“That’s not the important bit. You see, it took Kit approximately two weeks and a day to find out what happened to me. You know, he’d vowed he would never go back there,” Uilleam said suddenly. “But he came back … for me—an admirable trait, really.”
“Did he kill Alexander?” Luna asked.
“Oh, no,” Uilleam said as he tapped his thumb against the middle console, “it was nothing as mundane as that. Kit butchered him.”
“Butchered …”
“Where did you think he learned those skills he so benevolently bestowed upon you?”
She had never considered his father, definitely. “He never told me how he’d done it,” Luna said. “But then again, he hasn’t really said much other than the fact that he killed him.”
“Kit didn’t murder the man because he hurt me,” Uilleam went on, his voice low. “He murdered him because Alexander almost took me away from him. Now, I’m just his brother, and you see how well we get along on any given day.” With a short laugh, Uilleam touched her shoulder, the smile on his lips contradicting his next words. “Now, do I really have to tell you what he’ll do to a man at just the thought of him taking you away?”
Chapter 5
Fang
“You must learn obedience,” the professor said as he snapped the end of his ruler against the edge of Christophe’s desk, his mania concealed behind a smile as the boy jumped in fright.
But even as the threat of what the professor might do to him if he didn’t comply hung over him, Christophe refused to raise the whip he held in his right hand any higher.
Punishment was preferable to what the professor wanted him to do. He couldn’t torture someone as he had been tortured.
But that wasn’t the right word, was it?
The professor liked to call it teaching—he was ensuring they all learned what to expect outside the walls of his school.
Pain.
Betrayal.
Everything he was finding in this school regardless.
Christophe was starting to wonder how long it would take before his insolence resulted in his death. One would think that knowing it was inevitable, he would try to save his own life by doing as he was told.
He wouldn’t.
Christophe was ready to die.
Dropping the whip he held, he faced the professor with a smile of his own, and with every bit of strength his eleven-year-old body could muster, he reared back and kicked the man in his shin, laughing as he did it.
A distant part of him could hear the surprised gasps of his brothers—his fellow prisoners of this school of horrors—but he couldn’t focus on them.
So long as he had the professor’s attention, it would at least be diverted from them.
The last thing Christophe had seen before his head slammed against the floor was the professor’s fist swinging down at his face …
Fang snapped out of the memory, wondering why thoughts of the school had been plaguing him for the last few weeks.
It was often in his dreams that the professor’s smile tormented him the most, or even now, as he drifted away into his thoughts instead of focusing on the two men in front of him.
He had escaped—they all had, really—thanks to Nix and the happenstance of him being in that part of Romania for other business.
Despite his attempts to bury his past to the point that he no longer had to think about it, Fang still thought of that cold, winter night when Nix waged a one-man war on the gated school, sparing no one, save the children.
He had offered them freedom, a chance at a normal life, but the desire for normality had faded to nothing by the time the assassin arrived to free them.
Fang had wanted something else in its place.
He wanted vengeance.
But there was none to be meted out when Nix had killed everyone who had caused so much pain to the boys Fang had learned to care for like siblings.
No, not like siblings, they were his brothers—the few he was willing to give his life for, no questions asked.
And once he accepted a place in the Lotus Society—a secret organization of assassins that he had once belonged to—Nix had taken a spot on the list of people he was willing to die for.
He owed him everything.
So when Nix asked for a favor, there was never any hesitation—except when that favor involved The Kingmaker.
“Sorry,” Fang suddenly announced as he blinked, remembering that he wasn’t alone in the room, and the two Runehart brothers were still seated quietly across from him. “I didn’t hear you.”
Nix didn’t look fazed by the fact that Fang had no idea what he or his brother had said for the last … shit, how long had it been?
Nix was used to him disassociating at random, but The Kingmaker wasn’t, given the expression on his face.
“Is he all there, mentally?” The Kingmaker asked, sparing Fang the briefest of glances. “This is important.”
Fang frowned. “I’m offended.”
“Fang,” Nix said with a warning in his voice—he didn’t look amused.
“Fine,” Fang said with a wave of his hand. “Yes, go on.”
The Kingmaker was the first to speak. “I understand that you and your … team are rather proficient in high-security thefts.”
He made it sound sophisticated. “Yeah, we rob safety deposit boxes. What of it?”
“We have a job for you and barring the results of it, another might come after,” Kit added.
“This is for him, no?” Fang asked with a nod of his head in The Kingmaker’s direction.
“The job he’s offering is of mutual interest—helping him is helping me.”
Fang rubbed a hand over his jaw, thinking that over. “Right … and what do we get out of this?”
The Kingmaker looked annoyed. Fang hadn’t been around him much over the years despite how long he’d spent with Nix, but he doubted the man had ever been questioned.
“My gratitude.”
Nix said something to the man in Welsh—Fang only picked up on bits and pieces—he had never cared to learn the language—and by the time they finished, it was clear they had reached some sort of agreement.
“Double the usual fee, and a chance to renegotiate once this job is done.”
Double the fee?
Fang, nor his brothers, were bad off—they made significant money from the jobs they pulled with Nix, and coupled with the fact that they all shared a compound as a living space, their expenses were minimum.
But Tăcut often donated ninety percent of his income to various orphanages—whichever one caught his attention at the moment—and the rest all had their own vices that they spent a fortune on.
Like Thanatos and his penchant for romance novels.
But despite how close they all were, Fang still didn’t know what Invictus did with his cut besides offering tithes to nunneries. He was private that way, and despite how nosy Fang was, he didn’t infringe.
“That works,” he said dropping his hand and drumming his fingers on his knee. “When do we get started?”
“Excellent,” The Kingmaker said as he got to his feet, straightening the front of his jacket. “I’ll expect updates.” This was said to Nix a moment before the man left.
“Was he adopted?” Fang asked, watching the man go. The Kingmaker might have scared the shit out of others, but Fang had met real monsters.
And to him, The Kingmaker was just a dick.
“Unfortunately, no, but our relation aside, you shouldn’t antagonize him.”
“Why? He’ll send one of his mercenaries after me?” Fang smiled with a jerk of his head. “Pretty sure I can take ’em.”
“That’s not how he works,” Nix said, leveling a stern stare on him—like his fucking father once did. “He would send Luna to put you in line, knowing that I would never let any harm come to her.”
“Pretty sure I could take her too.”
“But you couldn’t take me, and I promise you that you wouldn’t like how I res
ponded if you laid a hand on her.”
The threat was clear in his voice, though there was no malice behind it. It wasn’t idle, Fang knew, but he still found it amusing all the same.
“Duly noted. So what’s the job?”
“You’ll be assisting Luna at a diamond boutique,” Nix said, picking up a thumb drive from a drawer in his desk and tossing it over. “All blueprints can be found on that.”
“What’s my timeline?”
“Seventy-two hours.”
Fang arched a brow at that number. “What’s the security level like?”
“Nothing you can’t handle. I’m still waiting for confirmation on another matter, and should I get it, the security will be nonexistent.”
“Right. I’ll keep that in mind.” Fang pocketed the device. “Anything else you need?”
“Make sure Luna doesn’t get hurt.”
If there was one thing that had surprised Fang the most since he had come to work for the former assassin was how much the man had changed over the last few years.
He wasn’t a bad boss—a bit of a moody asshole when he wanted to be, but he got worse from Tăcut when he was going through one of his moments. But everything had changed once Luna entered the picture.
That wasn’t to say Fang minded. If anything, he was glad he no longer had Nix riding his ass because he was more preoccupied with his wife, but he was also starting to see the effects of what could happen once you lost the woman you loved.
Aidra … No, he couldn’t imagine losing her. And just the idea of her walking away from him made him antsy.
He loved her, more than he loved himself sometimes because she was the purest thing he had.
“I’ll keep her safe,” Fang said before he could venture too deep into his thoughts.
He knew what Nix felt for his wife—he understood it.
And doing a solid for him was the least he could do after everything Nix had done for him.
Chapter 6
The smell of the ocean drew Luna outside onto the back patio to watch the waves gently lap at the shore. Despite the chill in the air, she kicked her feet up on the railing, leaving the blanket to only wrap around her shoulders.
She had only been there for a day and a half, but she was already finding the city to be better than she’d hoped—or the bungalow, at least. It might have been fully furnished when she arrived, but it already felt like home.
Or at least a home.
The château would probably always be home to her.
She knew those walls and everything within them—from Kit’s bedroom and the thrilling darkness it represented, or even the rooms down below the ground level where she had alternately learned how to wield a knife and watched men get butchered by them.
Sometimes, when she was back in Vegas after an assignment, she thought about the sprawling grounds, how the grass had felt beneath her feet for the very first time.
Luna missed everything about the place … and the people inside it.
She hadn’t seen much of Aidra since she had left nor the Wild Bunch, though she’d heard small things about what they’d been up to since she was gone.
Kit, on the other hand … she’d seen plenty of him. Most of those times hadn’t been voluntary, but all of that had changed in the blink of an eye with just one phone call.
“I have a proposition for you,” he had said, the sound of his voice in her ear making her heart thump harder.
“I want nothing from you,” was her reply, but that was a lie, one he didn’t call her on—she wanted everything.
“Come to a marriage counseling session with me. If by the end of it, you want nothing more to do with me, then I’ll give you what you want the most.”
At that time, the only thing she wanted more than seeing her mother rot was getting away from Kit permanently.
She still had the papers somewhere …
But her interest had been piqued because in all the months that he had tried in vain to get her to come home to him, he had never suggested anything like that before. At first, he’d tried to shower her with gifts, and when that didn’t work, he had resorted to practically stalking her across the United States.
No matter how many times she moved, he found her, which had grown annoying after a while, until finally, he had stopped trying by the time she landed in Vegas.
Then, she hadn’t known whether she was happy because he’d finally given up or sad because he had stopped trying.
One hour.
It had taken one hour for her to rethink everything.
By the end of that first session, Luna had fallen right back under his spell. It was almost ridiculous how quickly she let go of her anger toward him.
And now, even as she was supposed to be focused on the job with Carmen, she was thinking about Kit and when he would call next.
Hearing his voice last night, his laugh, and even the way she could almost hear the smile in his voice had made her feel giddy again, just as she had when she first met him.
A part of her—arguably a big part of her—had known this was inevitable. Kit was a charmer, and it took him no time at all to charm her. But depriving herself of him had helped to keep her focused.
Except now she was right back to where she’d started.
Hopelessly and irrevocably in love.
Here they were, close but not, and she could no longer deny that their separation was affecting her just as much as it was affecting him.
The sound of the doorbell pulled Luna from her thoughts, and unlike last night, she didn’t hesitate though she didn’t know who was waiting out there—but if she had to guess, it was because of Kit.
Venturing back into the house, she ran her fingers through her hair a moment before swinging the front door open, blinking at the man wearing a ball cap low over his face, holding a package under one arm, with an electronic pad in his other hand.
“Luna Runehart?” he asked, glancing down at the package before looking back to her.
Definitely Kit—no one on the face of the earth knew her by that name other than him and Uilleam.
And if it was from her handler, he would just address it to “Calavera.”
“That’s me.”
He had her sign, passed the package to her, then tipped his hat and headed back to the van parked at the curb.
Luna was already smiling before she even made it back inside, contemplating what she had just received. Placing it on the island, she found a knife, cutting through the brown wrapping paper and twine.
She barely had it open before the phone Kit had sent her was ringing.
“Are you spying on me?” she asked, feeling the same suspicion Winter had when she spoke about Syn.
“I tracked the delivery,” Kit returned with a chuckle. “Have you opened it yet?”
“You hadn’t given me a chance,” she mumbled to herself even as she finally opened the nondescript box and peeked inside. “Oh wow.”
When the delivery man had first passed her the package, she had briefly wondered why the box was cold, but once she got a look inside, she had her answer.
Not only was there a box of white roses, but there was a smaller box filled with chocolate cupcakes, and resting on top of the chocolate icing was a single blueberry for each one.
“Ah,” Kit said knowingly, understanding her silence. “You’ve opened it now, yes?”
“Kit, you …”
“Are you happy?”
That single question made her smile, her cheeks flushing. “Of course.”
“I’m willing to grovel,” he says, two sharp beeps in the background letting her know he was getting in his car. “Whatever it takes.”
“Whatever it takes to get me back?” she asked.
“Whatever it takes to keep you, Luna.”
You’re already keeping me, she wanted to say, but she held the words back. Despite what she was feeling, it wasn’t time yet.
Leaning forward, she inhaled the delicate scent of the flowers. “Well,
I’m liking the way you grovel, Kit.”
“I’m making progress, no? At least this one you aren’t planning to send back with a note.”
Luna laughed, remembering one of the first bouquets Kit had sent her once she was gone. After a week of ignoring his phone calls, he had thought sending flowers would soften her toward him, and he’d even had the audacity to include a card that said, Forgive me.
At the time, her anger had been too new, and she hadn’t thought twice about shredding those flowers, stuffing them into a box, and on the back of the note he’d sent, she’d drawn her best impression of a middle finger.
“I needed time then,” she said.
“And you don’t now?” he asked, the question more than just a simple inquiry.
But she wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’m not angry with you anymore,” she said and meant it.
Some days, it had felt like that anger was the only thing keeping her going … now, she was just tired of being angry.
“Progress then,” he said more firmly.
“There’s a lot that needs to work out before …”
She wanted to say before she forgave him, but if she were being honest, she had already forgiven him.
When he had confessed to everything during that first session with Donna, Luna hadn’t harbored any more resentment, but she hadn’t been ready to go to him just yet.
Something was still holding her back.
“As I said, progress,” he said, not mentioning her inability to finish her statement.
From the very first moment Uilleam had confessed to a years’ old secret, Luna had simply reacted, never stopping to think and rationalize. She just wanted to get away from it—get away from him.
It had been easy to make excuses for Uilleam because she hadn’t loved him—cared was a better word. She would never say that she didn’t care about him, but Kit … what she felt for him was entirely different.
At a time when she felt like she had lost everything, even her own identity, Kit had shown her how to put those fractured pieces back together again.
He taught her how to be a better version of herself.
And the thought of him having not cared whether she lived or died at one point, even if he didn’t know who she was, hurt her the most.
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