As the chaos wound down, Synek felt the weight of everything that had happened slowly bearing down on him. He didn’t think about the pain in his chest or his leg as he stumbled through the rubble, trying to remember the way he thought he’d seen Iris go before he had taken off after the Jackal.
The job said he should look for other members of the Den, or more importantly, he should ensure that the Kingmaker hadn’t been harmed, and if he had, to get him medical help as soon as possible.
But there was only one person on his mind as he searched the wreckage.
She was the only one who mattered.
He should have known, even before he came across her kneeling in the middle of the field, where she had gone. He imagined that if their roles were reversed, he would be exactly where she was.
But knowing why she was kneeling there, her gaze never lifting from the body she leaned over, he felt a pang in his chest.
He had failed her.
“Syn!”
Instinct had him turning, finding Winter looking frantic, the relief in her apparent as she hurried toward him. Her shadow wasn’t too far behind, though his mask was gone and abandoned somewhere, lost among the sea of destruction around them.
But even as a part of him was glad she wasn’t hurt, and that the only injury he could see on her was a small cut to her cheek, he was more worried about Iris.
Iris, who still hadn’t spoken.
Explosions had gone off for what felt like ages, followed quickly by the sharp crack of bullets flying. Dozens of people had run screaming, believing their lives were about end because of the kill squad Belladonna had called on, yet now, there was nothing.
Silence.
Nothing good ever followed.
“Ir—”
“I trusted you.”
Three little words shouldn’t have wounded him the way they did. “Iris, I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry.” Her voice caught at the end. Her hands balled into trembling fists on her thighs. “This was what he wanted all along, right? The governor dead.”
Synek wanted to speak again, to explain, but he could see she wasn’t hearing him. She probably didn’t even see him, not with the way she still had yet to look away from the dead man.
But he had to try. “I didn’t know he would kill him. That wasn’t—”
“But you’re the killer,” she said, her gaze finally lifting to his, and at the pain there, he almost wished she hadn’t. “That’s your job, isn’t it? You’re his cleaner. If there’s someone to maim and murder and dispose of inside of a ditch somewhere, he calls on you. Because that’s what matters, isn’t it? It’s about what the Kingmaker wants, and everyone else be fucked.”
There wasn’t anger in her voice when she spoke.
Anger, he might have been able to take. More than anything, he wanted her anger because that he could deal with. That he could fix.
But heartache ... he didn’t know how to fix a broken heart.
It wasn’t just about the ex-governor being dead, and it wasn’t about the vengeance she hadn’t been able to mete out. It was about her father.
The one true innocent in all of this.
The only life who would truly be affected by the governor’s death.
The Kingmaker could still carry on, doing as he always did. Even Belladonna, who had set all this into motion, wasn’t truly affected by all of this. Undoubtedly, she had accounted for this very moment.
But Iris hadn’t.
She had believed from the very beginning when she had absolutely no reason to trust him that he would be able to do what he had promised her. He would be able to get her father out of prison.
Not just breaking him out where he would be forced to live like a fugitive for the rest of his life, but as a free man as he should have always been.
Instead, he was the reason she had failed, and worse, she was right to be upset with him.
He did know the Kingmaker. He knew the man cared about himself more than he cared about anything, and ensuring justice prevailed for a man he didn’t know or could prove to be beneficial to him was not a priority for him.
“I can fix this,” Synek said, though he had no way of knowing just how to go about that. He only knew that no amount of money, or political offices, or affiliation would keep him from doing right by her.
“No,” Iris answered, finally moving to her feet as if she realized that Spader wouldn’t be drawing another breath. “You can’t, but I don’t want you to anyway. You’ve done enough.”
He reached for her without thinking, trying to grab her hand, but she jerked away from him before he could even gain an inch.
“I’m sorry,” he said, wishing he could show her just how much.
“Do you love me, Synek?”
He felt that question like a punch to the chest, but he had never expected to hear her say it like that—with sadness and regret in her voice. This wasn’t the way he was supposed to tell her.
“Of course, I do,” he answered without hesitation. Without thought.
If there was nothing else he was sure of, he was sure at that moment that he loved her more than anything in the world.
“Then don’t follow me,” she replied, finally looking away from him as a tear fell down her cheek. “Let me go.”
She could have asked him for anything at that moment—anything in the world—and he would have set everything on fire in his efforts to get it for her.
Anything but that.
“I can’t.”
Those words didn’t eat at him the way they should have. He had gone years without ever showing weakness. That was the last promise he had made to himself before he ever stepped foot in the Wraith compound.
Don’t ever let anyone see your weakness.
He lived and breathed by those words, but as he stood across from the woman he loved and she asked him to let her go, Synek didn’t give a fuck about weakness.
He just wanted her to stay.
“Don’t ask that of me.”
“Don’t ask me to stay,” she fired back at him, and while he had thought he wanted her anger, this ... this wasn’t what he wanted.
That rage intertwined with her sadness. The way it felt as if it was sinking into his bones and twisting him up inside.
“I don’t want to hate you,” she whispered, unable to meet his gaze, “not when I’ve started to love you. I’m not strong enough wake up next to you knowing that ...”
She couldn’t finish, but he knew what she wasn’t saying.
Iris turned her back to him, and Synek was just a step behind her until he felt Winter’s fingers grip his arm. He was seconds from shaking her off until she spoke.
“Let her go.”
“I can’t. Didn’t you fucking hear that? I won’t.”
If anything, her gaze was sadder than Iris’s had been. “Right now, you have to.”
Synek had a choice.
If he really wanted to get to her, he could. He wouldn’t let anyone stand in his way, but nothing he could say would ease her pain. Nothing would make the Spader’s death easier on her.
But if he wanted her forgiveness ... if he wanted to make this up to her, he had to give her something she wanted in return.
And even as it fucking gutted to let her go, he stood there and bore it with the knowledge that he wouldn’t stop until he had her back.
White noise.
That was all Synek heard as he rode in the back seat of the truck, his gaze unfocused as his mind turned in and over on itself. He was fine a moment ago, when he’d been standing in the middle of that field watching his one turn and walk away from him. Or at least, he thought he had.
But Synek had always been good at pretending. He hid what hurt him most.
Pain didn’t affect him the way it affected others. He buried it as deep as it could go and refused to even acknowledge it. Sometimes, he didn’t even notice the agony he was in until much later when the adrenaline finally subsided and he was left with
nothing but his thoughts.
He should have known that this, this would cut him. He should have known he would feel her absence like a bleeding wound once she was no longer with him.
“Syn ... are you okay?”
The question came from his left, soft and concerned, and Synek didn’t have to look in Winter’s direction to know she was trying to meet his gaze through the rearview mirror from where she sat behind the wheel.
Before they had left, while he stood staring at the spot where Iris had once been, Winter had sent her Romanian off, promising to see him later. It was clear he hadn’t wanted to linger, not with what he had just learned about his presumed dead brother and the absence of the rest of the Wild Bunch, but he had, for Winter.
Because he was loyal to her above all others.
It was what a good man would do.
Synek had hated the very idea of Tăcut for entirely selfish reasons, but the man reminded him on various occasions that his doubts and fears for Winter were unfounded. He was the better choice for her.
Yet Synek had stood there and let the ex-governor die without preventing it from happening. A part of him hadn’t expected the Kingmaker to actually kill him, even as well as he knew the man.
The Kingmaker wasn’t like other killers—he didn’t kill indiscriminately. If the world was his chess board, the Kingmaker made sure that every piece he captured was with purpose. So foolish as it had been, Synek had believed it was merely a ploy to get Belladonna to confess to something when the Kingmaker pulled out a gun Synek hadn’t even known the other man was carrying.
Besides, he didn’t ever have to pull a trigger. Not when he had a team of mercenaries to do it for him.
There had been nothing for the Kingmaker to gain from it, and worse, Synek’s instinct had stopped Iris from being able to put a bullet in the back of his head.
Instinct.
He had been trained to put the Kingmaker’s life above all others. He was paid for the privilege. Synek had chosen that instead of doing better by her.
The safe house came into view, this one far more heavily guarded than where he and Iris were staying. Even the thought had his hand twitching.
He had gone two weeks without smoking a cigarette—hadn’t even felt the impulse—but now, he was reaching up for the spare he always kept behind his ear, except this time there was nothing there.
No little stick of nicotine to blur the edges of his anger.
“We’ll find somebody else,” Winter said as she drove them up the twisting hill, unaware that he was already counting down the seconds until they were at the very top.
And the closer they came, the quieter Synek’s thoughts grew.
Focus. He would need to focus for what he was about to do.
“There’s always somebody else. A witness. The person who actually did the killing. Whoever or whatever, I promise I’ll help in any way I can. Just ... just don’t do something stupid. Don’t do anything rash.”
Once they parked, Synek pulled a pair of cuffs out of his pocket, careful to keep his hands low and out of her sight. As furious as he might have been with bloodlust rushing in his veins, he wouldn’t keep making the same mistake.
He wasn’t going to risk her too.
“If we—”
As she was turning, he grabbed her wrist, fastening a cuff to her wrist and locking the other one around the steering wheel.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Bullets don’t always have names, little miss. I wouldn’t want a stray one to hit you.”
Because even as his thoughts were clear, they wouldn’t stay this way. He wouldn’t always be in complete control of himself. He wouldn’t always see who was waiting at the other end of his gun because if someone stood in his way—and he knew that she would to save him from himself—he couldn’t risk what he might do.
“You’re not ...” She looked from him to where they were and the implications behind it. She hadn’t realized she had driven him to the one place he really didn’t need to be. “You can’t. He’ll have you killed and then what? You think she would want you to die? Synek, you’re not thinking clearly.”
Maybe he wasn’t.
But he was rectifying a mistake, and that was all he cared about.
“I’ll try not to kill your Romanian.” The closest thing to a promise he could manage.
He was halfway out of the truck when she screamed his name, yanking uselessly at the cuff as if that might loosen its hold on her. He shut the door against her cries of protest and the panic in her voice.
“Syn, you didn’t ...”
One of the guards, a man whose name Synek didn’t know and had never bothered to learn, was still talking as he came around the car, his eyes widening when he saw his state. But he didn’t have to know the man’s name to remember him from his time with the Den.
Right now, he was just an obstacle.
“Move,” Synek said before he pulled the gun from the holster at his back, the silencer already firmly attached. “Or be moved.”
“Losing your mind again, Syn?” the man asked with a smirk, making the foolish mistake of turning his nose up.
Synek shrugged. “Probably.”
It took two seconds for the man to realize his mistake—the two seconds in which it took for him to aim at the man’s face and pull the trigger. Winter was screaming, he thought, her voice muffled behind the steel and glass she was stuck behind.
He didn’t look back as he stepped over the man’s body and shoved open the door, startling the man standing on the other side. A heartbeat passed as he looked at Synek in surprise before his gaze dropped to the gun he was holding.
His fight or flight instincts were kicking in, adrenaline pumping through his veins. There was a simple gold band on his finger, one Synek noticed only because he started to reach for his weapon but wisely seemed to think better of this before he quickly shuffled to the side.
The others who guarded these halls and formed a line to the room where the Kingmaker was waiting weren’t so lucky. They all chose to take a stand, and Synek had no problem showing them the error of their ways.
And the more he killed, the more his mind broke apart.
He couldn’t feel anything anymore. He was lost to the carnage.
By the time he got to the last man standing, the same one who’d smiled and laughed as he whispered stories in Iris’s ear about him, Synek dropped his gun and pulled out a knife, letting the blade turn end over end in his hand.
Every emotion flickered across the man’s face. Fear replaced by anger replaced by animosity and finally, for whatever fucking reason, the man looked smug. As if he knew a secret Synek didn’t.
But Synek didn’t care enough to figure out why. Instead, he launched his blade across the floor and watched it sink into the man’s chest. Three long strides and he was across the room, yanking it free before he shoved it into the side of the man’s throat, waiting until his shocked gaze lifted as he fought to breathe before giving it a hard twist.
His heart didn’t speed up.
He wasn’t disgusted at all by what he had done, or even the number of people he’d cut through.
Synek didn’t care about anything anymore.
The Kingmaker was exactly where he expected him to be, seated behind a polished oak desk. Had his collared shirt not been untucked and stained with both dirt and blood, Synek might have wondered if they had both been there when his facility was breached.
Not even three hours ago, the man had looked as if he was on the razor’s edge. Not because of the ex-governor and his taunts, but because of the woman he’d been staring at right before he pulled the trigger. It seemed he was the only one not thinking of the right person.
But before he could focus solely on the Kingmaker, the Wild Bunch were there, two on either side of him, their gazes all a mix of contempt and fury. Synek was getting damn tired of people looking at him as if he was crazy. As if the carnage around him could be lain at anyone else’s feet
but the Kingmaker.
“You get one warning,” Synek said, his voice flat, his gaze slicing over to Nix. “Move.”
“I understand that you’re upset,” Nix said, and unlike the others, he didn’t show his emotions. “But let’s not regress to our baser urges.”
Synek wasn’t listening. Instead, his gaze had gone back to the Kingmaker who could very well see the body in the hallway as a pool of blood tracked into the room. He didn’t have to explain why he had done what he’d done, or even why he had a gun pointed at the man’s head.
“This what you wanted, yeah? You wanted me to kill for you, yeah? How d’you like my offering?”
Every person in this room knew what Synek was capable of. They knew, just as well as the man who boldly stared him down, that it would only take a second before the man’s life was ended no matter what they wanted to do.
They all had their talents, the mercenaries of the Den.
Red was the sniper. Celt, a master thief.
And even before she had an assassin guarding her back, Calavera had been a master manipulator.
But Synek ... he wasn’t brought into the Den because they thought to make him a better man. He was brought in because of what he could do with a knife in his hands. There was no conundrum inside him when he needed to kill, or at least, never at the moment.
His guilt and need to drink the memories away came later.
For now, he just wanted blood on his hands.
“Be very sure of what you’re doing right now, Synek, because you won’t enjoy how I respond.”
“I told you I needed him alive,” Synek said, taking a step closer. “I made that really fucking clear, didn’t I? And you have the nerve to stand there looking down at me because you knew, didn’t you? You found an out.”
It was the carelessness on his face that irked him the most. Because he knew that expression, even wore it often, and that was the face of a man who still thought he was in charge of the game.
But he seemed to be the only one who finally understood what was happening as Calavera asked, “What are you talking about?”
“You really think either of them give a fuck about each other?” he asked, gesturing between the Wild Bunch and the Kingmaker. “No, but see, he has something they want, isn’t that right? Since Belladonna is holding their mate, they’ll do whatever he wants so long as that means they get to him first.”
Iris. (Den of Mercenaries Book 7) Page 19