It was in his living room that a deal was struck.
But it wasn’t for a car, or jewels, or things that Carmen asked to receive, but something that sounded impossible.
“I want power,” she said on a purring whisper, attempting to be-spell the man as she had to him.
Had that been it?
Had it always been a game?
“I can give you your heart’s desire,” the man said with an almost elegant shrug of his shoulder, “but there is a price.”
Her body, Juan had thought.
He would demand she sleep with him.
That was what men like him did, but even as his heart seized at the possibility—and the sudden realization that he was sure his wife would accept such an offer—a part of him was glad.
Maybe now that she had what she wanted, she would stop her complaining.
But it wasn’t her that the man, this Kingmaker, wanted.
“Those in power don’t always get there because of family lines and privately funded campaigns, sometimes it is enough by just having the public on your side.”
“But how will this help me?” she asked, eager to listen. “Why would they care about me?”
Not them.
Not their family.
Her.
That was what she cared most about.
If he were a stronger man, Juan might have intervened then.
“Precisely. What would make a community come together and rally behind a woman who’s virtually unknown to them?”
Carmen shook her head, waiting for his answer.
The Kingmaker smiled. “The loss of a child.”
“The price you paid was the life of your child?” Kit asked, interrupting the man’s story, too infuriated to hear any more. Already, the metal of the gun at his waist seemed to heat with such ferocity that he was sure it was a mirror for his anger.
He had always wondered the connection between them. It was clear that Luna didn’t know—he had always been rather good at reading her lies—but Uilleam had learned from the best on how to hide his hand.
He was a master at it.
Juan flicked the butt of his cigarette out the window, already reaching for another as grave eyes swept over the skyline outside. “A small price to pay, he said, for what we would gain in return.”
“Despicable.”
“I would have given him Ariana,” Juan said, as though that justified his actions. “But he didn’t want her—not that Carmen would have been willing to part with her—he asked for my precious, Luna.”
“Who meant so very little to you that you tossed her away,” Kit returned.
It must have been Kit’s tone change that made the other man finally blink and really look at him, his gaze narrowed and wary. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“We all have choices.”
“Then you and I are not the same. Who are you, anyway? Why does any of this matter?”
“Who I am is immaterial. Finish your story.”
Confess your sins.
Juan hesitated a moment before continuing. “It was all very simple, he said. We would leave, run an errand, and when we came back, we would find the house ransacked. He told us Luna would be gone, that there would be nothing left of her. I-I,” Juan stammered, emotion clogging his throat, “didn’t think it through. I didn’t understand it all.”
“But you agreed all the same …”
Juan hung his head in shame. “I agreed. We called la policía—we did everything we were supposed to. I didn’t have to pretend to grieve when we were being filmed for the news report, I was grieving. I realized too late the mistake I had made—I couldn’t change my mind. Days later, whispers of the Contreras Cartel being responsible made the rounds. They were well known for trafficking, young girls like my Luna were always going missing—they assumed she was just one of many.”
Juan took a breath, placing a fresh cigarette between his lips as he felt around his pockets for a lighter. Kit pulled his own from his pocket, igniting the flame as he held it up for the man.
He wasn’t one to smoke—the habit didn’t agree with him—but he kept a lighter on him for moments like these. Though he was rather methodical when it came to what he did, if requested, he allowed those that crossed them this moment.
The last cigarette.
“Carmen became this activist—this warrior against the trafficking of young girls. As he had said, many were willing to stand behind her. Though most had children, even if they didn’t, at one time they had felt the unforgiving hand of the cartels.”
Kit may have hated what he was hearing, but the cold, logical side of him understood Uilleam’s intention. If you put enough support behind a person, they had the potential to do more than a person would with all the money in the world.
“He told us it was quick,” Juan went on, not noticing Kit’s musing. “That she didn’t suffer—I didn’t feel as guilty then.”
“When?”
“What?”
“When did he tell you that it was quick?”
“A couple of weeks after, just before Carmen got the call.”
That didn’t make sense.
Why would Uilleam lie?
It didn’t matter at the moment, Kit would find out soon enough. “And where are they now? Carmen and the other daughter?” Kit made a show of looking around the room. “They’re certainly not here.”
“They moved away, somewhere far from here. She got a better offer from another man.”
He had the gall to look hurt. “D’you expect to inspire sympathy within me?” he asked with a shake of his head. “If you’re looking, you won’t find any in me.”
“Why does this matter now? Why are you here?”
“I came for Luna.”
Those words were partially true.
“Is this my punishment then? He sends you to take care of another job for Carmen—the last little flaw in the life she’s trying to forget?”
“Almost five years to the day, The Kingmaker too came to me with a proposition. He asked that I take a girl into my home. Could you guess who that girl was?”
When Kit didn’t get his answer right away, he pulled the gun from his belt, and the silencer from the pocket of his trousers. Slowly, methodically, he twisted it into place.
“Go ahead and guess.”
“He told us she was dead.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kit said. “You shouldn’t have given her up in the first place.”
There were tears in Juan’s eyes as he sniffled. “Who are—”
“Her husband.”
His gaze flickered down to the gun in Kit’s hand. “What kind of man are you that you would murder her father?”
“The kind that won’t feel any remorse.”
Kit aimed and fired, plugging a bullet into the man’s chest, closer to his shoulder. He didn’t want to hit his heart, not yet.
“Luna believes that her family was spared, that perhaps you all wait for her return with hope in your hearts—she doesn’t know about the greed.” Kit pressed the smoking silencer against the man’s wound where blood seeped. He cried out in pain, but Kit ignored him. “And if I can help it, she’ll never know.”
She didn’t deserve more pain.
Though he generally hated false illusions, for once he was willing to sacrifice his own code—he hated to see her in pain.
“She was spared?” Juan asked, despite the pain he was in. “She’s—”
“No longer your concern.”
“Then if you’ve come to kill me, get it over with.”
Kit raised his gun once more, intending to do just that, but before he could, Juan spoke once more.
“What would you have done?” he asked, almost desperately. “He offers a deal or death? What choice did I have? You would have done the same thing!”
Kit shook his head, shifting his aim to the man’s forehead. “You should have died. When it comes down to your life, or the one you love, you face death with a smile. Luna des
erved better than you.”
Acceptance shone in his eyes. “She deserves better than all of us.”
Kit pulled the trigger.
Stowing his gun away, Kit ventured back out without a backward glance, removing two envelopes of money along the way—one for the pregnant woman who had never seen his face before, and one for the men around the television that would swear Juan Santiago had enraged a smuggler that decided to kill him for crossing him.
But as he climbed back into the truck and started back out on the road, Kit was already thinking of his next move.
It was time he and his brother had a conversation.
There were two kinds of men in the world—those that fixed problems, and others that were the cause of them.
Most days, Kit fell into the latter—even if by fixing, it meant taking someone’s life—and for a time, he thought Uilleam fell into that category as well. But when he returned from his trip to Mexico, armed with damning knowledge, he realized that his brother fell more in the middle.
And that was not a good thing.
“Perhaps you should have invited the Wild Bunch on this little excursion,” Aidra said as she checked the slide of her gun. “Confronting your brother in a compound full of his mercenaries doesn’t seem like a rational thing to do.”
Kit had sought Aidra’s aid, not in just coming with him to the compound—though he wouldn’t have needed her for this, really—but in her thoughts. He’d needed someone to confide in, and she was the only person he knew without a shadow of a doubt that wouldn’t break his confidence.
She had also thought there was ulterior motives behind Uilleam’s interest in Luna, but even she hadn’t pictured this outcome.
No one could have.
“I never thought I would see the day when you were afraid to face a mercenary,” Kit said as they drove beyond the gate to the compound and parked. “I taught you better than that.”
“They are being trained by Z, no? I don’t put anything past the man.”
It wasn’t often that Uilleam listened to reason. He liked to think he was infallible, but for once, he hadn’t attempted to stay in the open after the shooting. Instead, he went underground, and there was no better place than a remote facility that was guarded by men he paid large sums of money to.
“Besides, it’s just a conversation,” Kit said, though he knew that was a lie. It wouldn’t just be words he gave his brother.
“Those usually don’t go well for the two of you. If you recall, you threatened to throw him off a roof in Berlin because he made a few million pounds off a contract you were negotiating. In answer, he decided to torch three of your cars and allowed a family of homeless tweakers to take up residence in your loft in the city—they ended up condemning that place, didn’t they?”
And back and forth it went until they grew tired and moved on.
It was what they did.
But this …
This wouldn’t be nearly as pleasant as that time.
“Uilleam may not answer to anyone else, but he will answer to me.”
Kit would ensure it.
Abandoning his car, he had no trouble getting into the building and up to the floor where Uilleam was reclining in a bed with his phone in one hand, and his gaze on the television set up on the other side of the room.
Gone was the hospital gown, and though he didn’t wear a suit as was his custom, he was still better dressed than the last time Kit had seen him.
Besides the lack of color in his face, Uilleam didn’t look as though he had been in a firefight mere days ago, or that during the operation to save his life, his heart had stopped beating for a few seconds.
Those that raised hell often lived the longest.
“Twice in one week, I’m shocked,” Uilleam said, his voice groggy as his gaze moved from the TV, to Kit, and stopping on Aidra. “At least you’ve brought beautiful company. Aidra, you look lovely as always.”
Despite her efforts, his assistant wasn’t immune to Uilleam’s charm. She offered a shy smile, though she didn’t move from Kit’s side.
“What can I do for you, brother?”
“I know, Uilleam.”
“I’m sorry?”
“About Luna,” he reiterated. “I know what you did.”
There was a wheel of emotions that played over Uilleam’s face in wake of Kit’s statement. First, surprise, then anger, and finally a hint of smugness that Kit hadn’t expected.
“You think you know?” Uilleam laughed, the sound harsh and grating. “You know nothing.”
“What did you hope to accomplish? Did you think to use the truth of what you had done to make her upset with me?”
His jaw hardened in pain as he climbed out of the bed, but Uilleam didn’t let it show. “The fact that you’re asking me that question only proves my point.”
“You’ve yet to make one.”
“I assume you found Juan, did you not? A man too stupid to realize that he meant nothing to the woman that would rather see him destitute than at her side despite everything she had given him?”
Kit folded his arms across his chest. “If there is a point to this, you’re not making it.”
Uilleam was smiling, smiling as though the entire thing was a joke. “They paid me to kill her, yet you haven’t asked yourself why she’s still alive, have you?”
Kit scoffed. “I know your schemes, Uilleam. You wanted to use her against the woman, no?”
“Yes, I did. I wanted to train her as a mercenary—I wanted her to thrive on the knowledge that her mother was a cunt, and when the time came, she would have no problem putting a bullet in her mother’s head.”
“Then why did you—”
“No, let me finish,” Uilleam demanded, gaze never straying from Kit though they were no longer the only three in the room. At some point, Zachariah had entered, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I had her taken, smuggled to the US, and left in a warehouse until I could make the proper arrangements. The first time I brought her to you, I hadn’t lied when I said Zachariah refused to take her until she was older—I hadn’t accounted for that in my original plan—but I hadn’t the time to babysit a kidnap victim while I worked. Do you know who I turned to, brother?”
Kit thought of Luna and everything she had ever told him about the kidnapping and the ensuing days after.
I woke up to smoke, she had told him once.
Because the warehouse she’d been in was set on fire …
The warehouse …
“Putting the pieces together, I see,” Uilleam said smugly. “I called my dear brother to do me a favor, one that would have cost you nothing. Instead, you betrayed me, and for what? To stoke your own ego? Pathetic.”
Kit didn’t think, nor could he hear the cries of alarm as he grabbed his brother by the throat and slammed him back against the wall, holding him there.
Uilleam winced, his pain too great for it to be ignored. “Have you realized your mistake? Have you realized that it was because of you that Luna ended up in the hands of Lawrence Kendall? Imagine my surprise when I found her at that party—after all, you were the one to tell me no one had survived the fire at the warehouse.”
The fucking warehouse.
It was so long ago that Kit almost didn’t remember, but there had only been one of Uilleam’s safe houses that he destroyed.
That fucking warehouse.
He could almost remember the day Uilleam called him, asking for a favor as he often did. It didn’t matter that Kit had grown tired of his schemes and wanted to take a break from Uilleam, the man was relentless.
Especially because it was one of the few properties they owned together and both did work out of.
More and more, Uilleam began making demands, carrying out his own agendas that put Kit’s work in jeopardy.
At that time, Uilleam had been unreasonable—it was either what he wanted, or nothing at all.
Kit had thought to put a stop to it. No one had ever made a move against the
infamous Kingmaker before, but he would. After all, he wasn’t a match for Kit, not really.
Once when they were children, Kit had asked his brother whether or not he was afraid of fire. Uilleam couldn’t have been more than six years old at the time, but it was clear whenever he walked past the hearth and stared with apprehension while the flames licked at the iron gate.
He was petrified.
It had been Kit that showed him the freedom in fire—in its purity.
From then on, Uilleam had made a bad habit of destroying things by fire when the mood suited him.
This was also why Kit had thought to burn the warehouse down.
The message was clear if one knew how to read it.
“So what have you come to say?” Uilleam asked, his voice only loud enough for Kit to hear. “I’m waiting.”
Kit licked his lips. “Who all knows?”
“I assume you would know the answer to that question, but by all means, share the answer with me. Because whoever thought it would be better to work with you and betray me, I owe them a present.”
“About you being behind the kidnapping,” Kit retorted. “Who all knows?”
“If you’re asking about my mercenaries, the answer is none. I made the deal with Carmen and Luna’s father, only.”
Then he could contain this.
“You will not, under any circumstances, breathe a word of any of this to Luna. Are we clear?”
Uilleam pushed his hand away. “Why not? Afraid that she’ll grow to hate you?”
He didn’t think that.
He knew it.
He was responsible for everything that had happened to her.
“We need to go,” Kit said to Aidra, starting for the door, ignoring his uncle’s presence entirely.
“Give a man enough rope,” Uilleam called after him, “watch him hang himself.”
Kit was panicking despite his outward display of calm. His intentions had always been to bury what Uilleam had done, not wanting Luna to face the horrors of it all, but that was before he knew it was his fault.
Now, it wasn’t about burying the secrets.
He had to destroy them.
Removing his phone from his pocket, he dialed Fang. “I have a job for you.”
Den of Mercenaries Page 73
