“Take care, Iris,” Belladonna said with a formal nod of her head. When she turned her back, fully intending on leaving once more, Iris forgot all about caution.
“I’m curious,” Iris called after her, waiting until she paused and looked back to speak. “Why didn’t you kill him? You had every opportunity.”
“I couldn’t,” she answered. “And I had no reason to.”
She said that with such calm efficiency that Iris almost believed her. Almost. Because while she didn’t know the Kingmaker as well as Belladonna or any of the others, she knew that he might have been willing to be done with the mercenaries, but he wasn’t done with the woman in front of her.
Not by a long shot.
And she wondered, oh how she wondered, what would become of them once they were all gone. Once there was no one else they could face but each other.
As she watched the woman disappear out the doors, Iris tried to imagine what could have possibly happened between those two to bring them to this point.
*
Synek was the first through the door, taking out anyone who wore a guard’s uniform and those who didn’t quickly scatter out of his way. Though he had no idea where he was going, it was easy for him to navigate the halls as it was similarly designed to a two-story prison.
“Take the left corridor.”
Whatever resistance met him was quickly disposed of as the cell doors opened one by one. The prisoners fled from their cells, raging against their captors, which made Synek’s job even easier.
“Is this you?” he asked Winter, happily showing one of the prisoners his favorite knife when he looked at him a second too long.
“I’m not opening the cells,” she answered, sounding every bit as confused as he felt.
“Somebody else is here,” he muttered gravely, quickening his step.
Iris might have trusted Belladonna to keep her word that once she did what was asked of her, that would be the last time they spoke, but Synek didn’t. Because, for whatever reason, she had chosen to kidnap and hold Grimm for years compared to the minutes she’d spent with each of them.
Grimm meant something, and he doubted it was in a good way.
“Right hallway.”
He followed Winter’s direction, entering a darker, more secluded section of the black site. These cells, unlike the others, were smaller, only holding a single bed each, and the men inside them didn’t look half-starved mindless.
Their eyes were clear, their stance straight.
They watched him with the same impassiveness as he watched them.
What the fuck was going on?
He couldn’t stop, though, not when he didn’t know why the other prisoners were being released or even who was in charge of the facility. Instead, he picked up the pace, scanning the cells as he passed, looking for a familiar face in the sea of men.
Synek was nearly to the door when a small charge went off, blowing the doors off two cells, smoke and debris flying out.
“Grimm!”
He forgot all about training as he raced forward, fearing the worst. He could almost hear Winter screaming in his ear, but the words were drowned out as the ringing in his ears grew louder.
A blond man with a beard came stumbling out of one of the cells, his gaze immediately latching onto Synek and narrowing. There was a tattoo inked up the side of his neck—a snake, if he saw correctly.
“Incoming,” the man said, his voice distinctly American.
Synek might have let him be had he not came at him.
Instead, he had no choice but to dodge a well-thrown punch that barely missed his jaw. He launched a fist of his own, first to the man’s side—though he hardly made a sound or moved back a step despite the power Synek had behind that hit—then another to his face, but before he could connect, a foot landed soundly in his side.
He flew across the room, his ribs protesting the treatment and all he saw was red.
He lurched back around, ready to fight, barely taking in the grisly visage of the man with too long hair and a beard that was in desperate need of a cut.
Synek was swinging before he even got a good visual.
But someone caught his fist.
“You’d think I hadn’t taught you how to fight.”
All at once, the rage fled him as he reared back, blinking up at the man who released him a second later.
He couldn’t have fought a grin if he tried. “Grimm bastard.”
He smirked behind his beard, the same man he’d always been, if not for the tightness around his eyes. “What took you so fucking long?”
Synek laughed.
If only the man knew.
He touched his fingers to his ear, not willing to take his eyes off Grimm for a moment lest the man disappear again.
“Target acquired.”
*
Iris was seconds from chewing off her thumbnail when she heard the mechanical whirring at the door a second before the lock turned and the heavy wood swung open. Synek walked in, still in his gear, though he was a little worse for wear.
That didn’t stop her from racing across the room and checking over the rest of him to make sure that he wasn’t too injured besides the bruises and cuts she saw on his face.
But he only gave her a second to look her fill before his mouth was on hers and she forgot about everything else that wasn’t him.
“It’s good to be home,” he said, holding her so tight she could burst.
But Iris didn’t mind.
She squeezed him back.
“I’m glad you made it back. Did you find him?”
Part of her was afraid his relieved expression would disappear, and sadness would take its place, but it didn’t. He smiled. Smiled so brightly that she knew they had found him before he even said. That his friend and mentor and the man he’d been searching for, for years was alive and well.
The job really was done.
“What now?” she asked, brushing her fingers through his hair.
“Now? Now, we fuck, and I pass out for a few days.”
Sounded like a plan.
Chapter 48
While there were benefits to being dead, it was also a hassle.
Like the fact Iris had to remain tucked in the back of a car with tinted windows well down the road from where the prison sat and the row of reporters waiting outside it. Most had fallen off the trail of the mysterious man known only as the Kingmaker when there was very little to find, but others were still hounding for the story.
Of course, her father wouldn’t know anything about the Kingmaker or his business or anything really, considering he had been locked inside this facility without any contact with the outside world, but they didn’t know that.
And worse, she hadn’t been able to explain to him what all had happened since the last time she saw him.
Which meant he would soon be finding out about her fake death.
She was squeezing Synek’s hand, Iris realized too late, loosening her grip on his fingers as she looked over at him apologetically. “Sorry.”
He merely smiled, not bothered at all. “You’re excited,” he said with a shrug. “Nothing wrong with that.”
And nervous, though she didn’t voice that thought aloud.
She didn’t think with the way she was feeling that excited was the right word. What she felt was more akin to peace. Ease at the knowledge that there was nothing left to worry about.
No more enemies.
No more sleepless nights feeling as if she were failing and destined to lose a battle she didn’t completely understand. She no longer felt the weight of responsibility on her shoulders. And after Synek came home three nights ago, she saw that he felt the same.
He seemed lighter. The shadows in his eyes not as oppressing. His tension gone.
They were free of it all.
“You know,” Iris said as they waited, “you didn’t have to wear that. My father is going to love you regardless.”
Even if only because she d
id.
Synek was unlike any other man she had ever met in her life. He could be vicious and angry, but he could also be remarkably kind with a charm she would never get tired of.
He was her one.
And because he had wanted to make a good first impression, he’d worn a bow tie. He hadn’t considered that his face was bruised, his lip cut, and he naturally wore an expression that promised violence.
The bow tie, he said, would make all the difference.
It was impossible for her to love him any more than she already did.
“He needs to know you’re in good hands,” Synek said with a nod, taking her hand back in his.
“He will.”
Up ahead, one of the reporters broke off from the others, holding a phone to her ear. Her expression shifted from confusion to elation before she was racing to her van, signaling for her camera guy to come along with her.
Iris blinked in confusion, watching as the others did the same, each answering a call one by one until they all drove off, leaving smoke in their wake.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“I suspect someone called and told them the Kingmaker was spotted in Manhattan leaving the Beaumont Hotel. Probably even got a grainy image of a mysterious man wearing sunglasses texted to them too.”
“Who …? Winter,” she realized.
Synek nodded. “She didn’t want the vultures asking your father how he felt about your death before we got a chance to explain.”
Iris would have to thank her for this. “Where are they now?” she asked, thinking of the conversation they’d had the night before.
“Romania,” he said, and though he undoubtedly knew Winter was in good hands, he still got that worried little notch between his brows. He probably always would.
Just as the Den had gone their separate ways, the Wild Bunch had ventured off too, for answers, she was sure, about the Jackal. She hoped they found what they were looking for.
Up ahead, Iris could just see a guard in the watchtower waving his arm, a signal for the gate to open, and the sound of the alarm ringing just as the metal fence slid open was music to her ears.
“Go on,” Synek said, drawing her gaze to him. There was that smile she loved so much on his face, but there was also a touch of nervousness.
She didn’t have to be told twice.
She slipped out of the car, making sure her hat was still pulled low as she started toward the prison’s gate where she could just make out a man in jeans and a white T-shirt, carrying a bag under one arm.
He was trying, she thought, to look confident, as if he had always known that this moment would come. That the relief he felt wasn’t substantial.
But it only took his eyes finding hers across the lot for that expression to waver. For her to see the way he tried to withhold his tears as he hurried toward her.
She could see it all in the way he took a shuddering breath—the way he scrubbed a hand down his face and glanced back as if he expected someone to tackle him to the ground and tell him he had to go back in.
But he wouldn’t because all of it was finally over.
Iris wasn’t sure which of them started running first, but it didn’t matter, not when she could finally wrap her arms around him and feel the comfort of his embrace.
This time, she was crying happy tears.
“Who’s this?”
Iris pulled back just far enough to see that Synek was upon them, looking adorably awkward. He plucked at his bow tie, trying to straighten it even though it had been perfect.
She might have laughed had he not looked so serious. Of all the things that could make him nervous, she had never expected it to be him meeting her father.
“Dad, this is my—” She paused, considering. Boyfriend sounded too simple, lover too intimate. “My one. Syn is my one.”
She could see what those words did to him, and knew, later, he would express that in a dozen different ways. She was looking forward to it.
“Syn, meet my dad.”
Synek cleared his throat, extending his hand. “It’s a pleasure, sir.”
“You’re the mercenary, right?”
Synek froze, his gaze darting to her for a moment, seeming at a loss for words. “I am.”
“She’s told me a lot about you,” Marvin went on, and it was taking everything in her not to laugh at the way he was so obviously trying to give him a hard time.
“Nothing too bad, I don’t think,” Synek muttered, still pulling at his bow tie.
“Enough that I know you love her, and that’s the only thing that matters to me.”
“Yeah, there’s no question about that,” he said, smiling at her.
This … this moment was better than anything she had ever dreamed about. “We should get going,” Iris said, starting for the car. “We have a plane to catch, and I have a lot of explaining to do.”
*
Gray skies and drizzle.
Synek was happy to be home.
Once, London had looked bleak, a place he had longed to escape from, but that was before the sheer terror that was fucking New York, and he soon realized there was no place like London. Which was why it hadn’t been hard at all for him to miss being in the States. Here, no one hunted him, and he didn’t have very many enemies.
Here, it was quiet.
Here, he could breathe a little easier.
And he couldn’t think of a better place to start over with Iris than here.
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” Iris asked as they pulled away from the hotel and entered the flow of traffic.
“Oh, he’s gonna love it here.”
If he wanted, Marvin Spencer would be able to start over from scratch—or rather, start over with a new identity. Synek had contemplated what would happen once the man was freed from prison from the moment the paperwork started changing hands.
It didn’t matter that the former governor had been corrupt or that he had done a lot of bad things. Her father would never truly be innocent in the eyes of the public. Sometimes the action, whether committed or not, tarnished a person’s image indefinitely.
Here, though, he would get another chance to lead a different life.
Synek had fully expected the man to want to live with them until he at least got a feel for the city, but he’d very kindly—for Iris’s sake, he imagined—declined. So Synek had put him up in a B&B not far from them, granting him his independence while ensuring Iris would have peace of mind.
He had been living with more than a hundred other people for the past eight years. He wanted a place to be alone.
Now, there was just one last surprise up his sleeve.
“I can assure you, dove,” he said, leaning over to kiss the curve of her jaw before nipping the same spot. “Your father ain’t gonna want to hear the sounds that you make when I get you on your—”
She covered his mouth with her hand before he could finish. “Must you?”
He laughed even as she rolled her eyes at him.
“Tomorrow,” he said as he turned on his turn signal, spotting a familiar building in the distance. “I’ll show you around to my old flat. Tonight, though, I want to take you somewhere special.”
“Oh?” she asked, her smile growing as she leaned in his direction. “What kind of surprise?”
The kind that had him a little nervous, if he was being honest.
He had never done anything like this before, and there were probably some steps he was skipping, but he didn’t care.
He’d never been one for rules anyway.
Synek turned into a subdivision, found the address, and pulled into the driveway. He did his best to ignore the curiosity and wonder on her face as he unsnapped his seat belt and hurried around to her side to get the door for her.
“What’s—?”
“Not yet,” he said, fumbling with the keys a bit before he got to the right one and inserted it into the lock.
Clearing his throat, he finally got the door open and let he
r walk in ahead of him, praying to anyone who would listen that the inside looked the way he hoped.
Iris stood in the middle of the floor, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide as she scanned every inch of it. He waited for the distaste, for the unhappiness.
He had already been thinking he should have spent more to get her a better place somewhere in London that was modern and fully updated.
“This is amazing,” she said instead, the very words he had longed to hear.
“It’s yours,” he said quickly, before amending, “ours. Not as nice as the brownstone, mind you, but it’s—”
“Perfect,” she finished for him, turning to face him. “It’s perfect.”
“You can decorate it however you’d like,” he said with a nod, pulling her back against him.
“You are good with your hands,” she muttered so low he almost hadn’t heard her.
He was glad she was happy. He wanted that above all else. “Where do we go from here?” he asked, reaching for her hand, intertwining their fingers.
“There’s only one thing left to do,” Iris answered with a smile. “We need to find a mattress store because I refuse to sleep on that couch of yours, and we need to get you a pillow.”
“You’re still on that pillow bit?” His smile was contagious.
“You deserve nice things too, Synek.”
He wanted to deserve her.
He smiled, loving this moment more than he could ever put into words. “I love you, Iris. You know that even if I haven’t been saying it nearly fucking enough.”
“You say it plenty,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “I love you too, in case the pillow doesn’t make that perfectly clear.”
It did.
More than she could ever know.
Epilogue
Three years later …
There was no place like home.
It didn’t matter if he had been gone for an hour or a day, Synek always looked forward to the moment when he was driving down the quiet street toward the old Victorian, knowing Iris was waiting for him.
All his life, he had gone from one room to the next, surviving off scraps and accepting it as his due, but once they left New York and put an ocean between them and the past that no longer mattered, she hadn’t given him a choice in the matter.
Den of Mercenaries: Volume Two Page 75