by Amity Cross
Rolling over, I winced as my joints came back to life, flaring hot. There was a Primark bag on the table, and I narrowed my eyes. I wasn’t used to wearing budget clothing. I wasn’t used to budget anything. Even in the days after Lorelei’s death, I still had quite a substantial fortune that I was able to take with me. Intelligence, by way of Gregory ‘Greggor’ Lansford, had ripped apart anything that had been left, including property and investments I’d made under my real name.
I’d been emotionally poor but never financially poor. Then again, I’d never been below the radar like this before.
Knowing she’d been quite busy while I slept, I slipped out of bed and grabbed the bag. Pulling out the clothes, I had to give her a little credit. She’d gotten the size and coloring right. Dark denim jeans, boxer briefs, socks, plain fitted T-shirts in black and gray, a leather jacket, a synthetic woolen jumper… Not bad at all. Snapping the tags off a pair of boxers, I dragged them on. Perfect fit.
As I got dressed, my ribs ached, and my joints were stiff, but at least I was warm. I’d lost track of what day it was somewhere around the time X and I had been double-crossed by my own guns for hire—the night I’d been captured by Royal Blood—and the moment Lorelei brought me back out into the light.
It was winter. Cold, snowing, delightfully balmy and somewhere around December. Christmas.
Shuffling across the room, I glanced out the window. Lorelei was just outside, hunched over the engine of a car I hadn’t seen before. It looked like she’d lifted the sedan from some poor unsuspecting person and was filing off the engine number.
I knew we wouldn’t be staying here for long, but I had no idea where we were going to go. What Lorelei wanted was unknown to me, and maybe even to her.
Moving away from the window, I opened the door and peered outside. She glanced up at the sound, and our gazes crossed. Straightening up, she slammed the bonnet closed.
Dusting off her hands, she placed the file she’d been using to wipe the VIN from the engine back into the black bag at her feet. Then she picked it up and walked toward me.
Stepping back as she entered the motel room, I closed out the winter air and turned to watch her movements.
Opening the little bar fridge, she took out a plastic bag that had a Tesco logo printed on the side and set it on the table next to the duffle. Then she began methodically pulling things out, setting each item neatly against each other like she was piecing together a puzzle. As she assembled her inventory, I watched her with interest and wondered which course of action she’d decided on.
She assembled ammunition, mobile phones, two handguns, a bundle of twenty-pound notes from the duffle, and two prepackaged sandwiches from the plastic bag before gesturing at me to come forward.
Sitting opposite, I ran my gaze over each item.
Handing me a sandwich, she gestured for me to eat. Ripping open the package, I wolfed it down. I didn’t know when I’d eaten last, and the hollow feeling in my stomach had become an almost normal part of my existence.
“Tomorrow, we will move,” she said, ignoring my messy eating.
Picking up one of the handguns, she checked the mechanism and the safety, then flipped it over in her hand. Grasping the muzzle, she held the weapon out to me butt first.
“You trust me with a gun?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You’ve had plenty of opportunities to leave,” she said blandly.
I took that to mean she trusted me for the moment, but I wasn’t fool enough to think that it meant implicitly. She could disarm me with little to no effort if she chose to.
Taking the gun, I sat it on the table in front of me and resumed eating.
She picked up one of the mobile phones and placed it next to the gun. “It can’t call out. Not until I say so.”
Obviously. I was a little boy again, a runner waiting for orders from my employer. Lorelei was in charge of me now.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
She scowled, her gaze falling to the tabletop.
“You don’t know, do you?”
Snatching up the empty packet in front of me, she stood and crossed the room, throwing it into the bin.
“What’s it going to be, Lorelei?” I asked, watching her ordered movements. Movements that would soon become chaotic as her conditioning continued to deteriorate. “Royal Blood or Lafayette?”
She turned her cold gaze onto mine and narrowed her eyes. “You think you have all the answers?” she asked harshly. “Then what should we do, Hangman? What path should I take?”
It was a trick. Another test. It had to be.
Stuffing the last piece of my sandwich into my mouth, I chewed slowly, dwelling on our options. Whichever direction she chose, I would follow—there was no doubt about that.
Door number one was Royal Blood. I knew how that story ended.
Door number two was Lafayette. The final page on that one was a little more hazy.
Whichever way we went, it was my job to keep her together.
Swallowing, I decided to tell her the truth. “It’s not my choice. Only you can make that decision.”
“What a cop out,” she spat.
“No, not at all. I’m here for one reason, Lorelei, and that is to be your constant.” I sighed, turning my gaze back onto the gun she’d given me. “I’d really like to take you away from all of this, like I was supposed to the day you were taken from me, but I know that’s not what you need.”
“And what do I need? Love?” She shook her head, still refusing to believe that someone could care about her.
“No, not love. That will come back to us, or it won’t. What you need are answers, and the sooner you understand that, the sooner you’ll be at peace with your future.”
Her lip curled. “The Hangman philosophical? I never thought a man like you could wax poetic about complete and utter bullshit.”
“It’s logical,” I retorted, knowing that the remark would hit an open wound in her psyche.
Lorelei strode across the room, fisted her hand into my jumper, and shoved me off the chair. Pain shot through my tender ribs as I stumbled to my feet, and it seared through the broken skin on my back the moment I hit the wall behind me.
“You think you know me?” she hissed. “You think you know what’s going on in my mind, Hangman? You know shit.”
“Vaughn,” I said, staring her right in the eye.
Her head tilted to the side, and her dark brown locks tumbled around her shoulders. “What?”
“My name is Vaughn.” I knew her game. She called me Hangman to distance herself from me. I wouldn’t allow her to keep me away, no matter how painful it was for her.
Her fingers loosened from the material of my jumper, and she let me go.
“I’m not your enemy, Lorelei,” I murmured. “I’m not going to fuck you over, but I am going to call bullshit when I see it. I know what you are, you’ve been reminding me of it since the moment we left Bristol, but you’re forgetting who I am.”
She regarded me with a closed expression. Most likely weighing up my usefulness.
“Who you are?” she asked quietly.
“Capable, connected, and just as determined as you are. I’m not some weak pussy,” I said. “I can put a bullet in a man’s head without blinking and not give a shit about it afterward. Do not forget who I am. They tell stories about The Hangman, and they’re all true. Every last sordid tale.”
She stood and let my declaration sink in for a moment. When she seemed satisfied, she turned and began packing the duffle bag.
Outside, the sun had all but disappeared. In winter, it was hard to tell what time of day it was since night came quickly. It could be five p.m., or it could be midnight.
I still felt like I could sleep for days, so I returned to the bed and leaned my back against the headboard as Lorelei organized her belongings. If she wanted me to do something, I was sure she’d command it of me sooner or later.
When she’d completed her task, she sat on the
bed next to me, her position mirroring mine.
“Tell me everything that happened after Sykes,” she commanded, her voice hushed in the still room.
Of all the things I thought she would’ve asked, that was not it. I was sure that this conversation wouldn’t have happened until much later in the piece, which meant I had underestimated her curiosity—and her penchant for logistics.
Settling in for the long haul, I began telling her everything I knew. I tried to piece it together as best I could, but back then was a haze. I’d drowned a lot of sorrows and hung a lot of souls across Europe in those days. It was only five years ago, but it felt like an entire lifetime.
“In the beginning, I dreamed about you almost every night,” I began. “I’d run and run, but I’d never get to you in time. I’d fall to my knees and hold your bloodstained face in my hands and cry. I didn’t know how to deal with your loss, so I began reenacting your fate on those who would go against me. That is why they call me The Hangman, because of how I kill, but in truth, it was because of what Sykes did to you.”
Turning to take her in, I found her gaze firmly on the wall in front of her, her reaction to my words unknown.
“Hawkes and I worked our way across the continent, forging alliances, gathering information and informants, building a network with one purpose,” I went on.
“And what was that?” she muttered.
“Revenge.” It was as simple as that.
My plan had been to build my wealth and forge powerful connections, and a part of that was using the man who’d killed my one true love to do it. If I’d been aware of Greggor’s true identity, I might’ve targeted him as well, but I thought he’d been nothing but a grieving father. A pillar of the business community, not the leader of an underground crime syndicate.
“I never made peace with your death,” I said quietly. “I bided my time, got my pieces in position, and then I used Mercy to pull the trigger. Sykes killed her entire family, so who was I to deny her payback? I had many chances to take him out over the years, and I never took any of them. I could’ve prevented her family from dying.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I shrugged. It could’ve been many things, but Sykes had been more valuable to me alive than dead. He never knew it, but it was his dealings that made The Hangman rich again. I supposed it was greed that had been the cause. Greed and the slow burn of revenge that I’d given over to Mercy Reid.
“Vaughn.”
I turned at the sound of my name on Lorelei’s lips. On the surface, it was a small thing, her using my correct title, but I knew it was a step in the right direction. I was forging a connection with her.
“The time wasn’t right, though I suppose it was never going to be perfect.”
She snorted and glanced away. “And now here we are.”
I allowed the one-sided conversation to fall into silence. She didn’t move or speak, she just sat there like a closed book.
“Tomorrow,” I began, and she glanced at me. “Where are we going?”
She shrugged. “I haven’t made up my mind.”
“You can be anyone you want to now,” I said. “Go anywhere. Do anything.”
“Who do you want me to be?” she asked, her eyes giving nothing away.
“There’s no going back, I know that.”
“And if you don’t like the person I’ve become when this is all said and done?”
I was still in love with Lorelei Lansford, the gallery curator from a wealthy British family. I was in love with the demure flower I’d run into on the street in Kensington in the heart of London. The woman who sat on the bed next to me was an assassin. She was deadly and unfeeling with the potential to become the darkest monster of them all. She’d murdered without feeling, and she would go on snuffing out whichever lives she chose fit. That was not the Lorelei I knew and fell in love with.
The only thing I had to go on was the faith that underneath all of The Watchman’s conditioning she was still in there. Or she at least had the potential to break free and become her own person again.
“I don’t know,” I replied truthfully. “We’ll figure it out if we get there.”
Sadness flickered through her eyes so briefly I almost thought I was imagining it. Climbing off the bed, she retrieved her gun from the table, checked the lock on the door, and flicked the light off. I guess we were done talking.
To my surprise, she didn’t sit in the armchair. Instead, she returned to the bed and lay down beside me, placing the gun underneath her pillow.
“Go to sleep, Vaughn,” she said. “We’ve got a long way to go tomorrow.”
Sighing heavily, I kicked off my boots and lay beside her, both of us still fully clothed.
Thinking about the things she would have to deal with in the coming days, I couldn’t comprehend how X had overcome any of it. I wondered if he’d reconciled with his past life before he realized he was falling for Mercy. Lorelei was rooted in my past, but Mercy was a part of X’s future.
Maybe we were doomed before we even began. Maybe this was a fool’s errand.
I was sick, but not it the way I used to think I was. I was sick with longing for the love that I had lost. If I was going to move forward with Lorelei, then we’d have to forge a new love and not dwell on something that no longer existed.
All that was left to do was to help Lorelei find out who she was now. This wasn’t about me, not anymore. It was about the fight for her identity. Love would come later, or it wouldn’t come at all.
Only time would tell.
Chapter 5
Lorelei
The first thing I remembered was darkness.
Total, consuming darkness.
A darkness so complete I thought that I stood on the precipice of what was beyond the universe.
The unknown. The final frontier.
The dawning of a new age.
When I opened my eyes, it was like I’d just blinked. I knew I’d slept, but it had passed in uneventful silence. I was really hoping I’d dream so I’d learn something about my impending fate, but there was nothing. I’d never cared about much, but now I wanted control over the one thing that was common to all humans. My mind.
Sitting up, I glanced at Vaughn. He was beginning to stir, my movement disturbing his sleep. His face had a different light to it when he wasn’t aware. Awake, he had a dangerous flare to him as if his corners were sharp yet soft at the same time. He knew how to control his compulsions for murder. Vaughn was his own master, that much was clear.
I’d never been free. Never been left to make my own decisions outside of a hit. I was always waiting for my next command like a perfect, obedient soldier in Royal Blood’s secret army—so secret their other assassins never knew of my existence. The ultimate specter of death.
Was I looking for my next master?
Vaughn’s eyes cracked open, and he stared at me as his body shook off the last of the sleep that had taken it last night.
His lips curled into a slight smile. A smile. Idiot.
He dragged himself to a seated position, grimacing at the pain his body was still recovering from.
“What’s the plan?” he asked like he was trying to poke holes in everything I did.
I hesitated. Last night I’d been so determined to leave this place, but this morning, I didn’t know where we were going.
“What do you know about Greggor’s dealings with Lafayette?” he asked.
“Dealings?” I replied, scowling. “He had no dealings.”
Vaughn narrowed his eyes, signaling that he didn’t believe me.
“I was privy to a great deal of things that Royal Blood were involved in,” I said.
“Never said you weren’t,” he retorted. “But The Hangman knew Jacques Lafayette.”
“So you said, but you didn’t mention why…and how.”
“I knew him in passing,” he went on. “Human trafficking wasn’t the only pie he had fingers in, and those pies were also some of mine. Sykes wanted an
in with him, and I could get a meeting,” he explained impassively. “Considering I thought you were dead all these years, I never knew of his continued involvement with Sykes. Not until X and Mercy came to me for assistance in tracking down her families murderer.”
I wasn’t sure what was bothering me about the scenario. “Why did Sykes want in with Lafayette?”
“Around a year ago, I became aware of his attempts at breaking into the human trafficking market. I always thought Sykes was a loose cannon, a crazy fucker who was nothing more than a thug trying to worm his way into the big leagues. When I first dealt with him, I intended to use him to further my own aspirations. Turned out, he was a businessman with a fucked-up start-up that needed an investor. Lafayette was that investor.”
“I was Sykes’s gift,” I said, the pieces starting to fall together. “His test of loyalty.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Vaughn countered, but I wasn’t listening to reason.
There was no proof that I was even sold to Lafayette, only words from my father’s mouth, but in my mind, the connection was clear. They must’ve known who I was. They must’ve known who I was. Not just that I was Vaughn’s, but that I was Greggor’s daughter, too The ultimate prize.
I rose from the bed, pulling the gun out from underneath the pillow. I was going to torture a confession out of the sick fucker, and then I was going to kill him. I was going to kill Jacques Lafayette.
Between the time I was taken from Vaughn and the time I woke up as I was now, there were weeks or even months that were left unaccounted for. I always believed that the marks on my body were all from The Watchman’s training. What if they weren’t? What if they were from the sadistic brutality of my captors? What if there were even more horrors locked away inside of my mind? Those numbers scarred on my wrist…
“Lorelei,” Vaughn said as I began gathering my things.
“Get your stuff,” I snapped. “We’ve got to go.”
“We need a plan,” he countered. “We can’t just go out there blind. We need to contact Hawkes and—”
“We need to go,” I interrupted. “We need to go and find Lafayette. I need to know what he did to me.”
