by Bethany-Kris
“You’re my best friend, actually,” Penny replied, smiling softly with painted pink lips. “My first real friend. And I think that’s a good enough present for all my birthdays, Luca.”
“Maybe.”
But even still ...
“How about a kiss, then?” she asked, her grin turning almost demure. Like she knew exactly what she asked for, but her shyness couldn’t help but make an appearance when she pressed her lips together and stared at the floor instead of him. “I never had a real first kiss. Could I have one of those for a birthday present? I think that would be sufficient, don’t—”
Luca should have said no. A big part of him screamed to do just that, too. If he were a better man, the kind of man he tried to be, then he would have refused. He was also her friend even if that meant a lot of things—and shit ... she did have the nerve to ask him.
He also didn’t want to say no.
Before Penny had even finished what she was saying, Luca stepped in closer to her. His hands found her waist when her head tipped back, so she could stare up at him. Without warning, he dropped his mouth down, lips locking over top of hers for a soft, stroking kiss that despite not going deeper, still managed to set flames alight in his chest. Even his heart raced against the flames.
Crazy.
He kissed her once—then twice.
The third time, her lips trembled against his as he started to pull away, and her shaky breath echoed between them. Then, he kissed the tip of her nose. And the top of her head. He didn’t let go of her waist, and Penny’s hands came to tighten around his wrists like she was trying to keep them right there in that moment. There was something incredibly innocent and enthralling about the way she let her tongue sweep the seam of her lips for a taste of him as she glanced up to meet his gaze again.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Luca only smiled back. “Happy birthday, Penny.”
LUCA WAS PERFECTLY content to sleep until the afternoon after the night of Penny’s eighteenth birthday party simply because he could. He didn’t have an early morning class, no lecture to race to, and all business for the family side of things was on hold while everyone recuperated from their celebration.
Italians knew how to party.
And rest.
With no place to go or be, Luca couldn’t find a reason to roll his ass out of bed at a decent hour. Shit, this might be the only time he was able to sleep in for months. Maybe even years. Who was he to say?
If only everyone else agreed ...
It was the sharp ring of his phone—the piercing ringtone he’d chosen for Naz’s number snatching Luca from his slumber instantly—that fucked it all up. He could have ignored the call. Even considered it when he saw the digital alarm clock said it wasn’t even nine in the goddamn morning.
Except it was Naz.
So ...
“Fuck,” Luca grumbled, rolling to the side in the bed under the fluffy comforter to reach for the cell phone ringing on the nightstand. He almost dropped the phone as he tried to blink awake and answer the call at the same time. Feeling like more of an idiot, he shoved the phone hard against the side of his face and mumbled, “What?”
“She’s gone.”
That was all Naz said.
She’s gone.
Luca blinked again and sat up in the bed, scrubbing a hand down his face to wipe away the sleep when he asked, “I don’t understand. What—who?”
“She’s gone, man. Penny. She’s gone.”
He thought his lack of comprehension and his slowness to catch up was just that he had woken up. Quickly, he understood it was simply because none of this made sense.
“Naz, I talked to Penny last night. Everybody did. She was happy. Are you sure she’s not just taking a walk or some—”
“She’s fucking gone—left her shit, took mine. Left a note, too.”
No way.
“Naz—”
“Remember the program I created? The one that scours the dark web for sexual predators?”
Of course.
Hell, the whole set up Naz made stayed at Luca’s place for a while just to keep Roz from stumbling on it. Eventually, his friend moved the system to his own home, satisfied that it wouldn’t be bothered or a problem.
Luca hadn’t asked about it since.
“She took files I had for it and the mainframe ... the laptop,” Naz murmured. “Luca, she took everything.”
“And she’s—”
“Gone,” his friend deadpanned. “Yeah.”
Now, Luca was out of the bed and entirely awake. He wasn’t neat or kind about the way he tore into his closet looking for something suitable to throw on as fast as he could when he asked Naz, “You said she left a note?”
“Yeah, but it’s—”
“What did it say?”
“Nothing, really. A thank you. She apologized.”
Luca came to a stop in the doorway of the closet, swallowing the lump that lodged in his throat to ask, “Anything else?”
“And she loves us.” Naz let out a harsh sound. “How the hell did she even leave? She barely even leaves the house! She doesn’t have a car or ... where is she?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
Or he would.
Somehow.
“I’m on my way,” Luca told his friend.
He didn’t know it then, but what started as a frantic morning would be the beginning of a long, five-year search. He hadn’t been ready. In the end, he would sacrifice what had once been his life just to find her.
How could he be ready?
Penny didn’t give him a choice.
18.
Penny
DESOLATE land surrounded all four points of the vehicle. In the backseat, Penny stared out the window to her left and watched the miles of desert pass them by with every second. She didn’t know where they were other than somewhere in Nevada. She only knew that because the pilot on the private jet that delivered her to the state had announced their arrival.
Were they still in the state?
She didn’t have a clue.
They had certainly been driving long enough to feel like they crossed several states. Well, not really, but still ...
It was also hard to see anything outside the car, except for the shape of the land, because of the darkness. Not that she figured there would be very much to see even if it was daylight. Nothing was still nothing, even in the light of day.
Penny had never done well with long car trips. It was the only time she couldn’t seem to sit still and found herself more willing to talk. Maybe that was why she asked the driver, who hadn’t even offered to speak to her, “How much longer?”
She saw his gaze dart to the rearview mirror, but otherwise, he didn’t act like she said anything. Or rather, that he didn’t hear her.
Penny wasn’t done trying, though. “Where are we?”
A sigh echoed from the front of the car. Maybe that should have been a warning for her to drop it—a sign of the man’s irritation with her sudden questions. She just didn’t care.
“Are we almost there, or—”
“My job,” the man said dryly, even his tone speaking of how bored he was, “is to move you from New York to Nevada. Accompany you. Keep you in one piece while you travel. Make sure you don’t ... take off.”
Penny swallowed hard. “Yeah, so?”
“My job is not to talk to you, entertain you, or answer your questions. Remember?”
Right.
She should have expected that.
In fact, she had been told those exact words when a folder had been placed in her hands before she boarded the private jet at a private airstrip in New York. She glanced down at the matte cover of the black folder, her fingers itching to flip open the front and see what waited inside. The warning in the back of her mind stopped her from doing just that.
Don’t open the folder, Cross had told her. It’s not for you. Think of it ... like a test. Your first of many after this, I’m sure. It�
��s not yours. And it’s certainly not yours to read. You’re going to deliver it.
To what?
That’s what she wanted to know.
The man had only shrugged and said, To the rest of your life, maybe.
She hadn’t really known what he meant, and maybe a part of her was too scared to ask him to clarify. He said he could help—that he knew people who could make it all go away. There was just one thing ...
We can protect them, he told her, but it won’t be easy.
There was a small part of Penny that was aware she wouldn’t be ready for what came next. The red flags started in New York when she had to leave the night of her eighteenth birthday party after the house was asleep, and no one would know she was gone until the morning.
By then, it was already too late.
The red flags kept popping up that this wasn’t something simple or easily undone when she had been asked to collect the data and devices Naz had been using to crawl the dark web.
We’ll get them all—every last one of them.
She held onto those words.
Repeated them like a mantra.
As long as this made everyone safe again, then that’s all Penny wanted. Or, that’s what she kept telling herself when the fear thrummed with every beat of her heart in the backseat. What else could she do?
THE COMPLEX OF BUILDINGS seemed to rise up out of the desert from nowhere. Penny didn’t even realize it was there ... until it was.
She didn’t know what to make of the tan, cement walls. From the piece of the building that she could see—along the side where they parked—there weren’t any windows despite the section jutting up from the foundation at least three stories high. Their vehicle had parked in front of two black, metal doors that didn’t even have handles on the outside.
The camera and security light overtop those doors, however, made it clear the place was active. In some way. The camera blinked with a red light while a streak of bright yellow illuminated a small patch of ground in front of the doors. Likely giving the camera a decent view of anyone who dared to step in view.
The driver put the car in park, and without a word, stepped out of the vehicle. He rounded the back to her door, and opened it up, telling her, “Step out.”
Nope.
“What is this place?” Penny asked.
She didn’t move from the backseat.
Refused.
Not until she got some kind of answer.
The man simply stared at her, repeating, “Step out.”
The look he gave her suggested that the next time he had to tell her to follow one of his orders, he was going to make her do it. Penny really didn’t want that to happen, and she didn’t want to test his patience when she had probably already done that enough on the drive there. Instead of asking again, she unbuckled the seatbelt and exited the car clutching the black folder tight to her chest.
The wind whipped around them.
It tasted ... dry.
Definitely still in Nevada.
At least that was something.
Or rather, she knew something.
“Here, you’ll need this for entrance,” the man said, holding out an item for her to take.
Penny eyed the small card stuck between his two fingers before she snatched it from his grasp. Not meeting his gaze, she flipped the thick paper over in her palm to see what it was—or what was on it, for that matter. It was small like a business card, matte black on both sides, but one was different.
A small gold circle encompassed an L written in a scripted font. Coiled around the letter was a single snake. The reptile stared out at her from the card with eyes that seemed to lock onto hers without mercy. She’d never been one for snakes, honestly.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Likely your salvation, girl.”
What?
Penny knew better than to ask.
He wouldn’t answer anyway.
“Show it to the camera,” he added. “At the doors.”
And then, she watched as he got into the car and left. That was it. Penny was alone.
Well, mostly.
The building with the black doors still waited for her. Looming at her back, she couldn’t possibly forget it was there while she watched tail lights disappear into the darkness.
THE CARD WITH THE SNAKE did get her inside the building after she held it up high under the light for the camera to clearly see. That was only after she stood in the darkness for more minutes than she cared to admit.
Fear was a terrible thing.
It controlled Penny even when she didn’t want it to. That seemed to be her entire life in a goddamn nutshell.
The fear didn’t get better when she entered the strange building. Darkness still greeted her. Empty hallways with locked doors guided her through a strange maze of stairwells and passages. No one spoke. Cameras watched her at every angle. It seemed like the place was full of ghosts.
Nothing she could see, but things she could feel ...
If that made sense.
She simply kept walking. If a door was open, then she went through it. If a hallway led her to a stairwell, then she took it.
Eventually, she came to stand in the doorway of what looked to be an office. Although ... certainly not a normal office space. The large glass and metal desk dominated the room. Walls were made up of screens that showcased camera views from every angle. The brightness of the screens contrasted against the shape of two men standing behind the desk.
One was taller than the other. He also had braided his slick, black hair neatly over his shoulder. He was the one who smiled at her.
The other man?
He simply stared.
Cold and calculating.
“Hi, I’m—”
“Put the file on the desk,” the man on the right said. The one with the icy stare and his silk button-down rolled up to his elbows. “Introductions are not important.”
She did what he asked.
Only because he didn’t offer an alternative.
Once she stepped away from the desk, the man moved forward and picked up the file. The man with the braid leaned sideways a bit to peek at what was inside the file. It was the way he lifted his brow and nodded, clearly interested in whatever he was reading, that had Penny’s heart thumping harder in her chest.
“I don’t understand what this place is,” she said, wishing anyone would talk to her.
All this silence was deafening.
“Or why I had to come here,” she added.
The man with the braid gave her a rueful smile. “It appears you’re here because your boss wants a weapon. A very specialized weapon. One we can provide.”
The other man nodded, snapping the folder closed. “Cree is right.”
“Mark that one down,” Cree said in a chuckle, “It’s not often Dare says that. I like to keep count.”
Penny was so confused. “What?”
The man named Dare lifted a hand like he was showing her the space—or maybe everything surrounding them including the building—when he said, “Welcome to The League, Penny Dunsworth.”
19.
Luca
“NU-NU lu-lu,” the one-year-old babbled.
Leaning in the rear passenger window, Luca tickled the cheek of his nephew. “Uncle Luca, yeah, dude. Nu-nu-lu-lu.”
It was the most little Cross could get out. The kid had ma and dad down. He reached for things he wanted and was attempting to at least copy the sounds of some words when it was something that interested him. Luca was working on getting the baby to say his name, now.
When he could, that was.
And had time.
“Almost,” Luca praised the boy.
Nu-nu lu-lu was the closest they had ever gotten to actually saying Uncle Luca so he was going to count that shit as a win.
Cross grinned back at him, showcasing the two front teeth on the top and bottom that had given him hell growing in. He clapped his chubby hands and laughed. Luca could
n’t help but laugh back. There was something about babies—or rather, his godson, in particular—that made him fucking stupid.
Still wasn’t keen on having his own. But shit, he loved this kid.
A lot could happen in six months.
Luca learned how to change a kid’s diaper because he decided to start taking his godson once a week for a night. It let Naz and Roz get out of the house together ... without a baby in tow. He also dropped out of college officially because he was tired of trying to swim while his head was barely above water. Pride was a tricky fucking thing when a man like him had to admit he failed at something.
He learned that, too.
Six months also saw his sister finally marry his best friend—shit that was probably destined to happen from the moment they met as children but took decades to finally come true. Life was funny like that.
What else happened in six months?
Little Cross turned one the week before—his godson was starting to develop a personality with every babyish smirk and each squealy laugh.
And absolutely nothing.
Nothing related to Penny, that was. Because six months was the amount of time Luca had spent looking for even a scrap of her existence. It was like piece by piece, she started to disappear. The fact she existed in the first place was slowly erased in every way.
It started with her physical disappearance. The biggest part of the entire puzzle—what started everything. He realized there was nothing on paper to say she had actually left or been taken. They did have video, though.
Security camera footage of Naz’s place showed Penny taking the external hard drive and other devices attached to his dark web program, writing a note, and leaving. She got into the back of a waiting vehicle that was blacked out on all four corners.
And that was it.
He went into her accounts, first. Bank. Email. Anything to find something. A purchase, even, that would start him out when he realized she left of her own will. He couldn’t find a plane, bus or train ticket in her name—nothing. Any legal way to track Penny came up with the same, and he exhausted those options fast, but he had already moved onto the illegal ways of finding someone in their world, anyway.