by Bethany-Kris
Win some, lose some.
Story of her life.
“I can do that—list the bounty, I mean. And make the payment through your offshore accounts when it’s been claimed, too.” Marcel’s clicking had started up again, adding, “Nothing will be tracked back to you or me as well.”
“Expected nothing else. And—”
“One favor, Penny. That’s all you get.”
She almost smiled.
“Except this is a personal request. Something of mine that I want to be returned. So to speak ...”
“I’m not following,” he returned.
“I want the files unsealed and dumped.”
A pause answered her back. Then, the hacker asked, “What files?”
“You know what files.”
Every single image and video of her as a child—each scrap of evidence that proved her sexual abuse and trafficking by her parents. Everything that The League spent years finding and hiding at her behest. It served two purposes—one to help her heal while also erasing her very existence. Or a part of it, anyway.
“I want it to be clear,” Penny said, “that girl and the white ghost are one in the same.”
“Penny, I can’t willingly release child po—”
“They are my files. They are my images and videos. Of me. Only me.”
“Penny—”
“It’s my choice, Marcel. Unseal and dump them.”
“But ... why?” the hacker asked.
Well, that wasn’t an easy answer. And not one she planned to give to the man on the other end of the call. It wasn’t like she wanted people to see those images and videos. She didn’t want to give other predators more fodder for their dark and illegal desires. But she also had no other choice.
Penny had to throw as many wrenches into the plans of others as she could—including releasing any and all information about herself that she could afford to without putting her safety at risk. Especially if it hurt her mother and any plans Allegra might have.
Like her marriage. This would certainly make that hard to see through. At least, on Senator Gilles Tracey’s side of things. The woman might be able to scare one reporter away, but she seriously doubted Allegra would be able to do the same when Penny’s files were dumped and available for public consumption. Not to mention, when those files made their way to the offices of reporters and journalists all over the state.
Eat your heart out, Mother.
It’s what you deserve.
“Because I said so—one more thing,” Penny said to Marcel as she readied to end the call.
“Christ, what now?”
“How are they doing? The League, I mean?”
“Tracking you.”
“Obviously. I meant—”
“You’re ahead of them,” Marcel murmured. “But only barely. You’re both in New York now. Or at least, a team is there. It’s only a matter of time, Penny.”
Right.
But she just afforded herself some more.
And that’s what counted.
One second after another.
It all added up.
8.
Luca
“WHAT are you doing right now?”
Luca didn’t usually like when conversations opened up that way. It almost always meant someone was going to pile more shit on top of his to-do list, and he really couldn’t afford more at the moment.
“Depends on what you’ve got to tell me,” Luca said, taking a right turn onto the next block. “And my godson is in the back seat, so keep that shit clean, you know?”
Keys chuckled deeply. “Thanks for the heads-up—Naz Donati’s son, right? He’s in that fancy fucking private school for gifted youth, huh? Smart kid.”
Luca tensed a bit at the hacker’s personal knowledge of a side of his life that he had never shared with the man.
Before he could even say anything about it, Keys added, “Sorry, I check out shit about everybody when I’m bored. Bad habit—you start to feel like you can just join in on people’s lives when they don’t even realize you’re a part of it. Know what I mean?”
“Not really.”
“It’s ... a hacker thing. Speaking of which—”
“What?”
“Just listen, things are looking up for you,” Keys muttered, making Luca remove one hand from the steering wheel to massage at the side of his temple where a headache was starting to form.
The thing about life lately? It was really testing his patience. In every single aspect—including people. He took a second to check on little Cross in the backseat, safe in his booster seat while he ate a cup of gelato and watched the city streets pass them by. At least, the kid was happy and unconcerned. But Cross always seemed that way. The people around him over the years had learned the boy was always listening.
Always.
And he heard what people thought he didn’t. He understood more than people could sometimes be comfortable with—honestly. Gifted didn’t begin to cover his nephew, but the way the kid’s eyes flickered back and forth at passing buildings told Luca he was distracted. The conversation happening between the hacker and his uncle didn’t interest him at all.
One thing to his favor.
Back to Keys, Luca said, “Things are going to be looking some way for you if you don’t stop wasting my time with this conversation, too.”
“Hey, be nice.”
“Keys.”
“All right—I was only trying to make conversation.”
“I don’t have time for conversation right now, man. I’m running out of time to find her here, remember?”
The hacker on the other end of the line cleared his throat, a more serious note taking a hold of his tone when he replied, “Shit, right, okay. Back to it, then?”
“Please.”
“You got it—was going to ease you into this, but that’s not going to work. So, I have a ... friend.”
Luca’s gaze narrowed. “Are you fucking with me again—”
“Nah, listen. I can count on one hand the number of times Marcel has called me in the last ten years. He’s an old friend, shit went bad years ago, and he got out. And I don’t know what happened to him, but sometimes I’d get a call. A friend in the business that started where I did—there’s a code, Luca.”
“Why am I getting an entire backstory here?”
Keys sighed so loudly the speakers crackled in the Bluetooth. “The point is—I never asked about what happened because it wasn’t on the table. The code. If you’re safe, that’s great. But he called again. I was over here minding my own goddamn business and checking up on that shit about the white ghost you sent me.”
“What does this have anything to do with—”
“He wanted to ask a favor—a million-dollar bounty to be listed in New York. He figured since the last known location was here, it’d be better to open the bounty here. Really get the underground moving here while the bounty spreads outside the state. The man isn’t wrong, and he wanted to go through my servers to do it because they’re the most secure in the state to do it remotely, but that’s not the good part.”
“What is?”
“Who the bounty is on.”
Luca blinked, finally catching up to speed. No, Keys hadn’t been wasting his time at all. “The white ghost.”
“Yeah, man. So—”
“Did he have her location nailed down within New York?”
It was the only thing he cared to ask. The only thing that really mattered.
Keys quieted, and Luca had his answer before the man even said it. His heart sunk deep in his gut when the hacker muttered, “Most he could say was she had been in the state for a while and he could pinpoint her at or near the Hudson river in the past two days because she confirmed it. And we know that basically tells us nothing.”
The urge to punch his steering wheel came on so strongly that it shocked even himself. Luca swallowed back the desire, remembering the little boy still eating his gelato in the backseat. Not that the kid
hadn’t occasionally seen violent things. It was the nature of their life.
He at least tried to give Cross some semblance of normal when he could—a lot like his father had done for him, and Naz still tried to do. Which was every reason why when something came up for business unexpectedly on Naz’s side of things, Luca was quick to jump in and take his godson off the man’s hands even though he had his own shit going on.
Life didn’t relent.
Luca was her bitch lately.
“Wait,” Luca said, realizing something else, “she confirmed it—he talked to her?”
“Man, I’ve already said too much. It’s ... the code, okay?”
“Nothing you know will help me? That’s all I wanna know.”
“She put it on herself.”
“What?”
Keys swore severely under his breath before spitting out, “The bounty. She put it on herself.”
Jesus Christ.
The silence stretched on deafeningly as Luca tried to absorb what that meant for Penny. He couldn’t even pretend he came from her ... world. He only graced the surface with his business through Naz and doing retrieval work over the years. It wasn’t the same as the life Penny lived as an assassin for The League. He knew that.
But he wasn’t so ignorant that he couldn’t comprehend what it meant for her to take a step to put a bounty on herself. A world-class assassin whose moniker had only been whispered about in the tightest of circles for years.
It might take a week for New York to be in a state of chaos as anyone who had the means and motive to see the bounty through mobilized to New York to hunt down the infamous white ghost, but the next few days would be dangerous for Penny to even breathe near an uncovered window where she might be recognized or seen.
“You still there?” the hacker eventually asked.
Luca swallowed hard as his car came to a stop at a red light. “I ... I gotta go.”
He had to catch up to Penny.
Somehow.
And his day wasn’t over yet.
BEFORE NAZ HAD EVEN called Luca that day, he’d already been set on a task that needed his attention immediately. Time was running out for him to look into it when he’d gotten word about it that morning through a friend with connections to the journalist that had published the piece in the Times about Allegra’s history—using both her married name Dunsworth, and connecting it to her maiden name, Hatheway.
He didn’t have time to take his godson off Naz’s hands—even if it was just for a drive to drop him back off with his mother—but he also couldn’t say no. Not when he knew his friend was trying to get as much time with his son as possible while also dealing with the politics of family business as he took his father’s vacated seat for the business side of things.
And that was all before Keys called to drop his bomb.
Luca was pulling double-duty and doing so dangerously. He knew it as he leaned in the rear passenger door to hand his cell phone to his godson, telling Cross, “Play one of those games you like—I’ll be back in five minutes. Do not unlock the car for anybody. Got it, shithead?”
Cross gave him a look from the side. “Got it.”
“You better.”
“I do.”
All that attitude in such a small body. The kid just didn’t know what to do with it. A lot like his father, Luca supposed.
“Be good, buddy.”
Cross was already flipping through the pages of Luca’s phone when he closed the door and pulled out the fob to lock the car. Satisfied somebody wouldn’t be punching out the window of his car on a cool day when he was right across the street, he darted through slow moving traffic to the line of yellow police tape at the entrance of a large apartment building’s parking lot.
Beyond the line of police vehicles that had been parked inside the lot, Luca could see what movement remained at the scene. Which wasn’t very much. The lack of a coroner’s vehicle or an ambulance told him he had been too fucking late to catch someone—like maybe a reporter—that could confirm what he’d heard happened here in the early morning hours.
“Shitty thing, huh?”
The new voice at his left had Luca turning that way. The approaching security guard with a cigarette tucked between the same two fingers that he used to scratch his bulging midsection nodded toward the cops that were chatting at the rear of one police vehicle.
“They’re finally finishing up. It’s been a whole day thing. Don’t know why when they said it was just a suicide.”
Luca stuffed his hands in his pockets, deciding to lie because maybe he could get something. “Yeah, a friend of mine lives on the fifth floor. Guess she saw the body this morning. Jumped from the—”
“Twenty-fifth floor, yeah. Some reporter’s—or a journalist, maybe?—husband.”
“The one that wrote the article in the Times that got a lot of attention recently, right? About the senator’s fiancée. Crazy. Was she there?”
“Nah, they can’t find her. The thing about it ... people don’t usually jump headfirst, but hey, the cops said the place was quiet. Nothing out of the ordinary. And I’m just a fucking security guard, you know what I mean?”
Luca’s first thought?
Professionals.
But which ones?
The Elite?
The League?
Someone else?
Anything was possible.
“And sorry,” the guard told him, “but I can’t let anybody through until they cut the tape. Only residents of the building. Your friend will be here on another day.”
Shit, yeah.
Right.
“Thanks, man,” Luca said.
For more than he knew ...
By the time Luca returned to his car, his mind was already running a million miles a minute. He needed to stop trying to find Penny, and start thinking like her at this point. They were beyond the line of just finding her—time had run out for that.
Slipping inside the driver’s seat after he’d unlocked the car, Luca wasn’t surprised to find Cross had discarded his phone to the backseat. The kid never liked electronics as a distraction. At least he wasn’t longer than the five minutes he promised.
“We’re gonna go see your mom,” he told his godson, getting the car turned on and in gear.
Cross nodded. “Okay. You know she’s going to come back, don’t you?”
Luca’s check of traffic as he maneuvered out of the parking spot came to an abrupt stop as his gaze darted to the rearview mirror. His nephew watched him with the same calm demeanor he always had when he was doing ... that shit. He didn’t even know what to call it. Vibing, maybe. Feeling the aura of the people around him—reading the damn room.
All of it and more.
“Who?” Luca dared to ask.
But he thought he might already know.
“Penny,” Cross said. “That’s what you’re doing, right? You’re looking for her. I saw her—she promised. She’ll come back. But I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”
Fucking hell.
Luca swallowed hard, realizing he was right—he needed to think like Penny—as he told little Cross, “Keep that promise—nobody but me, okay?”
“Okay.”
9.
Penny
THE rapid flicker of the overhead light setup in the busy, popular Brooklyn club moved to the beat of the same music that vibrated the floor under Penny’s combat boots. In black cargo pants and a tight long sleeve in the same color, she certainly didn’t fit in with the crowd around her, but that wasn’t the point. She wasn’t trying to blend in with the people when she didn’t intend to stay long enough to need to.
Not that it mattered.
She hadn’t even come through the front—instead, she used a knife and pick to bust out one of the older locks on a side exit door when the drunks stumbled out of the alleyway long enough for her to get the job done. It wasn’t like the security at the front would let her in looking like she did—guns and knives strapped into the holsters at
her chest and thighs—and she thought the thirty-dollar entrance fee was a little steep.
But that was none of her business. She wasn’t here for any of that.
Penny could, however, see her current target on a platform that rested higher than the rest of the dancefloor. Metal stairs led up to where rope sectioned off the setup filled with red leather booths and black tables. Two men in suits waited at the velvet, braided rope. Their presence and posture was more than enough to tell her there were likely guns under their three-piece suits.
They wouldn’t be a problem.
Knowing better than to linger—with a live bounty on her head, even being in a packed club with hundreds of faces all around her was dangerous—Penny headed for the platform VIP section. Unsurprisingly, she caught the eye of the man sitting in the booth alone before she had even managed to reach the stairs.
He didn’t stand. His dark gaze didn’t show surprise. Almost like ... he expected to see her there.
“Take a break,” she heard him tell the two guards who had finally noticed her approach. “It’s fine. Go have a smoke, and take him with you.”
“But, boss—”
“Go.”
They didn’t question the order again. Penny wondered, as the two men took the metal stairs down and passed her on the way, how many times they dared to question Cross Donati even once. By the look in his eye as he followed their retreating backs, it wasn’t very often. So was the life of a mafia boss, or that’s what she had come to learn.
The older man—with hair as dark as tar and only a whisper of gray despite the years that had left crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes—didn’t bother to stand even when Penny stood on the other side of the table from him. He tipped his head to the side, taking in her getup and the long white braid that she had flipped over her shoulder to at least keep it under control for the moment.
“Plans tonight?” he asked.
Penny shook her head. “Being cautious.”
“Yes, I suppose you have to do that now, don’t you? Comes with the territory of having a million-dollar bounty on your head.”
“Semantics.”
Cross gave her a look.
