by Bethany-Kris
The man was right.
Luca did recognize her—there was a familiarity in his actions. There was also something else he could use for his current situation. Another lie.
“Can’t see her face there but you should have,” Luca said, chuckling under his breath. “Chick was hot—fuck me for taking a shot.”
The cop cleared his throat. “Clearly it didn’t work. The bitch stuck you with a needle the first chance she could.”
“Yeah, shitty luck, huh?” Then, Luca arched a brow. “Did you catch her face at all?”
“No,” the man replied. “Well, Mr. Kutner, thank you for ... your lack of help. We will be in touch should we think of anything else. And if you remember something else—”
“I’ll be sure to call.”
“I’m sure.”
Yeah, Luca knew that tone. The cop couldn’t say he was lying but thought he was; Luca wouldn’t verify or deny and since everything they had on record about him currently was a lie ... they weren’t coming back. They couldn’t.
Just before the cop walked out of the room, he turned back with a finger pointed at Luca like a loaded gun when he asked, “And how do you remember nothing except for the fact she was attractive?”
Luca said the first bullshit to come to his mind because at this point, what did it really matter? “Spent five grand last night to eat with a bunch of bastards, got lost in the hotel, didn’t even get the meal I paid for, and I got knocked out by some woman you think murdered a man. The only good thing about my night was her face. You’re surprised I remembered it?”
“A little, yeah.”
The man didn’t offer anything more before making his presence scarce. Luca made quick work of pulling out the blazer he’d stuffed in a dirty laundry bin. Either the medics and cops hadn’t noticed the blood during his treatment and observation the night before, or they thought it was related to his injuries.
Or they foolishly overlooked it.
Either way, he wasn’t leaving it behind and before noon, it would be burned or handed off to one of the many homeless in the city to use as needed. Whatever made it disappear. And with his walking papers from the hospital at the top of his chart, Luca was free to leave.
He didn’t even make it out of the room, though. Nazio Donati strolled in seconds before he had gathered what remained of his personal items sitting on the nightstand beside the bed. His friend shut the door behind him and then closed the blinds to shut out any view from the outside through the windows.
“What the fuck happened?” Naz demanded.
“Nice to see you, too, man,” Luca muttered.
“Sorry—you’re okay, yeah?”
Luca lifted one shoulder. “Better than I was a few hours ago. Nearly got a tube shoved up my cock when they thought the drug would last longer. That shit was the only motivation I needed to stop pretending like I couldn’t understand what was happening. That was also around the time the cops started coming into my room. What are you doing in here? They think my name is James Kutner ... you won’t help that.”
“Right, right ... the only good thing about not being a made man and working for the mafia is that your pretty black and white picture isn’t on every official’s corkboard in the city, I suppose. How long do you think you can get away with being someone else before they figure it out?”
“Not much longer. Which is why we need to get the hell out—”
“Fuck the cops. I got in here clean. And I left Roz in the car,” Naz said, shifting from foot to foot and observing the room like something was going to jump out of the walls at him. His best friend had always hated hospitals ever since he flew across the world thinking the love of his life—Luca’s sister—was sick. “Not like we needed two Donatis in this place milling around. Drawing attention, and all. Not sure she would have been able to control herself either considering she thinks you’re in here dying.”
“She does not.”
“I told her you were fine. Telling Roz one thing and her knowing it is entirely different. Now we are wasting time with bullshit. What happened?”
Luca headed for the door, moving to pass Naz as he said, “You should have sent someone else to pick me up.”
“Stop.”
Naz’s hand stopped Luca from grabbing the doorknob when it latched tightly to his wrist. His best friend met his gaze, the question burning there but not being spoken out loud. It didn’t matter if he said it; Luca could see it and that was enough.
“I was working. Shit went bad.”
“Was it her?” Naz asked.
Luca swallowed hard. “Naz—”
“I know, you don’t like to get my hopes up. You don’t want Roz to know unless you’ve got something firm. I also know you’ve had a lot of last-minute shit come up lately, your father is calling mine to bitch every other hour about it, and you didn’t tell me what you were up to last night. Was it Penny?”
“I didn’t know for sure until—”
Naz let out a hard breath. “That’s the first time you’ve actually seen her, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but that makes sense considering everything I’ve found on her says they’ve been keeping her overseas for ... whatever she does. Work, I assume. Killing people. It’s only been the last year or so that she’s been back in this part of the world, and it’s a lot harder to keep every trace of her scrubbed from existence when people here see her and can pass on the word, likely.”
His friend’s brow dipped. “They?”
“That’s what you took from all I said?”
“Who are they?”
Luca chewed over his next words but only because he didn’t want to step in shit somehow. Not with Naz, or elsewhere. Like the people who had Penny on their payroll. “An organization called The League.”
The slight brightening of Naz’s eyes told Luca that wasn’t the first time his friend had heard that particular name. “Huh.”
“You know of it?”
“Of it,” Naz agreed quietly, “partly. They deal with assassins. The training and selling of them. Handling their creations for their buyers for a fee. And that alongside everything else I’ve heard about them is enough to tell me to stay the hell away because I don’t want their problems.”
“That’s going to be tough to do if you want me to find and retrieve Penny Dunsworth, Naz. I’m almost positive she’s one of them.
“Almost positive?”
“It’s taken me five years to even lay eyes on her, man.”
Naz’s jaw tightened. “And?”
“And that tells me the people behind her—maybe back then but definitely right now—are every reason why it’s taken me this long. What do you want me to do now? Where am I going from here? Either I back off because I have a new starting point that’s too dangerous for you, or I keep searching. Which do you want?”
A shadow passed by the shaded windows, quieting the two men just long enough for whoever it was to continue past the hospital room.
“I promised my wife answers about Penny and what happened all those years ago,” Naz said. “She blames herself ... she misses her. I want those answers, Luca. Don’t you? Don’t you want to know why she left—or who made her leave?”
Tell them I’m sorry, Penny had told him. As the drugs she shot into his neck kicked in, and she helped him to the floor, she had added softer, I always am.
“What if she doesn’t want to give the answers to us, Naz?”
Because that was a real possibility.
6.
Penny
IVORY and sugar pine danced beneath Penny’s fingertips. The notes that echoed from the keys she played reverberated through the empty, dimly lit room in a compound she hadn’t visited in weeks. That was usually how it worked when she was sent out on a job.
“I know you’re there,” Penny said, never looking away from the white cement bricks that made up the wall where the piano faced. “And you know I hate it when you stand behind me like you intend to—”
“I’m not
going to sneak up on you,” Cree replied. “Just enjoying the music.”
Penny rolled her eyes.
Cree would say that, the asshole. The fact was, her handler—one of two at the League whom she answered to—knew her better than anyone. And even though she was supposed to be upstairs briefing Dare, the other asshole in the whole handler equation of her life, on her latest job ... the first place she visited when returning was never to him.
Of course, Cree knew.
He knew everything.
“I also know you just rolled your eyes,” Cree added like he could read her mind.
Penny didn’t even bother to glance over her shoulder. She didn’t need to in order to see the image of the large Native man with his glossy black braid falling neatly over his shoulder. Those dark brown-black eyes of his, the same color as molasses, would watch her with an aura of intensity she had become accustomed to over the years. His stare could feel both cold but probing at the same time. The man only needed to look at any one of the assassins he helped train to know the things hidden inside their souls.
It was kind of ... fucked up.
And freaky.
“Dare is waiting whenever you’re ready,” Cree said.
“I’m sure.”
“And he’ll wait for whenever you’re done.”
Yes, he would.
“Although, he would rather not wait in this case,” the man added.
Everyone here had come to learn a long time ago that when it came to Penny, it was far easier to get what they wanted by allowing her what she needed.
Nevada was supposed to be home. The place she always came back to again and again—year after year. Job after job. That was the rules she agreed to when she signed up to be trained here. No matter how far away she was sent for her next assignment, she always ended up right back in the Nevada desert inside a building full of people with the same skills as her.
It was a home, of sorts. Homebase for The League, maybe. She much preferred the hotel room that her handlers kept on a tab for her to come and go as she pleased whenever she stayed longer than a day or more in the state before heading off on the next assignment.
For her, she had forgotten what home felt like a long time ago. Before dark rooms, water tanks, knife training, and learning how many ways to kill a person while also memorizing the most effective methods to create poisons from simple ingredients found in a home.
The League didn’t take away the place she called home because she never had one even before she came here. She thought she did—once. Almost. Until the idea of having somewhere to call home meant causing the people who created it for her unimaginable pain.
It was a dangerous thing, hope. The one and only time she had allowed herself any kind of hope for her future it had been ripped away before she even knew what had happened. Partly by her own choice, if she were being honest.
Self-sabotage had long been one of Penny’s favorite pastimes. Back when she still had daily suicidal ideations and a blade that allowed her to feel something other than pain with every cut against her pale skin.
But that time was gone.
And now here she was.
It wasn’t lost on her that despite not being able to consider The League’s compound home—or the hotel she used as an apartment when needed—that she did, in fact, find comfort here. Specifically, the music room deep within the belly of the complex that had only been created after Penny’s arrival.
It just showed up one day.
She didn’t go near it—didn’t breathe within ten feet of it—for the first two years. After all, she had thought that coming to this place meant giving up every part of her that had come before. Including her promising career as a pianist.
Except someone had taught her that the piano always meant pain for her. She hadn’t learned to play for her own peace of mind, or even because she loved the music.
Not until Naz and Roz.
And then The League ... well, the piano became a solace in a very dark—
“Does playing when you’re here still take you away from what it all is—can you pretend to be someone else?” Cree asked.
Penny sighed. “Not when someone talks over my shoulder.”
“You’ve not even missed a note. I’m barely bothering you. Don’t deflect. I don’t indulge your sarcasm like everyone else does. Not when I see it for what it is. Another way to protect anyone from getting close enough to your sharp edges where—”
Her fingers slammed down hard on the keys, making deep notes clang through the room and stopping Cree from spouting anymore of his Yoda bullshit. He wouldn’t be wrong. She also just didn’t care to hear it.
Was that so wrong?
Penny swung around on the piano bench to stare at the towering, broad-shouldered man leaning in the doorway to ask, “Is there something you need? Something other than asking questions you already know the answers to?”
“Dare would like an update sooner rather than later.”
“I’m on my way.”
“He did appreciate that you sent over the electronics from the Elijah Smithenson job yesterday when you first arrived, but since you waited an entire day ... and you’re in here right now, I’m sure you see where I’m going here.”
“Rushing things along?” she asked.
Cree shrugged. “Is what it is, kiddo.”
Penny scowled at that title. One he’d called her since she first walked through the front doors of this hellish place. “I’m twenty-three.”
“And I’m old enough to have gray instead of black hair, but these genes of mine are determined to keep me young. What is your point?”
“Since when does Dare get you to do his dirty work?” Penny flipped a hand toward the ceiling and the upper levels of the complex where she knew, without a doubt, Dare was currently watching their exchange on one of his many cameras. People couldn’t change who they were—another thing The League taught her—they could only hide who they used to be. “He knows where to find me.”
“You are deflecting,” Cree murmured, “but this time, it’s not about the piano. Just like the piano thing a minute ago wasn’t about the piano, Penny. I get the feeling the job didn’t go exactly as planned, you’re likely aware that we know, and that’s why you don’t want to go upstairs.”
A frown pulled at her lips.
He wasn’t wrong.
Again.
“Well?” Cree asked.
She wished she had even a tenth of the percent of information about this man that he knew about her. Or even the guy upstairs. She didn’t even know her handler’s last names; only that they let her kill every monster they could find.
All she knew about Cree and Dare and this place they called home were the things they could do—to her, to people she cared about, and to the ones she hated more than anything.
Everyone had to make choices. She had made hers long ago. Which was why she left the piano bench and headed upstairs to brief Dare. Even if that was the last thing she wanted to do.
“LAPTOP WAS WORTHLESS,” Dare said when Penny finished recapping the important details of her trip to New York and the hit on Elijah Smithenson. “As was his phone, but we expected that.”
“And the USB drive?”
“You didn’t find that little device anywhere near the computer, did you?”
“Nope.”
“Filled with what you would expect for a man of his tastes,” Dare informed with a dry inflection that said nothing he found on the drive shocked him. That was a sad fact about this entire world she had fallen into; the monsters were everywhere, and they did the most monstrous of things. Nothing was surprising. “All files were, of course, wiped of anything usable regarding metadata, but we’ll see what our people can do with the videos and photos. Connect it back, if possible. I assume you don’t want to see—”
“Would rather not,” Penny interjected shortly. “I don’t need visuals when I already have a whole memory bank of my own to get me through cold nights, thanks.�
��
Beside her, Cree folded his arms over his chest but avoided looking her way. Still, he said quietly, “Have you considered you might be able to help those ch—”
“I am helping.”
Cree let out a weighted exhale. Dare didn’t miss a step and continued with his previous discussion like the exchange between Penny and his partner beside her didn’t happen at all.
“We can safely assume if Mr. Smithenson was willing to go outside his usual connections within The Elite for his fix,” Dare said, his back facing Penny while he observed the many security cameras keeping watch on the halls and rooms of the compound, “then perhaps other members will do the same in the coming months. That will make knocking out a few more of them easier than we’d hoped. This is a good thing.”
“Did you consider it might only be because of recent events?” Penny asked.
Dare lifted his silk-covered shoulders. The sky-blue hue of his button-down was a stark contrast against the light of the screens in front of him. “Depends on what you mean.”
“I think it’s likely the only reason he did go outside of the group is that their members keep showing up dead. Do you think they haven’t caught on yet that someone is hunting inside their group? It was bound to happen.”
“We don’t have proof of that.”
“Yet,” Penny muttered. “It is inevitable. We knew that when we moved on to the group in the states. I’m sure they know it, too.”
Dare didn’t reply.
He rarely did to her attitude.
“Either way,” Dare added, “we continue like we have. Carefully. One step at a time. We don’t move without purpose, and we don’t hit without—”
“I know.”
Finally, Dare turned on his heels his ice-cold stare burrowing holes into her stoic form across the room. “Anything else you want to fill me in on while you’re here? Or should I pre-emptively lock all the doors leading to the music room, so you can play unbothered for the next two hours before you leave?”
