“That works. Much appreciated, Dominic.”
He inclined his head slightly. “Sir.”
Alone once more, Uilleam considered what he intended to do for the day. He didn’t have another meeting with Claire McDonall scheduled for the time being, and Karina was busy working. His time was his own.
At least until his phone rang.
Sometimes he thought of chucking the thing right out the window just to see how the world got on without his influence. Wondered whether the wheels would keep turning if he wasn’t the one driving the car.
But those were thoughts for another day.
“Uncle,” he said as he answered the call and placed it on speaker before tossing the device on his desk. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon.”
“I figured there was no better time than the present to have you witness a potential trainee,” he replied dryly, a tone Uilleam didn’t think he could help. “If you want to see what he’s made of before you decide to take him, I suggest you come and see.”
He wasn’t doing anything else ... “I’ll bring Skorpion.”
“Make sure you bring a coat,” Zachariah replied oddly before ending the call, leaving Uilleam staring down at his mobile as if it could provide an answer.
Before long, however, he picked it back up and sent Skorpion a text, inquiring whether he was available to travel. Nearly to the second, he responded, asking where they were going. Uilleam received another text from his uncle with coordinates.
After a bit of a search, he had his answer.
It looked as if they would be going to Ireland.
Only twice had Uilleam ever visited the Irish countryside.
He rather liked the rolling hills covered in lush green grass—the smell of crisp air and the occasional car driving past. It was all pleasant and simple, two things he rather enjoyed which was why he’d made the Runehart estate his home over the past several years now that it was vacant of his family.
But his work didn’t often bring him to the remote villages in Northern Ireland that were untouched by the modern bustle of busy cities like Manhattan. It was peaceful out here.
“Sure you don’t want me to drive?” Skorpion asked, his large hand wrapped around the door handle, the veins and tendons along his arms standing out in stark relief.
As if the man truly had reason to fear for his life.
Uilleam rolled his eyes before glaring at him. “There isn’t even a speed limit,” he said, gesturing around them with a wave of his hand as if he really needed to remind him where they were.
“All the more reason,” he replied dryly.
“Fortunately for you,” Uilleam tacked on as he switched gears and pressed the gas down a little harder, “I’m not easily offended.”
Skorpion cocked a brow. “You actually believe the bullshit that comes out of your mouth?”
He was the best at what he did, Uilleam reminded himself. He couldn’t very well kill him. That could always come later …
“What the hell’s out here anyway?” he asked, sounding moderately interested.
During most of their six-hour flight, Skorpion had slept, his hat resting over his face though it had done very little to drown out his snores. Uilleam had grown rather used to the noise, so he hadn’t had any trouble tuning him out and focusing on the contracts he still needed to go over for the mercenaries.
A last little failsafe to ensure that one couldn’t double-cross the other.
He had learned quite well over the years that it wasn’t as simple as merely taking a man’s word for something—he needed something far more concrete. Something irrefutable that would ensure he wouldn’t have to do anything drastic like getting his hands dirty with the blood of those who thought to fuck him over.
It was also a means to keep him honest as well. Those who chose to work for his Den would be, essentially, offered a new life. He wasn’t just providing them with disposable income—probably more than any one of them would ever see in a lifetime—but he was also offering security and benefits. More than any other person he could find that had gone to great lengths for their security.
But speaking of contracts and the reason he needed them … “Zachariah mentioned a recruit some time ago. An Irish teenager he thinks is worthy.”
When his thoughts had first turned to forming the Den, he had imagined finding seasoned men who’d been fighting and killing for years prior, essentially experts in their field, but Zachariah had had other ideas.
He’d suggested those who were still impressionable—ones who could be molded into whatever image he saw fit. Which was what the training was for. It was much harder to teach an old dog new tricks, but with what his uncle had in mind, he needed those who could be trained.
“He’s said to have a bad temper and fast fists.” A combination that could prove beneficial if they were able to harness him correctly.
Which was why he was here in Ireland.
So far, with the addition of Bishop Amell—who had yet to earn a moniker—he was up to two mercenaries, but two didn’t make an army. He still needed more.
Patience had never been his strong suit.
“A teenager?” Skorpion asked, managing to both sound curious and disapproving.
“A few months shy of his seventeenth birthday.”
Truthfully, Uilleam didn’t understand why his uncle had selected him, considering his age. There was no place for children in this line of work, but he assumed Zachariah had a plan of some sort.
One he just hadn’t been privy to just yet.
“Assassins and their code,” Skorpion mumbled dryly.
He wasn’t wrong.
Zachariah didn’t mind taking in the young to train them for his purposes. He’d always said they were the better learners compared to all the others he taught.
Uilleam would just have to see if it would be worth it to him.
After the relatively short drive—and only once the car was parked did Skorpion release his hold on the door—they stepped out in front of a building that might have looked abandoned had it not been for the sheer number of vehicles parked along the front of it—one of which was a black Mercedes that stuck out among the rest.
Two guards flanked the door, both watching Skorpion warily, but didn’t stand in their way as they passed through the front doors.
Voices were faint, but he could still hear them bleeding through the floors, growing louder the farther he walked down the hallway. But even as he was ready to venture downstairs to learn what all the fuss was about, he caught sight of his uncle down the hall, deep in conversation with a man Uilleam wasn’t familiar with.
Zachariah saw him first, gesturing for him to come over.
Already, Uilleam didn’t like the look of the man he was standing with. He seemed too wired. Jittery. His fingers tapping against his leg as if his thoughts were running a mile a minute and he couldn’t focus on any one thing.
“This is Craig Dorsey,” Zachariah said, not bothering to give Uilleam’s name, “the man I was telling you about.”
“I understand you’re interested in one of me fighters, eh?” the man asked without preamble, his accent as thick as they came.
“Perhaps,” Uilleam responded noncommittally, wanting to see for himself before he made a commitment to the idea.
After all, this hadn’t been someone he found on his own but rather his uncle’s doing. And while his uncle was good at what he did, Uilleam would have to approve his mercenaries first before he offered any one of them a contract.
“You’ll like what you find,” the man said with a nod. “I guarantee it.”
Yeah ... he was sure he would.
“Let me show you to where you can watch.”
Through a separate door where others weren’t allowed to go through—from the sign on the heavy wood that said KEEP OUT!—Uilleam trailed the man, with Skorpion close behind, until they reached a separate part of the building Uilleam hadn’t known existed.
And as soo
n as he stepped in, he realized where the voices were coming from.
It was a pit.
There was no better way to describe the view from where Uilleam stood above the other spectators, his hands curled around the cold steel of the railing in front of him.
A certain energy charged the atmosphere, and he felt all of it. The cheers and giddy desire for violence from the men clutching money in their fists as they thrust their arms in the air. Terror and bloodlust from the boys—because that was what many of them were—lined up along the ropes, all in some state of undress.
This wasn’t the first time Uilleam had ventured into a place like this—though the fights he usually visited were either legal, and even the ones that weren’t all featured adults—but he didn’t feel the same sort of indifference as he usually did.
The one he had come to see was older, and it probably wouldn’t be as daunting to watch, but the very idea of watching children who had been smaller than even he had been more than twenty years ago didn’t appeal.
Skorpion seemed to share his feelings on the matter, leaning back against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. He had never been one to pretend to care about things like this.
Zachariah was still below somewhere, talking to the Irishman whose name Uilleam hadn’t bothered to remember.
But while he was gone—and Uilleam still had time before the fight began—he pulled out his mobile, ignoring the rest of the messages he’d leave unanswered until he was ready, and stopped at the text from Karina.
He didn’t read it, his thumb hovering over the screen there, because he couldn’t afford to indulge in conversation with her right now. Some part of him knew that should she know where he was right now, she wouldn’t like it.
Of course she wouldn’t.
She would be angry with every single man down below who extorted those fighters for their own personal gain. Not blinking an eye at the violence against children.
And as that thought crossed his mind, he also wondered how she would look at him.
Was he no better than the men down below? He, too, had come here for his own gain, hoping to find someone he needed for the sole purpose of providing him with a necessary tool to further his empire.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t particularly excited by the sight of them below him, or that he intended to only watch the one that mattered to him and not every single match.
It was merely standing on one side of an already black line.
“Settle down, lads. Settle down,” the same man Zachariah had been talking to announced as he stepped out onto the dirt floor, kicking up dust as he went. “Who’s ready for a fucking show, eh?”
His eyes were practically electric, seeming black in the muted light of the room as he gestured out around him. He looked almost manic, and far too proud as he stepped over the rope and walked to the center of the makeshift ring.
Considering how much money could be made in an operation like this, the man was only dressed in a pair of dirty jeans and a sweat-stained T-shirt, his black hair greasy and hanging limp. Which meant it wasn’t about the profit for him but rather the sport of it all.
When Zachariah suddenly filled the vacant chair beside him, Uilleam had an excuse to look away from the man. “You actually believe there’s someone to find here?” he asked, sure that his discontent was clear in his voice.
His uncle, who had trained boys and girls far younger than the ones down below in the arts of the Lotus Society, didn’t appear bothered by the display. “I found only what you were looking for.”
He hoped so.
“Which one am I looking at?” Uilleam asked, moving his gaze away from the smallest of the fighters until he reached the older ones.
Ones who didn’t have the same fear in their eyes.
Ones, if he had to guess, who had been here for far longer than the ones to their left. Their expressions were more resigned—stagnant, in a way.
But before Zachariah could answer, his gaze fixed on one of the boys who looked ... like he had gone through war. He might have skipped over him entirely since his gaze had been on the floor during Uilleam’s sweep, but at the last second, he lifted his head, staring at something across the room.
That was when he saw the still-healing wounds on the boy’s face.
Whatever had been done to him happened quite recently, if he had to guess from how the wounds appeared purple around the edges and near the stitches that ran from just outside the boy’s mouth and up his cheeks.
As if someone had used a blade to slit his mouth open from one side to the next, but instead of killing him, they had simply wanted to maim him.
Made him hurt and bleed but ensured he wouldn’t die from his wounds.
Something he imagined the ring leader addressing the crowd would do.
Uilleam wasn’t sure how he knew—intuition, he supposed—but the moment he fixated on the boy was the moment he knew this was the one Zachariah had asked him to come out to see.
“Kyrnon,” Zachariah said a moment later, offering a nod. “His name is Kyrnon as far as I know.”
“Get your wagers in,” the leader called with a final wave of his hand, finally moving to the outskirts of the ring. “And let the battles commence.”
Uilleam didn’t watch the first fight.
Or the third.
Or the seventh, not even when excited cheers lit up the room as some impressive move made by someone who shouldn’t have been made to do it.
Instead, he lost himself in his thoughts, indulging in the work that had yet to be done, the future he had to look forward to, and the many nights he would spend with Karina.
All of which was a welcome distraction from what was happening all around him.
But as he was considering venturing outside, if only to feel the cold air on his face and to give him a second away from the scent of sweat and despair, he saw it was Kyrnon’s turn.
He wasn’t a boy, not like the rest of him. Besides, he wasn’t much younger than Uilleam was, but from where he sat, Kyrnon looked so terribly young down there with gangly arms that seemed almost too long for his body.
Uilleam would have thought he would be afraid to go out there—especially with his face in its current state—but he didn’t hesitate to step forward when he was signaled even though his opponent was significantly bigger.
Despite his earlier feelings on the matter, Uilleam sat forward, needing a better view. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Skorpion stand straighter.
“They’re actually going to allow him to fight in this condition?” Uilleam asked, knowing that should he have hosted anything like this, he would want his contenders at the top of their game just to even the odds.
“The boy insisted on it, apparently,” Zachariah responded, a touch of admiration in his voice.
“What happened to his face?”
“Apparently, he attempted to escape,” he explained with a shake of his head—but Uilleam didn’t know whether it was at the boy’s daring or the punishment at what he had done. “And when he was caught, he didn’t want to come back quietly so—”
“So someone deigned to give him a Glasgow’s smile?” Uilleam asked, not even bothering to try to keep the disgust out of his voice.
He wasn’t unfamiliar with the markings, but he’d only ever seen them on adult men who’d been in bar fights.
Never as a punishment for someone willing to do anything to gain their freedom.
“And this one?” Uilleam added, nodding toward the boy he was meant to fight.
“According to the whispers”—Uilleam didn’t bother to ask how his uncle had managed to hear any of these whispers—“he was the one who told the guard and Craig that he’d gone.”
That certainly explained the animosity.
Uilleam might have been tempted to fight far too soon if he had been in his place.
No more than a minute passed before the bell rang, and the fight commenced.
From his vantage po
int, he couldn’t make out what the bigger boy said to Kyrnon, only that it made his eyes narrow and his pale face redden. And as quickly as he’d seemed to be contained, the boy snapped.
Fast fists was an understatement.
He hit as if he’d been fighting all his life.
As if he were born to do just this.
For this particular fight, Uilleam didn’t shy away from the violence he was witnessing. He didn’t ignore all the subtle things everyone else would miss.
He watched until the very end.
Until only Kyrnon remained standing—his knuckles bruised and bloody, his chest heaving with his exertion.
Without taking his eyes off him, Uilleam nodded. “He’ll do.”
14
Brothers
“Want your usual, Karina?”
She smiled at the barista before nodding and pulling out a twenty-dollar bill. “That’d be great.”
One of the benefits of working in the city was the convenience of not having to travel far to get work done as well as grab a bite to eat—though her wallet probably didn’t agree with her there. And considering she worked at the paper not even a block down the street, the baristas here at Coffee & Co. recognized her.
It was one of the things she loved most about this place.
As she awaited her order, she walked back over to the table she’d been sitting at before, propping open her laptop before she reached into her bag for the notebook she had tucked away inside.
For almost a month, she’d been working on the story about Hugh McDonall, and in all that time, she still felt as if she hadn’t gotten anywhere yet. That she’d hardly scratched the surface on the truth behind what was happening between the man and his wife.
She had no one to blame but herself, really. In the last couple of weeks especially, she had allowed Uilleam and everything happening with him to distract her. It was so easy getting lost in his world—forgetting herself and all she wanted to accomplish for herself.
The key was finding a balance between the two. She just hadn’t found it yet.
White Rabbit Page 17
