Den of Mercenaries [Volume Two]

by London Miller

  Brown eyes were trained on him, assessing—judging from the amused light that entered her eyes as she gestured to the board behind him.

  “We’re all good at something, aren’t we?” She wasn’t from Brooklyn, he thought distantly, the barest trace of something unfamiliar tinged her voice.

  Enough that he wondered whether he knew her … and from where.

  “Knives are what you’re good at?” he asked, drawing closer, throwing caution to the fucking wind. He was curious about her, and he’d be damned if he denied himself.

  She shrugged. “Sometimes. There’s something rather poetic about them, no?”

  Yes, there was. He knew it all too well.

  The deceptive beauty of them, how easily they could be manipulated. They could glint in the early morning sunlight, reflecting rainbows and sparkling light, or they shifted into something dark and beautiful when pressed against a man’s neck.

  “You must be new around here,” he said once he stood at her side, enjoying the way she needed to look up at him even with the impressive heels she wore. “I’d remember a throw like that.”

  Her smile became a little more pronounced as she gave him her undivided attention. “Something like that.”

  Her gaze flickered over his shoulder, a brief smile on her lips at someone behind him before her gaze returned to him. It definitely had to be the fucking liquor that had him annoyed enough that someone else was noticing her too.

  Not that he didn’t understand why—she had his attention without even trying.

  Lust wasn’t unfamiliar to him, but it had never felt quite like this before.

  And from that knowing little smile on her face, she knew exactly what she was doing.

  Synek stood there, anticipating the moment when she’d tell him to buy her a drink—to try to play a game with him that she had no possibility of winning—but she surprised him when she turned back to the bar, dismissing him entirely.

  Maybe if he hadn’t watched her throw that knife, or remembered that little smile she’d gifted him, he might have been able to leave her be and going back to his solitary existence.

  But he wasn’t used to being ignored.

  He shouldn’t have cared, not after the past few days he’d had, and with his favorite bottle within walking distance, but he found himself closing the distance between them.

  Like an invisible cord dragging him closer.

  Her eyes, which seemed lighter in the glow of the televisions mounted above her head, lifted when he got close, as if she’d known without a shadow of a doubt that he’d follow her. A touch of something akin to amusement lit up her face as her gaze finally drifted back to the table where he’d been sitting.

  She’d noticed him, it seemed, before he ever noticed her.

  “I would ask what you’re drinking, but …” They both knew the answer to that.

  And as of right now, he didn’t need a drink. He was good with her. “What are you having, luv?”

  “You’re bartending too?” she asked, her voice throaty and captivating.

  Something else lingered behind her words—something he might have been able to decipher if he were sober—but for once, his mind was blissfully blank of the shit that plagued it, and for now, that was all that mattered.

  “I can be whatever you need me to be.”

  She rested an elbow on the bar, her chin in her palm as she regarded him with a lazy smile. “Charming.”

  “Only when I’m trying.”

  She tucked wisps of that dark, ebony hair behind her ear, eyeing him like he was a puzzle she was trying to figure out and enjoying the challenge. “I’m not sure you’d even be able to make a drink in the state you’re in, even with the whole”—she made a vague gesture behind her toward the board without turning around—“knife thing.”

  He shrugged. “I could make that with my eyes closed. I’m not nearly sloshed enough.”

  “Then surprise me,” she said.

  He didn’t have to be told twice.

  Slipping behind the bar, Synek offered Dismas a quick nod of his head, but he only got a frown of confusion in return. The man wouldn’t question what he was doing—or who he was doing it with. He was used to his antics by now.

  Instead, he ventured farther down the bar to give him space to do his thing.

  But before he ventured far, Dismas turned back to eye the woman sitting at the bar, a peculiar frown tugging at his lips. He didn’t know her, that much was obvious from the expression on his face, but it might have been because he didn’t know her that the look was there.

  It was no secret Dismas knew everyone on both sides of the law, so his not knowing her could either be good or really bloody awful.

  In his current state, however, Synek didn’t mind the mystery. The damaged, fucked up part of himself he kept on lockdown appreciated the fact she wasn’t treating him like some wild animal she hoped to tame as the other women who frequented the Hall tended to do when he came to town.

  For tonight, at least, he wasn’t the walking, talking weapon he was made to be.

  Though Synek knew fuck all about mixing drinks—he liked his liquor straight with no chaser—he’d watched Dismas enough times to get a general idea.

  First came the vodka—more than a shot’s worth going into the shaker—then came ice before he poured a variety of different fruity juices until he finally grabbed a bottle of rum for good luck to finish it off.

  Giving it a good shake, he poured it into a pair of glasses he grabbed from the corner of the bar before setting them down in front of her and feeling like a right fucking idiot as he poured them. “Go on then,” he said with a nod of his head at the glasses. “Have a taste.”

  “I didn’t realize you were using Iordanov vodka,” she said with a gesture of her hand to the bottle he’d set back on its shelf behind him.

  He glanced back, barely registering that it was one of Dismas’s “Don’t fucking touch!” bottles before offering a shrug of his shoulder. “I can afford it.”

  Even if it was over four-thousand dollars a bottle.

  It already paid well doing what he did, but what he didn’t hand over to sustain his drinking habit, the rest sat untouched in an account collecting interest. Synek was rich ten times over even if it meant nothing to him.

  She was holding both drinks in her hands when he faced her, a smile on her lips before she offered him one. “To our health.”

  A part of him had expected her to just let them sit, but smiled all the same as he took the drink she offered and tossed it back. By the time he was setting his glass back down, hers was already resting in front of her, her fingers brushing over her lips to wipe away the moisture.

  At that moment, he was in love.

  “What brings a girl like you to the Hall?” he asked, figuring it was a safe enough question.

  “A girl like me?” she asked, sounding affronted even as she was still smiling.

  “No offense intended,” he replied. “Doesn’t seem like your scene is all.”

  “It seemed … interesting,” she answered, her gaze dropping for a moment. “Would you believe me if I told you I was looking for you?”

  “Not even a little. I’m trouble for a girl like you,” he said with a casual smile, already thinking of a million ways he could and might corrupt her.

  “Maybe,” she said, surprising him again, “but there’s nothing wrong with a little trouble. Especially when it looks like you.”

  His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he didn’t have to look at the screen to know who was calling him.

  Winter.

  He’d left without a goodbye, but without taking his eyes off the woman in front of him, he reached into his jeans and turned the ringer off.

  He’d call her back later.

  Synek’s smile grew a touch. “Are you going to tell me your name?”

  “There’s no fun in that, is there? Ruins the mystery.”

  A better man might have asked if she was sure—if this, if he,
was what she truly wanted—but he was a bastard and didn’t want to give her a chance to change her mind.

  Instead, he walked around the bar, practically feeling the electric current thrumming between them as he offered her his hand.

  She slipped her much smaller palm into his, happily climbing off the barstool and following him through the back of the Hall where he grabbed his money from Davie as he left, then walked through the back door and out into the night air.

  The door had barely clicked shut before he was spinning her around to face him, claiming her mouth before she could even draw a breath. This was what he needed—a beautiful distraction. Something to take the edge off what that vodka couldn’t quite manage.

  She was frozen in his arms for only a heartbeat before she was responding, rising on the tips of her toes to better allow him access.

  He could taste the liquor on his tongue, the sweet bite of cranberry, and a taste that was uniquely her own—he wondered if the rest of her tasted just as good.

  Reluctantly, he drew away from her, studying the flush in her cheeks and the slightly uneven breaths she took. “One night,” he said.

  “Don’t worry,” she said as she stepped out farther in the alley with him. “I know exactly the kind of man you are.”

  Even better.

  There would be no need for long explanations in the morning. No expectation of something more than this moment. Right here. Right now.

  In the next breath, he tugged her back to him, but this time, he hooked an arm around her waist and lifted her clear off the ground. Already, his cock pressed incessantly against the hard denim of his jeans, practically begging to be set free.

  Her legs wrapped around his waist; she clung to him like a lover, her fingers buried in his hair, and for a moment, he felt her give in. Her bones turned to liquid and a sigh left her lips a second before he had his own lips on hers and swallowed the sounds she made.

  He walked them forward, pressing her back against the brick wall, forcing her legs even wider to get better between them. Even through the jeans she wore, he could feel the heat of her and knew if he got his hand in her knickers, he would find her soaked.

  The anticipation of that very moment thrummed inside him, riding him so hard he was surprised he hadn’t given in to the impulse yet.

  “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” she whispered in his ear suddenly, her words like a dark lullaby.

  He was drunk on this—drunk on her—until those words penetrated, only slightly clearing his foggy brain.

  “What’d you say?”

  She kissed him one last time before pulling away entirely. “You’re never supposed to accept a drink from a stranger, Synek, or have you forgotten your training?”

  He shoved away from her even as he brought his hand up to close around her throat, an unconscious reaction he couldn’t stop.

  Because of that name.

  His name—something she shouldn’t have known.

  Most thought his moniker was a clever play on the word, sin, rather than the shortened form of his actual name—Synek.

  His mother was rotting in the ground, so there was no possibility she had shared it with another—not that she would have ever acknowledged Synek in any way.

  Which could only mean one thing …

  The girl must have realized what he was thinking because her smile grew even as his fingers squeezed tighter.

  “Did the Wraiths send you?” he asked, needing to know for sure before he snapped her neck.

  “The price they offered did,” she strained to say from the pressure he was exerting.

  But she wasn’t afraid.

  She didn’t fight him or struggle to get free.

  She was … waiting.

  “They said you were impossible to find—their own white whale.” Her smile grew. “Maybe they weren’t trying hard enough.”

  He wanted to strangle the fucking life out of her—he wanted to see her face muddle with red before she passed out from the lack of oxygen—but more than anything, he wanted to see her react.

  To see that anger and fury and fear that she might die at his hands for trying to betray him cross her face.

  But she wasn’t, and that baffled him most.

  Not afraid.

  Not angry.

  Nothing.

  Not with his hand around her throat, and obviously not from what she had been told about him; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been here now.

  He’d been a different man with the Wraiths.

  Hungrier.

  Bloodier.

  Nothing they had to say would be good to hear.

  Yet she’d tracked him down as if it was all nothing—as if he was no threat at all.

  He should have shoved her away, left her in the alley, and taken off—if she were here, the Wraiths weren’t far behind—but he hated that smug grin on her face, as if she had won.

  He needed to wipe that look off her fucking face.

  “You—”

  The words were there, resting on the tip of his tongue, but a wave of vertigo struck him so hard he could barely keep his head up, let alone get his mouth to speak.

  You’re never supposed to accept a drink from a stranger, Synek …

  He’d heard her words clearly enough, even as his world began tilting and his vision grew blurry at the edges, but they hadn’t fully penetrated until now.

  Until he realized she had drugged him.

  Even as he loosened his hold involuntarily, stumbling back a step as he tried to right himself, the incessant buzzing in his ears grew louder.

  Squeezing his eyes shut and giving his head a sharp shake didn’t help the vortex he was currently sinking into. Nothing did.

  “You fucking drugged me?” he asked, dazed. Surprised.

  Or at least, that was what he’d tried to say, but the words sounded slurred even to his own ears.

  Disbelief warred with the nausea churning inside him.

  No one—no one had been able to get this close to him in years. He’d never let his guard down for anyone at any time.

  He knew better.

  Remember your training …

  Synek didn’t make mistakes—not like this. Not when he knew the cost was his life.

  Distantly, he heard tires screeching to a halt, doors swinging open, but he refused to look back at who he knew was coming.

  His past had finally caught up with him, and no matter how far he had run, no matter how careful he had been, he couldn’t fight fate.

  This moment had been inevitable since the night he’d taken that pencil and killed the men he’d once considered brothers. All so he could save the life of a little girl he hadn’t known.

  The Wraiths had always promised vengeance, and now they were here to collect.

  He should have gone home.

  The girl stepped around him, her face starting to blur with the rest of her. Something about her expression made him think she was … remorseful, but he was wrong. If she was with them, then she didn’t regret what she had done at all.

  Sleep now, sweet boy, he heard distantly, a hauntingly sick voice from the past that threatened to drag him under. It won’t hurt for long.

  The last thing Synek saw before the blackness overtook him was the girl’s back as she walked away.

  Chapter 4

  Excitement crackled like lightning inside the room.

  Iris had slipped through the door but stuck close to the wall, positioning herself just so to see the front of the room where her target had been dragged some minutes before.

  A metal collar was locked around his neck, a foot’s length of chain connecting it from a loop in the back of it to a post in the wall. If it was supposed to make him afraid or submit and start begging for his life, it wasn’t working.

  He looked less like the victim and more like the one they should all be afraid of.

  Like a rabid animal held off only by the chain that seemed so insignificant despite the strength she knew it hel
d.

  More curious, he didn’t seem to be looking at anyone in the room.

  They weren’t alone—others were present, men who’d worked alongside him, others who wanted nothing more than to see him bleed, and Rosalie who looked far too pleased with the sight of him strung up—but for all the attention he paid them, they might as well have not been in the room.

  From the moment Iris had walked into the room, finding a shadowed corner to stand and watch, his gaze had lifted from the dirty floor in her direction and hadn’t moved since.

  He couldn’t possibly see her, not with so many people surrounding her, but she could practically feel his gaze—like his hatred was a tangible force wrapping around her.

  If she were within an inch of him, he would have his hands around her throat, just as he had in the alleyway, and he’d choke the life out of her without a second thought.

  The smart decision would be to turn her back and leave this room without ever looking back. Her job was done. Her target delivered. So why hadn’t she walked away?

  “I’m so glad to have you home, puppy,” Rosalie said as she braced one leather-clad hip against the chair she stood next to, her hazel eyes trained firmly on Synek. “I’ve missed you.”

  Iris thought she had known the depths of the woman’s infatuation with Synek, but she’d clearly underestimated what he meant to her. Her eyes were shining, her lips turned up in a cruel smile, and she was practically shaking with excitement.

  Iris doubted she had ever felt even remotely as crazy about someone as Rosalie seemed to feel about Synek.

  Yet if the feeling had ever been mutual—as Rosalie had always told her it was—he wasn’t showing it. Despite Rosalie addressing him directly, he still had yet to take his eyes off her.

  Maybe it was his lack of acknowledgment to her goading that had the others realizing he wasn’t simply waiting to be addressed but that he was focused on something else.

  Someone else.

  Iris shifted on her feet, careful to keep her face blank though the rest of her was squirming. Ever since she had joined the Wraiths—ever since she had run from that courthouse in the pouring rain—she had always made it a point to stay in the background and not draw too much attention to herself.