Black Swan

by London Miller

  “If she wants to see it,” Katherine cut in, “she should. It’s about time she learned the truth anyway.”

  It was decided then.

  Within the span of a few seconds, her adrenaline turned to a fear so deep, she was almost afraid to keep going forward. A part of her wanted to avoid the reality of what had happened to her entirely—sneak away up to her room, all of her bravado forgotten.

  Isla would find a way to smooth it over with Mother. She always did. She certainly wouldn’t blame her for stowing away from the truth.

  But burying her head in the sand wouldn’t make anything better, and it certainly wasn’t helping her move forward.

  It was time to face the truth, even if it was the last thing she really wanted.

  No one spoke as Katherine set up the display, producing a disk tucked away in her drawer. As the video loaded, Karina was sure she’d forgotten how to breathe.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to take her eyes off the screen in front of her, not even as the camera feed cut in, and her heart sank in her chest at the view the camera provided.

  There would never come a day when she didn’t recognize that street and the restaurant. It didn’t matter that the picture was in black and white or that there was no audio. Within seconds of seeing it, it felt as if she was right back there.

  The constant honk of horns as she’d left the car and entered the restaurant.

  The well-mannered waiter who saw her to her table.

  The smiles of affection from women in the restaurant when their eyes dropped to the roundness of her stomach.

  Karina didn’t realize her fingers had tightened around the arm of the chair she sat in until the ache became too much to ignore.

  Moments after she had disappeared into the restaurant, she watched herself walk back out onto the balcony, sitting under the wide, white umbrella that shadowed her table. Omerti was already seated when she arrived, his steak nearly halfway eaten.

  He hadn’t thought for a second that anyone would target them, not with the way he was so casual in appearance.

  He hadn’t known there was a man on a motorcycle parked across the street.

  Almost immediately, her gaze ventured over to him. He seemed to be the only thing still in a constantly moving environment. Despite the grainy image distorting some of the colors, she could still tell he was well-muscled beneath the bulk of the vest he wore.

  She could see the way his gaze seemed to focus directly on them.

  Still. He was entirely too still.

  And though she hadn’t the faintest idea why, Skorpion popped into her head. The way he had a way of blending into everything around him despite his size.

  The way she never saw him coming until he was ready to announce it.

  “Karina,” Isla said softly, her tone letting Karina know what was about to happen.

  “I’m fine,” she answered just as quickly.

  As much of a lie as it was the truth.

  Sometimes, the truth hurt, but it was important to bear it all the same.

  So with as much determination as she could muster, she watched the man as he unstrapped the long bag across his back and refused to flinch when he unzipped it to reveal a long rifle within it.

  It was unlike anything she had ever seen.

  The blackest of black with a barrel nearly as long as the man’s arm.

  Surely, he could see the street was full of innocent people—that he was firing into a crowd and anyone could be harmed. It was certainly clear to her, and she didn’t even have his vantage point.

  But that didn’t stop him from aiming or from sliding his finger around the trigger.

  A second passed … then another.

  The shot was so quick, she would have missed it entirely if not for the explosion of chaos it created. As people ran away from nameless bullets, she’d frozen.

  Terror kept her rooted in place.

  She had always thought it was instinctive to duck—that if she were ever in a situation like this, she would duck for cover as quickly as possible—but she hadn’t factored in the reality of seeing a man die right in front of her. She certainly hadn’t considered the way it would feel for a man’s blood to splash across her face.

  But, once again, Karina’s gaze was drawn back to the man on the bike and the fact he was only adjusting the slightest of inches.

  It hadn’t been a mistake then.

  She hadn’t just gotten hit by a stray bullet meant for someone else.

  She had been the target just as much as the man who’d sat across from her.

  Between one breath and the next, the mysterious assassin fired again.

  And she felt it.

  That searing heat. Flesh ripping and tearing as the bullet shot through her.

  Even now, she reached up, touching the physical scar that remained nearly in the center of her chest. She’d gone so long pretending it wasn’t there—caring more about what she had lost rather than what she’d gained. But now it seemed to make its presence known.

  Never letting her forget.

  It was only when she had fallen as well that he stowed his weapon away and rode off before anyone could stop him.

  Minutes passed before the ambulance arrived, and the medics placed an oxygen mask over her face and loaded her onto a stretcher.

  Seconds before they were peeling away from the curb and racing toward the nearest hospital.

  And all too quickly, the footage stopped.

  Karina continued to stare at it, not knowing what to say.

  What to feel.

  How to react.

  She just … stared.

  “Karina?” Isla called. “Say something.”

  She blinked, only allowing one stray tear to fall before she quickly wiped the rest away. Then she sat up a little straighter, folded her hands in her lap, and held her head up high.

  “Play it again.”

  Time passed quickly when she was lost in her own thoughts.

  She wasn’t sure how many times she’d watched the footage at this point—more times than she should have, all things considered—but it had been long enough that the room had emptied and a remote was placed in her hand.

  The first time she watched, she wanted to see it again. The time after that because she needed to numb herself to what she saw.

  She had to watch it until the ache wasn’t so acute and tears weren’t constantly stinging the back of her eyes. It was easier, she thought, around the fifteenth time, but she had long since stopped counting.

  Now, she was looking for the things she hadn’t seen.

  Whoever the man was, he was certainly well trained. He hadn’t taken his gaze off his targets from the moment he arrived on that corner. Nearly halfway into the video, he removed his helmet, though he never turned his face to the camera.

  Only his profile.

  Strong jaw. Clean-shaven.

  A very specific haircut style she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  Military precision, she thought. He was in and out without a single complication, weaving through traffic with relative ease.

  He was far too good not to be in a database somewhere. And if he wasn’t military, then he worked for someone. He could very well sell his talents to a bidder on the dark web. She’d seen such a transaction before.

  A little research and she could probably find him.

  She’d done more with less before at the Gazette Post, and then, she had mostly been working inside her own moral lines.

  There was nothing moral at all about what she planned to do to him.

  “If I could go back, I’d have never let you go to New York.”

  Karina didn’t know how to feel about those words because while she didn’t regret anything about New York until the very end, a smaller, foolish part of her wished she hadn’t gone either.

  If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here now.

  “Then I would have never met—” She cut herself off there, remembering who she was talking
to.

  She was under no illusion that her mother had liked the man she’d fallen in love with. In her mind, Uilleam was less of a factor than he had been before this.

  But for once, Katherine smiled indulgently, sitting next to her on the length of the couch. “I know what it’s like to have your first love. Your father was very much that for me. I loved him dearly.”

  Karina kept quiet as she listened. It wasn’t often that Katherine would talk about her father for any length of time. She’d only mention certain things about who he was and the way he dressed.

  She only ever remembered glimpses of him, though even those had faded with time—now she remembered him in emotions and feelings. She’d been too young to remember the day he died. She only remembered how sad Isla had been once he was gone.

  They’d been closer, she’d always thought.

  Over the years and the number of husbands that had come along in the years after, Karina was almost sure they had stopped talking about her father altogether.

  “Sometimes,” Katherine continued, “love hurts more than anything else.”

  “But it didn’t hurt when I was with him,” she whispered, those treacherous tears racing back.

  She’d been the happiest she had ever been when she’d met him and spent many nights and weeks getting to know the man he was.

  “Darling, you’re too young to see it now,” Katherine said, patting her knee. “He manipulated your feelings for him.”

  “No,” Karina protested, shifting away. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “He used you, Karina. To further his own agenda.”

  “I don’t …” This was the last thing she wanted to hear. “I can’t do this right now, Mother. I don’t want—”

  “One day,” Katherine cut in, unfettered. “One day, you’ll see what I see.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “The truth about the man you love so much.”

  She didn’t know what Katherine meant by that, but in her current state, she didn’t particularly care either. After all, it wasn’t as if she had been completely honest with him either.

  But none of that was important right now.

  There was only one thing on her mind:

  Finding out who the man was on the film.

  In a city of over five million, finding one man was like trying to look for a needle in a haystack.

  As far as Karina could tell, she was chasing a ghost. It didn’t matter that she had his likeness caught on film or even that she had a license plate to the motorcycle he’d been driven because it was as if he didn’t exist.

  No matter where she looked for him, he didn’t pop up in any database, and as far as she could tell, there was no record of him serving any country at all in any military branch.

  Before, that might have deterred her from digging any further—she’d learned some time ago about how much time she could waste chasing dead ends—but this time, it was the lack of information that made her search everything twice.

  And she didn’t stop there.

  Every morning and every night, she watched that video. Obsessing over every little detail and documenting in a little notebook everything that seemed of any importance whatsoever and even that which didn’t.

  It all started with one simple question.

  Why?

  Why her? Why then? Why when she was meeting with a man who not many knew about?

  It wasn’t as if this had been a drive-by where bullets were sprayed in an effort to cause the most destruction—this had been calculated. Carefully orchestrated by the man she couldn’t bloody find.

  Karina tossed her notebook aside, as frustrated with her lack of answers as she was with herself.

  She was supposed to be better than this. Not just because of what Katherine had taught her growing up, or even some of the parting lessons Uilleam had inevitably shared with her. But because she was still a journalist.

  Even if she wasn’t actively doing the job, it was just who she was.

  She couldn’t let herself forget that.

  “I thought I would come offer you lunch, considering you haven’t left this room in twenty-four hours,” Isla announced as she entered the room carrying a heavy silver tray.

  “I have left,” she whispered, though she did try to think of the last time she’d left beyond her trip to the bathroom to shower and get her head together.

  “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

  “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you had a meeting with Zoran.”

  Her bodyguard had made it two days before he announced he had a ‘thing’ to do, and he hadn’t been back since. Isla had seemed on edge ever since, even as Katherine seemed rather pleased at his sudden departure.

  “He’s off doing something personal,” Isla said in that way that made Karina want to question it further.

  But she had plenty of time to do that later.

  “How can you watch this?” Isla asked, changing the subject. “Once was too much for me.”

  Karina wasn’t sure how she managed it or even when she’d stopped flinching whenever she saw the bullet slam into her chest.

  But seeing the girl in that video, in that dress and a belly practically bursting with the life that was inside of it, it didn’t feel as if she were watching herself.

  That girl was a stranger.

  And when she stopped thinking of herself as the victim, her chest didn’t feel as tight, and she was able to pick up on all the things she hadn’t noticed before.

  A new assignment, she’d told herself.

  It was a job.

  “As far as I can find, no enemy of Omerti’s with this kind of skill targeted him that day,” Karina said, briefly looking over at the stack of notes she’d accumulated after hours of poring over as much data as she could find.

  “He might not be the reason Omerti had to die that day,” Isla said as she took a seat to read over what Karina had gathered. “He could just be the muscle.”

  “Like … a mercenary,” she said woodenly, practically feeling the moment Isla’s gaze lifted to her.

  Her gaze shuttered even as she nodded her head. “Yes, like a mercenary.”

  It’s better not to cross the Kingmaker. He doesn’t respond well to perceived slights.

  The words filtered into her head, impossibly loud—another reminder of that day. But they weren’t significant.

  Not for this.

  Clearing her throat, she tried to concentrate back on the video, trying to shake the feeling that had come over her. “If he’s a mercenary, it means he had a contract, right? There has to be something somewhere about him.”

  “It probably won’t be easy to find him if you’ve already tried looking,” Isla said as she chewed her lip, a habit they shared. “Men like that wipe their tracks wherever they go to make sure they can’t be traced.”

  “Then how do we find someone that can’t be found?”

  Now, Isla smiled as she reached for her phone. “We find someone who can.”

  9

  Rebirth

  Uilleam tended to avoid those who annoyed him the most, but he thought it imperative to meet with Lawrence Kendall anyway.

  After all, the man owed him nearly two million dollars for services rendered, and it was about time he collected.

  “You seriously don’t think you need backup?” Bishop asked later, but Uilleam waved him off. “Lawrence is as predictable as he is cowardly.”

  Besides, he didn’t intend to make an event out of it.

  Lawrence Kendall wasn’t worth the effort.

  Debauchery had never been his favorite—at least, not in such blatant display around people he didn’t know.

  He had never been very good at sharing, and he certainly wouldn’t start with a woman in a setting like this.

  Once, when he had been new to this, he’d tried to understand what a man could possibly find stimulating about the women in places like this. Sure, there were probably a couple who didn’t mind t
he profession of sharing their bodies with strangers, and some probably even found power in it.

  But the ones here in Lawrence Kendall’s brothel—some of whom he didn’t think could possibly be eighteen—were certainly not here of their own volition. Their eyes were too glazed—too haunted—to say they actually enjoyed what they did.

  If he had to guess, enough narcotics swam through their veins that they didn’t feel anything at all.

  Women of all ages were perched on nearly every available surface, waiting to be summoned by whoever favored their company. There was one tucked back into the corner, her gaze on the floor at her feet.

  But no matter how she tried to hide, someone found her, their bulky frame nearly shielding her completely.

  Turning his gaze back to the man he was trailing, Uilleam put her out of his mind.

  Here in the mountains, they were afforded the privacy they needed to run a place like this—so even the atrium he was ultimately led into seemed more like a hidden alcove despite the looming trees outside the windows.

  His mobile’s vibration in his pocket told him that his mercenary was in position and ready.

  Uilleam wasn’t sitting alone for long before Lawrence Kendall came back, and this time, he wasn’t alone.

  A girl of seventeen, he thought, walked at his side.

  Far too young to be in the skimpy bits of lace he had her in. And that was before he actually made it up to her face and felt as if someone had punched him in the chest with the ways his lungs seemed to seize.

  He would be the first to admit that he wasn’t taking Karina’s death very well, and even that he hadn’t responded to it in the healthiest of fashions, but he didn’t expect to find ghosts from his not so distant past.

  Luna.

  The girl he’d been charged with murdering.

  The girl who should have been dead from a warehouse fire that had claimed the lives of three others. One of which, he now realized, hadn’t been her.

  “Pet, grab the glasses,” Lawrence said, his voice seeming loud in the silence of the room, dragging Uilleam out of his thoughts.

  Uilleam couldn’t bring himself to speak—not yet. Not when he wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was actually a reality or if his fractured mind was punishing him further.