty of great thieves, particularly an Irish one who would love to give her tips on the trade if she asked, but there was no guarantee he wouldn’t wonder why she was asking, and the last thing she needed was Syn catching wind of what she was doing.
But she was now considering another set of thieves.
Or one, in particular.
For the first time since she’d found it weeks ago, she pulled up a file from the archives of her hard drive she was never supposed to know about.
Sure, she was The Kingmaker’s gatekeeper, of sorts, and he was a master at keeping secrets. And even if he wasn’t the most technically savvy—that was why he had her, after all—he’d had someone hide this one among the other files of his. ‘Persons of Interest,’ he liked to call them.
Then again, he might not have been trying to hide them from her, but rather from his brother, Nix, who undoubtedly had a hacker of his own and wouldn’t be too pleased that his brother had a dossier on the four men who worked for him.
The existence of the file hadn’t surprised her as much as the fact she hadn’t found it until recently.
All the mercenaries had a file The Kingmaker kept on hand, but that was expected. What they and many others didn’t know was that he kept a file on everyone.
Politicians.
Grocery clerks.
Consultants.
Even some men and women who liked to dress up as Furries didn’t escap
e his notice.
If they could potentially offer him something he needed, he gathered all the intel he could until he had a digital rendering of their lives.
There was even one on Nix, though even with all her curiosity, Winter hadn’t touched that one.
Calavera was one of her closest friends, and it felt like a breach of trust just knowing it existed and not telling her about it.
The only one she cared about was the one on The Wild Bunch.
Theirs wasn’t nearly as extensive as the files her employer kept on the mercenaries, but it was a treasure trove of information she was sure she would have never known without reading it.
There was Fang—the unofficial leader of this little band of thieves. Classic middle child complex. Răzvan was the oldest, Thanatos the youngest, and Invictus somewhere in the middle of them.
Fang had seemed rather playful the few times she’d crossed paths with him back in California, but she hadn’t been around him enough to get a good read on him. But after Aidra, that had all changed.
Invictus and Thanatos only had one page between the pair of them for reasons she didn’t know, but from what she read, one didn’t seem to act without the other.
Each of the photographs in their file always showed the pair together and never separate.
Thanatos was the blond, if she remembered correctly, and Invictus had dark hair tapered on the sides.
The former always seemed to be smiling—the latter, on the other hand, never seemed to.
There wasn’t much in their file beyond their fighting styles, confirmed kills, and the name of the orphanage where they had grown up.
Where all of them had grown up, she’d learned.
An orphanage that, no matter where she looked, was hard to find any information on.
But it was Răzvan’s file that made her pause and actually read it through rather than skim as she had the others.
She’d never mentioned it to him, and not just because The Kingmaker would be pissed, but because she knew how the lack of privacy made people feel.
If she was going to do this job with Ollie and the others, though, her best bet would be the one member of The Wild Bunch she could hopefully talk into it.
Before she did that, though, there was one person she needed to talk to first.
Reaching for her phone, she typed in her password with lightning speed before dialing the number of the one person she was closest to in the Den outside Syn.
She hadn’t heard from her since California. Not for lack of trying on her part, but Calavera was on her second honeymoon, and Winter understood that.
When the call actually connected, she laughed in surprise. “Is he finally letting you up for air long enough to answer the phone?” she asked, cradling the phone between her ear and shoulder as she finished typing out a message. “I was sure it would go straight to voicemail again.”
Calavera’s laughter echoed over the line, the soft cry of a seagull following. “You’ve got about five minutes before he comes back and ends the conversation himself.”
She might not have known Nix very well—not nearly as well as she knew his far more attractive younger brother—but one thing she did know was how much he loved Calavera.
She had become something of a big sister and a best friend to Winter after they’d met years ago when Calavera had needed help finding someone. Before then, Winter hadn’t even known female mercenaries existed.
“Tăcut. Tell me about him.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask …”
“What’s he like? Tăcut, I mean.”
“Serious. A little rude, though he can be nice when he wants to be. Maybe a bit surly. One of the best guys I know. Why?”
“We’re getting to know each other,” she replied, which was technically not a lie.
“I say this with love, so keep that in mind, but I’d rather Syn not try to break his legs. I like Tăcut the way he is.”
Winter rubbed her forehead. “That’s why I’m not telling him about it.”
Syn had a tendency to overreact.
He didn’t believe in asking questions first.
Calavera’s tone grew more pointed. “Is there something to tell?”
Winter glanced at her phone for the time. If she was going to make it to The Hall on time, she needed to get dressed because what she was wearing now wasn’t going to work for what she intended. “Not yet.”
A muffled but distinctly masculine voice sounded in the background before Calavera came back over the line. “Looks like my time is up. Be careful, and don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. Trust me—I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell Syn you’re interested in someone other than him.”
As she ended the call, Winter was sure she’d made the right decision, but as she got dressed, she wasn’t thinking about a job.
She was dressing to get a reaction out of Răzan.
He’d stumbled across The Hall by accident, or more aptly, Nix had suggested it to him after a job had gone bad long before California.
It was a good place to get lost in the bottom of a bottle, and though the others didn’t venture there often, he still went.
Regular bars didn’t appeal to him. It always felt like he was under a microscope when he was inside one, and people had a tendency to get squirrely when they realized he didn’t speak, but at Dismas’ place, he was practically invisible.
There were whispers, though—the curiosity about just who he was and why he never attempted to engage with anyone—but no one had been bold enough to address him yet.
But a tiny hacker half their size hadn’t given a shit how big he was.
His bike’s headlight cut through the swarth of darkness night brought as he rode toward the building then parked a little way down and removed his helmet.
Once it was secured and he was heading down the nearly vacant street, he dug out a pack of Romanian-brand cigarettes from his pocket and tucked one between his lips.
He knew the rules about smoking inside, but so long as he didn’t step foot in with it, Dismas didn’t give a shit.
Not even five minutes had passed before soft laughter drew his attention away from the cigarette he held and to the group of three walking in his direction.
His gaze swept over them quickly, assessing their threat level, but it only took a glance at the silver-haired girl walking just in front to lower his guard.
It was the hair, he thought, that seemed to glow in the night that made him notice her almost immediately, and not because something about her made him sit up and take notice.
For a moment, he could study her in a way he hadn’t been able to the night before, or even the first time they’d met.
He’d been too preoccupied the first time with getting shit done for his handler to truly take stock of her, and then after Aidra, he’d been busy keeping Fang from falling down the rabbit hole.
But now, like it was the first time all over again, he was really seeing her.
Long legs encased in skintight black denim with slashes at the knees and up her thighs—a stark difference from the short skirt she’d worn the day before and the black garter.
Distracted or not, he hadn’t missed that little detail.
And when she was only a couple of feet away, he could see the crisscross pattern of whatever she wore beneath them, the thin material stretching a few inches above the waistband of her jeans. Fishnet? Then there was the top that showed far more than it covered, including the tiny jewel in her navel as well as the choker that encircled her throat.
Two words were inscribed in silver right in the very center.
Bad Kitty.
There was an air of innocence about her with those big gray eyes that made her look perpetually surprised, but one look at the rest of her made him think there wasn’t anything innocent about her at all.
A rueful smile spread across her face as she caught sight of him, breaking away from her group without a word to come over to him. “You know,” she said, gest
uring to his cigarette, silently asking for permission. “Once is a coincidence—twice is fate.”
He looked from her to the two she’d walked up with, siblings if he had to guess—the boy he recognized from the night before as the one who’d been walking with Winter when she was leaving.
They were both blatantly staring, but the boy broke his gaze first and muttered something to the girl that sent them both into The Hall without looking back.
—Is that what this is? Fate?—
Her smile grew a fraction of an inch before she wrapped those plump lips around the filter of the cigarette that was nearly half gone. “Isn’t it? I wasn’t expecting to see you last night, but there you were, and now you’re just the guy I need to see.”
—For what exactly?— She’d never gotten around to telling him that.
Her gaze dropped to her feet a moment before returning to his face. “Let’s make a deal.”
—I’m listening.—
“If I beat you in a game of pool, you have to do something for me.”
He arched a brow, waiting for her to elaborate further.
“But you can’t tell Calavera about it,” she added quickly. “Or that handler of yours.”
If he wasn’t suspicious before, he definitely was now. —What are you up to?—
“Nothing good, I promise you that, but that’s for me to know,” she said with a smile, tossing the spent cigarette to the ground and grinding it out with the toe of her boot.
Trouble.
She was definitely fucking trouble.
—Tell me again what I get when I win?—
“Dealer’s choice.”
Unbidden, his gaze dropped to her chest where the structured cups of her top emphasized her breasts. At that moment, he would have happily said her.
But he knew better than to say that just yet. —A boon.—
“A boon?”
—Something I can call in later.—
“Sounds ambiguous. I like it.” She gestured to the front door of The Hall where Jack, the doorman, was watching them with a frown on his face. “Lead the way, big guy.”
For two years, he’d been trained to spot minute differences in people—the slight tics and tells that told him what a person was thinking.
Shadows & Silence: A Wild Bunch Novel Page 5