Den of Mercenaries: Volume One (The Mercenaries Book 1)

by London Miller

  She always got a lingering sort of smile on her face when she talked about her home, about Blanco, and the family she had missed.

  “A needy, whining brat,” Ariana said, her words breaking into his thoughts. “She was always whining and begging for attention.”

  “From you?” Kit asked, now turning to face her.

  She looked at him then, her mouth parting just a little, as though his tone had caught her off guard. Ariana was more a nuisance than anything, but if she didn’t mind her words, he was liable to act without thought.

  “From everyone. Even when she wasn’t following me around like a lost puppy, she was forced on me because my father thought we should bond.” She rolled her eyes, as though the idea of that was absurd. “We had nothing in common. He thought the world of her, would give her anything she wanted, but if I even asked for something as little as a new pair of jeans, he always took issue.”

  Daddy issues.

  Made sense.

  “Sounds terrible,” Kit said dryly.

  Ariana studied her nails. “In the end, though, she got what she deserved. I always win in the end.”

  The words made Kit bristle, but he was careful not to show that. It was understandable why Carmen was the main target, but Ariana had always been an attachment to her.

  It had never been about her, but now Kit was curious about how much she knew about the decision to give Luna over to Uilleam in the first place.

  “Drink?” Kit asked suddenly, gesturing to the bar on the other side of the room.

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  Going over, she poured a tumbler full of vodka, putting far too much sway in her hips as she walked back over.

  “What d’you know of your mother’s agreement with The Kingmaker?”

  Ariana swallowed hard. “No one is supposed to know about that.”

  “But I do, so tell me anyway.”

  Eyes on the glass in her hand, Ariana shrugged. “He could give her … this, but she had to give one of us up. It obviously had to be my sister. I was the oldest, and I was willing to do whatever she wanted. Luna was never like that.”

  “And that warranted her death?” Kit asked, his voice tight as he resisted the urge to reach for a knife.

  How easy it would be to sever her carotid before she could think to save herself.

  “Better her than me,” she said, finishing off her drink. “She’s not missed, I assure you.”

  “Is that so?”

  She trailed her fingers down her throat, gently pulling at the halves of her coat. “Definitely.”

  “D’you consider this a game?” Kit asked before she could get too far, though he already knew her answer.

  This, all of it, was only a game to her—something she was trying to win. Which was why she didn’t see the murder—or attempted murder, as it were—as anything more than a lucky break.

  That was his biggest issue with Uilleam.

  Too often, he manipulated lives as he saw fit, “Playing the game,” as he always said.

  “What do you mean? I didn’t say—”

  “You said she got what she deserved, no?” Kit asked. “That you won. You must think it’s a game.”

  Standing up, he crossed the floor to her, close enough now that he could see the anxiety building on her face.

  “But tell me, who’s really won? Perhaps it’s the sister spared the life your mother provides you.”

  Her cheeks mottled with red, Ariana held her head higher, as though she meant to seem taller than she was. “I have everything I could possibly want.”

  “Do you? I only see a shell of a woman whoring herself to please her mother. How many men have you spread your legs for in a bid to get your mother more power? I wager that you didn’t even want to marry Agustín, did you? She couldn’t wait to offer you, someone who means so little to her, to someone who she knew would never love you and might even kill you should the mood strike him.” Kit shook his head, tsking at her. “Pathetic.”

  The arousal that had been so apparent in her eyes was now gone as she glared at him. The hatred she felt, not just for him at that moment, but for her mother as well, shined through.

  “Fuck you.”

  “But that’s what you want, isn’t it? I could tell you to get on your knees right now, and you’d drop like a bitch in heat. All because your mother, the woman you seem to admire the most, trained you as well as she trained the girls she traffics. I might have felt sympathy for you, but I can’t. Would you like to know why?”

  Ariana ground her jaw, but grudgingly asked, “Why?”

  “Because you’re a cunt, and I can’t stand the sight of you.” He was unmoved when she flinched, and had she thought she could hit him and there be no consequence, she might have done so. “Now, run along home to your fiancé.”

  “He’s not home,” she said, as though that would mean anything to him. “He’s out with someone else.”

  Kit didn’t even blink. “D’you need me to call for a car?”

  Trying to maintain what little pride she had left, Ariana got to her feet, smoothing the front of her coat. “I’m going to make sure you regret this.”

  “I look forward to your attempts, but understand something, Ariana, the moment you threaten me, I’ll end your life.”

  Lips pressed into a thin line, Ariana left without another word, leaving Kit to wonder who Agustín was out with.

  Ultimately, his curiosity had gotten the best of him, and he’d sent his feelers out to find out whom Agustín was romancing when he was meant to be keeping his nose clean until negotiations with Carmen were complete.

  While they all might have known that Agustín had no interest in Ariana, each of them were experts at pretending.

  Kit was the best of them.

  But not once, in the short half hour it had taken for him to get the information he sought, did he expect that the woman Agustín was with was Luna.

  His fucking wife.

  Slipping out of bed, Kit quietly exited the room, going out to pour himself a drink. At this rate, he would soon be drinking himself into a coma.

  In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t have mattered anymore. He should have been pleased after the hours he’d spent having her beg and moan and scream, but while his mood had temporarily lightened after he’d exhausted her, the reality of the matter had quickly reared its head again.

  The second he knew it was Luna in that restaurant, he’d gotten a feed of the restaurant, and the video surveillance only made his anger quicken. He’d had to resist the urge to wring her pretty little neck.

  She had played with dangerous emotions, and after being with her, hearing the truth from her lips, he had learned that had been her intention all along.

  Luna wanted his attention.

  She wanted him to react.

  So react he had.

  Even when she hadn’t wanted him and did her very best to push him away, there had never been a part of him that hadn’t wanted her. She was it for him.

  Hadn’t he shown her that?

  Hadn’t he shown her the weight of his sorrow as he did everything in his power to plead forgiveness?

  Had something been lost in translation?

  Gripping the glass so tightly he feared he would shatter the glass, Kit set it down and returned to the bedroom, trying to calm himself.

  Finding his trousers on the floor, he dug through the pockets until he found his phone, the brightness of the screen illuminating the room, and the bag Luna had left abandoned on the floor.

  She had been too focused on him to care about dropping it on the floor, or everything that was inside of it spilling out.

  He crouched, gathering it all, dropping it down onto the dresser, until he got to the neatly folded papers.

  Kit wasn’t one to pry—he would much prefer to hear whatever it was from her own lips, but with the mood he was in, he didn’t give it a second thought before unfolding them and scanning over them.

  His mother had alwa
ys taught him to never seek what wasn’t freely offered, lest what you find is not what you want.

  As his fingers dug into those pages, he wished he had never fucking looked.

  Chapter 9

  For the first time in weeks, when Luna woke up, she wasn’t happy she was alone.

  Kit had gone sometime in the night, his side of the bed cold, and if not for the smell of him that lingered on the sheets, she would have thought he had never been there at all.

  There was a stillness to the house around her that made her deflate at the idea that Kit had not only left, but he hadn’t even said goodbye.

  Before they’d separated, that fact may not have worried her, but after last night … He was angry with her, and he hadn’t been shy about telling her so.

  More than anything, she had felt that pain more keenly than she had ever felt anything.

  Taking one last glance at her vacant bedside, Luna threw the sheets off as she strolled into the bathroom for a shower.

  Today wasn’t like the others.

  There wouldn’t be anything behind the scenes of what she was doing today—they were going to get a reaction.

  A part of her had always wondered if it made her a bad person for plotting against her sister. Even as she thought back on her relationship with her, she still couldn’t see any one thing that was terrible about their relationship.

  Sure, she could be a bit mean sometimes and even made her cry on occasion, but what Luna was planning to do to her … it was hard to compare the two.

  Luna had only just come back into the bedroom when she noticed the papers on the dresser, folded neatly down the middle.

  With one hand gripping the front of her towel, she used the other to flip the pages over to see what they were.

  Divorce papers.

  Her heart nearly dropped out of her chest at the sight of them.

  Kit was never supposed to find them.

  A year ago, when she hadn’t seen an end in sight, and the only thing she wanted more than revenge against Carmen was to get away from Kit, she’d found someone willing to draft the papers for her.

  Just at the mention of his name had a number of people walking before she could even tell them what she wanted, which only annoyed her further.

  But once she had found someone, she had felt victorious, finally feeling like she was close to getting what she wanted, but after spending a night thinking of those papers and permanently ending everything between her and Kit, she hadn’t felt any happiness at the thought.

  It had started to hurt thinking about it.

  She didn’t want to lose him—she loved him.

  So those pages had been left abandoned in a bag somewhere. She hadn’t realized that she had brought that bag along.

  Tossing the pages back down, Luna squeezed her eyes shut as she turned away. The only thing she wanted to do was worry about what Kit could possibly be thinking, but she had a job to do, and they were on a schedule.

  That was what he would say, at least.

  The job came first, always.

  But after, she was going to call him, though she hadn’t the slightest idea what she would say.

  I’m sorry you found the divorce papers?

  They’re not what you think?

  Both excuses sound like just that … excuses. Neither sounded like anything she would want to hear if the situation were reversed.

  Dressing quickly, Luna pulled her hair back into a ponytail and grabbed her keys. She headed out the door, taking her car across the city to the downtown loft where the Wild Bunch were staying.

  Instead of four bikes, there were five parked along the curb—one for her, she thought.

  That was the easy thing about them, Luna had learned. They were always together. Where one was, the rest would usually follow.

  Luna rang the buzzer, waiting for the lock to disengage before she headed inside. Following the sounds of rock music to the back of the loft, she found three of the four men she was looking for.

  Thanatos and Invictus were both sitting on a wide sectional, controllers in their hands as they played Call of Duty: Black Ops II on a giant television mounted to the wall. Their gazes barely lifted, though they did offer her smiles and a chin nod before turning back to their game.

  The sight of them relaxed might have been a first for her had they not been in their full gear, their masks resting on the table in front of them.

  Tăcut stood alone in the kitchen, looking over a set of blueprints and security schematics with a can of Sprite in one hand and a pen in the other.

  She couldn’t fully see what he was marking until she was beside him and had a clearer view of what he was studying.

  “I thought you already went over these?” she asked once she was next to him, her gaze sweeping over the plans laid out in front of them.

  Each entry point was marked, and positions where security were usually posted was indicated with a red circle.

  Luna knew the layout and had studied the plans just as thoroughly as Tăcut had for the last two nights. And thanks to a little recon by Skorpion, they even had video footage of what the inside of the store looked like and the location of each security camera.

  Tăcut nodded—indicating that he had looked over the prints—but he tapped a spot around the front entrance of the boutique where he had marked the spot with a question mark.

  “What’s that?” she asked, though the answer hit her before he could write out his response. “Is it a safe?”

  He nodded again.

  “Why the hell would she have a safe in the middle of the floor?”

  It didn’t make sense.

  If she hadn’t had an office, plus another safe inside of it, Luna might not have thought it strange, but what could Ariana need to keep in there that she couldn’t keep stashed away in her office.

  Or maybe that was the whole idea …

  “Maybe the safe in her office is a decoy,” Luna said, looking from the diagram to Tăcut. “Maybe the important stuff is kept in here, instead of in her office because that would be the first place anyone looked.”

  Tăcut seemed to consider this a moment before nodding, agreeing with her point.

  “That’s a problem, no?” Fang asked as he walked over, pulling on a black T-shirt whose sleeves molded to his arms. As the material dropped into place, it concealed the myriad of scars that crisscrossed across his abdomen and back. “Floor safes are notoriously hard to get into.”

  On the contrary … “I know someone who can be of assistance.”

  Stepping to the side, Luna pulled out her phone and dialed Celt. “I need your expertise,” she said once he was on the line.

  “What in the hell are you up to?” came his jovial response, “and why am I not involved?”

  Celt lived for finding new ways to crack safes and break into high-security facilities just to prove he could.

  A floor safe would be nothing to him … especially since she had seen him crack one in no time weeks ago.

  “We have that other thing in a few days. I need you for that more.” Luna smiled. “Besides, this would be too easy for you.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Celt responded with a chuckle. “Go on then, tell me what you need.”

  She gave him everything she could, going off the scale of the safe from the plans.

  “Two options. First, you can torture the hell out of whoever has the combination—easy and clean if you do it right. Or you can do as I enjoy and blow some shite up.”

  “Tell me more about the second.”

  “You’ll need a small charge. Enough to break through the door, but not enough that you destroy everything inside. How much C4 do you have?”

  It was Fang who answered. “Enough to level a small country.”

  Celt’s response was less friendly. “Who in the hell is that?”

  “Fang—you’ll meet him when you get here.”

  “The Kingmaker?”

  “Nix,” Luna responded, knowing what h
e was asking.

  “Your husband has his own team? Fucking hell, there’s another one?”

  Luna didn’t bother trying to contain her laughter. “Tell us how to crack it.”

  Celt explained in excruciating detail how to go about it—from the amount of C4 to use, where to connect it, and the distance from which one would have to stand to ensure they didn’t get injured in the process.

  “Let me know how it goes, eh?”

  “You got it.”

  Luna ended the call, pocketing her phone as she looked back at Fang and Tăcut. “Is that everything we need?”

  Fang strapped his vest into place. “More than.”

  Thanatos walked over, with Invictus trailing behind him. Wearing a crooked smile and messy blond hair, he was holding a mask nearly identical to the ones he and the rest of the Wild Bunch wore. “Time to walk in our shoes.”

  Ariana’s diamond boutique was located in a highly populated area, one with a clientele that had salaries in the high six-figures. Picturesque with high-end stores located on either side of it, it wasn’t just the cartel’s security they needed to worry about.

  But this early in the morning, there would be very little collateral damage. Only a few people were actually shopping at this hour, and security was down to a minimum.

  Skorpion headed in first, perusing the cases of jewelry on display, charming the woman who came over to help him browse.

  Luna headed around the back, the Wild Bunch on her heels, and pulled her mask into place, making sure she was just as covered as they were. With the sheer amount of gear she had on, it would be much harder to tell if she was male or female, even though she was several inches shorter than the others were.

  Fang touched his fingers to the door, looking back at them. His expression was unreadable with his mask in place, but Luna knew without having to see.

  This was it.

  Shifting the rifle in her hands, she nodded once.

  She was ready.

  Fang checked the electronic display on his armband one last time, watching the seconds count down before an almost physical change came over him. He went from playful and loose to nearly robotic with his movement.