Shadows & Silence: A Wild Bunch Novel
Page 1
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Praise for London Miller
Five stars for the man who shows us that actions speak louder than words.
Becca Reads A Lot
Well written, captivating characters leaving you wanting more!
Zuri, Amazon Reviewer
The plot, the twists and turns, simply amaze me from the beginning til the end.
Angeline, Amazon Reviewer
London Miller writes with both complex emotion, high paced intensity and a diverse cast of misfits that you can’t help falling in love with
Mary Catherine Gebhard
Shadows & Silence
A Wild Bunch Novel
London Miller
Contents
Also by London Miller
Newsletter
Blurb
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Crooks & Kings
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by London Miller
VOLKOV BRATVA
In the Beginning
Until the End
The Final Hour
Time Stood Still
Valon: What Once Was
Hidden Monsters
The Morning
DEN OF MERCENARIES
Red.
Celt.
Nix.
Calavera.
THE WILD BUNCH
Crooks & Kings
SEASONS OF BETRAYAL
Where the Sun Hides
Where the Snow Falls
Where the Wind Whispers
Newsletter
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Copyright © 2017 by London Miller
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Editing by: Jenny Sims (Editing4Indies)
Cover Design: London Miller
Cover Photo: Adobe Stock
Blurb
Winter Banes is a grey hat hacker of unparalleled skill, but she’s tired of living behind a screen, and she’s tired of being invisible to the one man she wants to notice her the most.
Until she meets the man without a voice …
Răzvan ‘Tăcut’ Petri—former assassin and current bank
robber—hasn’t met a challenge he can’t best. Even if that
challenge comes in the form of a petite hacker who’s off-limits to him.
What started as a spark grew into flames and there was no walking away from what they had.
Răzvan will do anything to protect and keep her, but he’s not the only one.
For the silent ones
Death was a needy mistress—it stalked them constantly.
Răzvan ‘Tăcut’ Petri
Prologue
Love fucked you up.
Răzvan Petri knew in the worst of ways how love hurt those stupid enough to let it consume them.
He’d watched it destroy those closest to him—his father seeking it from a woman incapable of it, his mother watching helplessly as it walked away from her—and he’d felt it when it was ripped free of him the day he was dumped on the front steps of an orphanage that had ultimately become his personal hell.
After so long in a place like that, he just didn’t think he was capable of it anymore.
Sure, he had his brothers, and he would do anything to protect them—was even willing to give his life for them—but love … he didn’t think he was capable of that.
It was the love that Nix, his handler, had for his wife that had Răzvan swinging off his bike, hands digging into the pockets of his jeans as he headed up the stone pathway toward the bungalow mere feet from the ocean.
He could smell the salt in the air, hear the gentle lap of waves as they crashed into the sand, and even taste the salt in the air.
Yet he still felt nothing.
Once, he’d dreamed of traveling to the beach—of running into the ocean until it submerged him.
There had been no beaches in Constanța, Romania, where he was from.
No clear blue waters that were both dangerous and inviting.
There it was, one of his biggest childhood dreams, yet he had no desire to go out there. After years spent in a place where he wished for death daily, that desire had died a slow and painful death.
Each crack of the whip had gradually beaten its appeal out of him until nothing remained.
Even as the years he’d been away from that place added up, it was still hard to fully let go.
At the front door of the bungalow, Răzvan rapped his fist against the heavy wood, glancing around as he waited. It didn’t matter that the street was nearly empty save a few cars and he hadn’t seen another person.
Old habits died hard.
Before he could turn back, though, the door swung open, and he found a woman—it still felt weird thinking of her as a woman when she was only a few years younger than he was—standing in the doorway.
Surprise lit up her face. “What are you doing here?”
His lips quirked at the corners as he saw her, his gaze scanning over her from head to toe. How long had it been now since he’d last seen Calavera?
He hadn’t been there the day she’d left Nix, and he was glad for it. The way Aidra had told it, Nix hadn’t responded well.
But that wasn’t his business.
And he did his best to mind his own.
He touched the top of her head affectionately before stepping past her.
“By all means,” she said dryly, waving at him as she closed and locked the door, “come right on in.”
In all the years he’d known her, she still spoke to him as though he were actually capable of responding out loud.
He appreciated the effort.
Barely through the archway of the living room, he was caught off guard by a soft, slightly lilting voice. “Holy shit.”
His gaze cut to the girl seated on the couch with her legs folded beneath her.
She was young—younger than Calavera even who was seven years his junior. And though she had yet to stand, he could tell she was shorter than he was too. The top of her head probably reached his chest at best.
Silver-dyed hair twisted into two thick b
raids with the ends reaching the middle of her back. And her eyes, which were almost a little too big for her face, were that same pale shade.
And this girl, whoever she was, was staring at him. Not with fear as so many others did—she looked at him with unabashed appreciation.
“Winter,” Calavera spoke up, dragging his attention back to her for a moment before he looked back at the girl. “This is Tăcut.”
Winter.
It fit her.
When she continued to stare at him, not bothering to look at Calavera at all, he offered her a short salute, feeling awkward for the first time in years.
“It’s awesome meeting you,” she said, shuffling to her feet and extending a hand to him, which drew his attention to the sleeve of roses down her arm. “Are you one of the Den too? I haven’t heard of you.”
There was no hesitation. No casual broaching of the topic. She asked what she wanted to know and fully expected him to give her an answer.
Interesting.
He gave a shake of his head, watching as confusion clouded her features.
This was the part he hated. There was no easy way to explain to someone he couldn’t speak—that he was physically incapable of it.
Not since the professor had grown tired of his crying and screaming and decided to silence him permanently.
Răzvan didn’t remember the surgery, only that when he had woken up with pain that made tears bloom in his eyes instantly, and no sound had escaped as he’d lain in that bed and cried without making any noise at all.
“Does he not talk?” she asked Calavera then shook her head as though she realized how that sounded and looked back at him. “Do you not talk?”
The question was barely out of her mouth before she was reaching out to touch his arm in a sympathetic gesture—sympathetic until she gave his bicep a little squeeze.
“He can’t.” Luna explained what he couldn’t.
“Like can’t can’t or just forbidden?”
Calavera cleared her throat, glancing at him to see his reaction first before answering. “No, he physically can’t.”
He waited for the pity to shine in her eyes. Even Calavera, who had seen plenty of horrors in her short life, had looked at him with such sadness when she had found out the truth.
But he didn’t get pity from Winter. She actually looked impressed. Impressed—like she had been told he held a secret weapon.
“Wicked. So do you know sign language?” she asked, a second before she signed the question as well, shocking the shit out of him and Calavera too, it seemed.
It was rare, so fucking rare, that anyone who worked in their circles knew how to sign. His brothers had learned—the sentimental bastards wanted a way to communicate with him that didn’t involve them trying to decipher his glares.
After he had stopped feeling sorry for himself once he lost his voice, Răzvan had resigned himself to the idea that one in a thousand people would know how to sign, and the number was even lower in their line of work.
He was usually stuck standing in the background—observing and listening but never engaging. He had never confessed to anyone, not even his brothers, that it annoyed him greatly that he couldn’t speak for himself.
What were the odds that this mystery girl knew how to sign?
—Yes, I can sign.—
Winter’s gaze darted from his lips to his hands, a curious expression crossing her delicate face. “Huh?”
“What?” Calavera asked.
He had almost forgotten she was still in the room.
Winter was studying him, tapping a blunt-tipped finger against her chin. “I get the gist of what you’re saying, big guy, but you lost me in there.”
While she looked at Calavera and asked where he was from, he was still caught on what she had called him.
Big guy?
“Romania?” she asked in surprise, and when he nodded, she smiled a little. “My Romanian is a bit rusty, but Tăcut? Means silent or something like that, right?”
The question so innocently asked made his fingers twitch. He nodded again.
Her head canted to the side, and she regarded him with a renewed smile. “You know, you’re pretty hot for a sort of scary, silent Romanian.”
Răzvan didn’t get embarrassed—he rarely felt shame about anything really—but standing there under her gaze, he could feel the heat slowly crawling through him.
Calavera cleared her throat, interrupting. “So why are you here?”
Reminded why he had come here in the first place, he dug out the spare phone in his pocket and tossed it to her. Almost the second it was in her hand, it started to ring.
That would be Nix.
Calavera stepped away, her voice just a whisper as she disappeared around the corner for privacy, leaving him alone with Winter.
“So,” she asked once it was just the pair of them. “Are you going to tell me who you are, or will I have to guess?”
Curious, he asked—Does it matter?—
With all the conviction in the world, she smiled as she answered. “Of course. We’re going to be the best of friends.”
He might not have thought love at first sight existed before, but she had his undivided attention.
Chapter 1
Avoidance was key.
It was the easiest way to mend a broken heart—or a balm for a wounded pride.
Winter Banes wasn’t sure which she was trying to escape, but she knew without a doubt that she had needed to get out of London after spending the past twenty-four hours there for reasons she really didn’t want to think about.
Any time her mind even ventured in that direction … if she even remembered a hint of the soft smiles or the drunken stumbling, she squeezed her eyes shut to force the image away.
No, she definitely needed a distraction after what had happened, and there was no better place to find one than here in New York where she could lose herself in mindless fun with her friends until The Kingmaker, her boss of sorts, called her back to do another job for him.
Or worse, if she had to confront him and what they had done.
Murmuring a thanks to the cab driver, she lifted the hood of her jacket over her braids, stepping out the back into the pouring rain.
Water splashed up around her ankles with each step she took, the rain sliding over her patent white Doc Martens. Earlier, she’d thought of wearing her burgundy velvet ones, but now she was glad she’d chosen practicality over fashion.
By the time she reached the front doors of Crystal Pool Hall, she was nearly soaked through.
Already, she missed the colder months when the only thing she had to worry about was pulling on a coat and gloves. The rain provided soothing background noise when she was tucked behind her laptop, but having to suffer through it physically? The shit was overrated.
From the outside, The Hall looked like it was one bad day away from being demolished—crumbling brick and concrete making up its exterior, overgrown hedges, and cracks in the sidewalk leading up to the entrance—but despite its outward appearance, the inside was vastly different.
Like night and day.
She knocked once on the heavy front door, waving her hand when a pair of eyes glared out at her once a latch in the center of the wood slid away. Seconds later, the door was swinging open, and she was ushered inside after slipping the man a fifty-dollar bill.
The smoky warmth enveloped her the moment she stepped inside, chasing away the chill. As she stood in the entryway, her gaze scanned over the room as if she hadn’t been there a dozen times before.
Across one back wall, five pool tables sat in uniform order, each beneath a dim light hanging from the ceiling that allowed just enough illumination to see which ball you were hitting but not much else.
A few occupied tables were in the center of the floor—men in leather and chains drinking pints of beer, deep in rambling conversations with each other.
The bar might have been stocked with various expensive liquors, and the shaggy-haired
man behind it might have always made sure he had the best of the best—though he was careful never to overpour—no one really came to The Hall for the drinks.
It was the people who mattered.
The Hall, for short, was where one came when they needed a job done—or if you were the one looking for work. It was mostly freelancers—men, and some women, though none were affiliated with any particular organization.
It might not have looked like much, but more money changed hands in this place than any other in the world.
There were killers and thieves, drug dealers, and even a few working girls who lingered near the pool tables and happily tricked gullible men into games before taking them for everything they were worth.
One of them, Tracy, had been more than happy to teach Winter how to play when she first started coming around.
It was the people, Winter knew, who made her love this place so much.
The Hall also smelled of cloves and something else rich and earthy, a special mixture of tobacco found in the cigars the owner liked to peddle. Cigarettes weren’t allowed nor were any other brand of smoke.
House rule: if one needed to fill their lungs with nicotine, they had to buy the house’s blend.
Dismas, whose last name Winter didn’t know, was the owner, bartender, and wrangler of whoever came into this place and stood behind the bar, polishing a glass as he eyed her from across the room. The slight curl of his lips that almost resembled a smile made her smile in return.
Unlike the rest of the lot who ventured into this place, he wasn’t a mercenary or assassin. He didn’t have any special sort of skills that would make him deadly to anyone who crossed him.