Beautiful Vengeance

by Kaylea Cross

  “Holy shit,” Ty muttered, shaking his head.

  “She didn’t trust that we’d take him out later, so she’s going to do it on her own,” Megan answered, reaching for her weapon. “We better haul ass.”

  “I’ll drive.” Marcus snatched up the keys to one of the vehicles and the others followed him out back.

  By the time Trinity and Eden jumped in the back seat, almost twenty-five minutes had passed since Kiyomi left. He took the lead, speeding down the darkening streets while the last, weak rays of sunlight faded in the west.

  The sights, the scent of the dust and the smell of grilled meat took him right back to his final deployment here, triggering a gut-deep anxiety he couldn’t shake. The back of his neck prickled, a subconscious warning he couldn’t ignore as he thought of the blast.

  His men screaming all around him. Then the pain. The torture.

  He shoved the memories back. He’d take on hell itself to save Kiyomi. Saving her was all that mattered.

  They had to reach her in time. Because if they didn’t, Marcus couldn’t bear the alternative.

  ****

  Now or never.

  Kiyomi had waited as long as she dared. For the past twelve minutes she’d watched Rahman’s security come in and out of the gated property. Just as she’d thought, they were getting ready to move him.

  No way she was going to let that happen.

  The growing shadows swallowed the alley as she snuck down it and toward the privacy wall surrounding the house Rahman was in. She’d just checked the interior yard from a balcony across the street. He had to still be in there because she recognized two of his personal bodyguards patrolling the inside yard. He didn’t go anywhere without those two.

  Two well-placed shots from her silenced pistol took care of them. Security cameras would likely pick them up, but it didn’t matter. By the time anyone noticed what she’d done, it would be too late.

  Her hand closed around the grip of her weapon as she chose her moment. She’d planned everything out as best she could on the way here, confident that Rahman and his men wouldn’t kill her on the spot when they saw her.

  Ironically, for the moment, the Architect was her best protection. Kiyomi could endure anything short of death until her team got here—and she was betting that wouldn’t be long. Even if they were pissed as hell about what she’d done, they would still come for her.

  In the meantime, she had a personal score to settle.

  Blocking out the rage and hatred, she slipped into stone-cold op mode as she scaled the wall and landed lightly in a crouch in the yard. As she’d hoped, no other security rushed her.

  She hugged the shadows as she ran across the yard for the window at the side of the house she’d chosen for her entry point, making sure the camera mounted there didn’t spot her.

  By the time she’d pried open the window and started to boost her body through it, they must have seen the camera footage. Because just as her foot touched the floor, two men rushed toward her from the back, Rahman’s head of security in the lead.

  She shot them both in the chest. Both fell, but the head bodyguard was still moving, trying to raise his pistol.

  Kiyomi walked up and stood over him, staring into his ugly face for a moment before she put a bullet through it. She shifted her attention to the room at the back of the house. If Rahman was in there, he might have seen everything from a laptop.

  The bedroom door was closed tight. She stopped a few feet from it to gather herself, then attacked.

  She kicked the door open and burst into the room, her heart jolting when Rahman whirled to face her in his desk chair.

  He froze, that eerie, dark gaze locking on her. His stunned expression faded as he stared at her in the sudden silence, then a fanatical gleam entered his eyes, contorting his handsome features into a cold smile that sent a shiver up her spine.

  “Well, well,” he said in heavily accented English, raking the length of her body with eyes filled with a sickening mixture of lust and hatred.

  Her stomach contracted into a hard ball even as she held her pistol steady, the barrel aimed at his head.

  “Where are my guards, Kiyomi?”

  “Dead. And soon, so will you be.”

  Rather than look afraid or even concerned, he laughed softly. “You came back.”

  “To kill you.” Her finger was on the trigger. Something held her back from pulling it. A shot to the head was too easy. No. When she killed him, she would make it hurt.

  He smirked, the rage taking over the desire in his eyes. “I don’t think so, pet.”

  Pet. God, she wanted to puke. He’d called her that before he’d realized she was more than she’d seemed.

  Kiyomi’s pulse thudded in her ears as she confronted the monster before her. This was what she’d wanted. To face him alone. She let the anger and hatred coalesce into a fire in her gut, giving her strength to endure what was about to happen.

  “You really thought you could do it, didn’t you?” he mused, sneering as he stared into her eyes. “You thought you could break in here, take out my men, and kill me?” He laughed again, raking that chilling gaze over the length of her. Still arrogant as ever, confident in his power and his training even though he was the one at gunpoint. “I find that…untenable.”

  “You were going to sell me,” she hissed.

  He raised a taunting black eyebrow. “Oh, I’m still going to sell you, pet. After I’ve had my fill of you. The buyer’s going to pay even more than our original agreement.”

  She might be able to get the intel out of him verbally. “The so-called ‘Architect’?” she said in disdain.

  His stare burned into hers. “So you do know about her. I wondered.”

  Idiot had just confirmed it was a woman. After she killed him, Kiyomi would take his phone and any other electronics she could find in here and let Amber work her magic. “What does she want with me?”

  He shrugged, the smirk reappearing. “She recognizes perfection when she sees it.” Then his expression shifted. Showing a glimpse of the monster beneath the mask. “No one betrays me, Kiyomi.”

  His hand flashed up, a pistol in it. She dropped into a battle roll as the bullet slammed into the tile behind her, swung out a foot and knocked his chair off balance. He caught himself and swiveled to face her again, but too late.

  She kicked the weapon from his hand and moved in close to grab his wrist, taking away his leverage before he could reach for anything else. They stared at each other, both breathing fast, her weapon inches from his face. Rahman’s eyes burned like glowing coals as he stared at her in a terrible mixture of fury and lust.

  Snarling, he wrenched her wrist down and broke her grip, twisting her pistol free. It clattered to the floor beside them.

  Kiyomi didn’t move. Didn’t look away from him. She waited for the triumph to show on his face. For that arrogant look she hated so much, and thought of her Valkyrie sisters. Of Marcus. They gave her strength. “You’re mine,” he growled at her.

  He thought he had her. That he had won.

  She was about to show him just how wrong he was.

  Grabbing the clip in her hair, she split the two halves of the butterfly apart and slammed one stiletto through the back of his hand, pinning it to the armrest.

  His eyes bulged, his mouth opening on a scream of agony she muffled instantly with a hand clamped across his mouth as he struggled to pry the blade free with his other.

  “How’s it feel to be this helpless, you evil motherfucker?” she snarled, then drove the second blade up and under his jaw, jamming it through his carotid pulse. She twisted it while he screamed and flailed at her with his free arm, his right hand still pinned to the chair.

  Blood spurted as she yanked the thin blade downward with a savage jerk, opening his carotid and jugular wide. He clapped his free hand over it, screaming into her palm as he tried to bite her.

  Ripping his phone from his pocket, she leapt back and landed on her feet with the second b
lade in hand, ready to stab him again. Her heart pumped fast as she tucked the phone into her pocket.

  Rahman was already sagging in the chair, his eyes already growing unfocused as he slumped sideways, his hand falling away from the slash in his neck. The sound of her rapid breaths was harsh in her ears, the powerful lash of adrenaline and triumph making her muscles quiver.

  She’d done it. She’d killed him. Now his reign of terror was over.

  A distant slam in the background was her only warning before the unmistakable crack of gunfire shattered the silence. She whirled to face the wide-open door, then dove for the pistol Rahman had dropped.

  The shooting was coming from outside, toward the rear of the house. Men shouted. More gunfire came from the rear and then the side, then the faint sound of running footsteps.

  Kiyomi raced to the wall beside the door and waited, centering herself, ready to fight for her life with everything she had left. She had what she’d come for. She wasn’t going to die now that he was finally dead.

  Something slammed into the front doors. Twice. Three times.

  Kiyomi tensed, prepared to fight to the death for the chance to live.

  One more slam and someone burst inside. Kiyomi waited until the intruder got close, then ducked through the doorway to fire.

  She froze.

  But it wasn’t more of Rahman’s security rushing in to kill her.

  It was Marcus in pure operator mode.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Weapon up, Marcus swept past Kiyomi to check the entire room, searching for other targets. “Clear,” he called out to the others.

  Willing his heart to climb back down his throat, he holstered his weapon and spun to face Kiyomi, ignoring Ty and Jesse as they rushed forward to check the rest of the place. Kiyomi was covered in blood and he didn’t know if it was hers.

  “Are you hurt?” he demanded, stalking forward to seize her by the shoulders. Her face was pale, her eyes dilated, a pistol in her hand.

  “No. I’m fine.”

  On the other side of the room Rahman was slumped in the chair, stone dead, a vicious wound in the side of his throat and a blade pinning his hand into the wooden armrest.

  Shoving out a breath, Marcus grabbed her and pulled her into a fierce hug, closing his eyes on a hard exhale. He’d rip into her later for what she’d done. Right now he just needed this reassurance that she was okay.

  She was trembling a little, her breathing shaky. It was warm in the room and he was pretty sure the shaking wasn’t from shock, but from a backlash of adrenaline after killing the bastard who had tormented her day and night for the past several months.

  He bent and scooped her up in his arms.

  “No,” she protested, “I’m—”

  “Quiet.” No damn way he was letting her out of his sight for an instant. The others could retrieve her blades and try to minimize any evidence that might lead back to her.

  He strode from the room, his limp more pronounced, the additional weight sending pain shooting through his hip and thigh. Bloody hell. Before his injuries he could have swept her up in his arms and carried her for miles.

  “I got his phone. But we need all the electronics,” she said, turning to look behind her. “There’s a laptop on the desk.”

  Trinity stood outside the bedroom door, her stare glacial as she locked eyes with Kiyomi. “I’ll get it.” She walked past without another word, and Marcus swore the temperature dropped several degrees from the amount of frost Trinity was giving off. Not that he blamed her.

  “Who did you engage?” Kiyomi asked as he carried her to the front doors.

  “Hit team. Not Rahman’s.” Four men dressed in black, armed with rifles and pistols. “We killed three, wounded and captured the fourth.”

  Her attention sharpened on him. “The Architect sent them?”

  “Don’t know.” Right now, he didn’t even care. All he wanted was to get her the hell out of there safely before they had any more surprises.

  “Rahman confirmed it was a woman,” Kiyomi said to Marcus as he carried her out of the house. Ty and Jesse were standing guard in the yard where two more of Rahman’s men lay dead. Kiyomi had taken out two others earlier.

  “He told you that?” Outside the wall, Eden and Megan had both vehicles pulled up as close as possible.

  “Yes. But I don’t think he knows her identity.”

  He grunted and kept going. Amber was waiting by the side gate, watching the sidewalk. She waved them forward, rushed ahead to pull open the back door of the second van. Marcus bundled Kiyomi inside it and climbed in beside her.

  She turned toward the door. “Wait, what about the prisoner—”

  “He’s already in the back of the other van,” Marcus growled, anger beginning to bleed through the relief.

  He pushed it aside, focused on keeping the team safe as the rest of the members rushed out of the house and climbed into the vehicles. Trinity jumped into the front passenger seat of their vehicle just as the first van pulled away from the curb. Eden followed it.

  A cold, brittle silence filled the vehicle as they raced away from the scene. Law enforcement would no doubt be on the way, the shooting reported by the local residents. As soon as word got out about the attack and Rahman’s death, security forces would be alerted.

  Getting the team out of Syria was now ten times harder.

  Marcus squeezed his hands into fists and took a slow, deep breath to take the edge off the anger eating at him. He waited until he was sure they were in the clear and heading back to the safehouse before speaking. Just as he opened his mouth to tear into Kiyomi, Trinity beat him to it, swiveling in her seat to nail Kiyomi with a hard stare.

  “I told you we’d get him. I gave you my word. But that wasn’t good enough. You ditched us so you could go off on your own and take care of your vendetta. Do you know how fucking furious we are at you right now?” Her deep blue eyes snapped sparks at her. “I’m so disappointed in you.”

  Kiyomi’s chin came up, a flush hitting her cheeks. “His security team was in the process of getting ready to move him. I wasn’t losing my chance.”

  The fury on Trinity’s face was something to behold, and Marcus approved. Kiyomi deserved to be reamed out for this stunt she’d pulled. “Well, lucky for you, Marcus figured out you were missing soon after you’d left, otherwise you’d be dead right now,” Trinity continued.

  “I could have handled the others,” Kiyomi argued. “I had it under control.”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s not the point,” Marcus snapped, drawing her dark stare. “You took off to go after Rahman by yourself, when you were expressly ordered not to by your team leader. You didn’t want to wait, so you lied to me, went behind our backs and did what you wanted anyway. That’s not only reckless as hell, it’s bloody selfish, yet you don’t give a shit because you got what you wanted.”

  Hurt flashed in her eyes. “If I’d waited, he’d have disappeared again,” she shot back, color flooding into her cheeks. “He’d have wriggled off the hook and escaped justice yet again, and then we’d have spent God knows how long trying to track him down again—if we ever did. I couldn’t let that happen, and you of all people should understand why,” she flung at him.

  Marcus shook his head, suddenly weary now that the edge of his temper had been dulled. “I told you, I didn’t kill any of the men who captured me.” Just two guards on the way out of the compound with Megan.

  Her dark stare bore into his, hard, unflinching. Showing him the steely core he’d always known lay inside her. “But they’re all dead, aren’t they. You got justice. If some, or even one of them had still been alive right now in the city, you’re telling me you wouldn’t have wanted to settle the score?”

  She didn’t get it. She was too blinded by hatred to see the truth. “Killing them wouldn’t change what they did to me. And no, I wouldn’t have gone after them, because unlike you, I would never risk my team to settle a personal score,” he finished with a pointed look.
>
  She wrenched her gaze away, a muscle flexing in her jaw as she folded her arms. “I wasn’t risking any of you. Just myself. That’s why I took off on my own. None of you were supposed to know what happened until it was all over.”

  “From where I’m sitting, you’re damn lucky we did know and got there when we did.”

  He was well aware that she was highly skilled and deadly in a lot of ways. But taking on that many armed and highly trained security personnel alone, then Rahman, and making it out of the fortified compound while she ran through the neighborhood looking for a vehicle to steal?

  It still made his blood run cold to remember her standing there covered in Rahman’s blood and not knowing if they were too late. Wondering if that bastard had touched her again.

  A few minutes later, the van in front of them turned left and drove off. “Where are they going?” Kiyomi asked as Eden kept driving straight.

  “To a different location,” Trinity snapped, not having softened her stance even a little. “Amber’s trying to access Rahman’s security system remotely to scrub it of all evidence of us being there, but it might be too late. Now we have to split into two teams until we can get out of the country.”

  Kiyomi was silent a moment, then released a hard sigh. “All right. I’m sorry you guys were dragged into this. But I’m not sorry for going out on my own and killing Rahman. I had to.”

  Nobody said anything else for the rest of the drive to the original safehouse. The brittle tension between Kiyomi and the rest of them remained as everyone went inside.

  “Here’s his cell,” she said, handing it to Trinity. “Hopefully Amber can find a way to get the whole conversation with the Architect from it. Oh, and tell her he used a particular word that stood out during our short conversation. Untenable.”

  “So?”

  “So, it was out of place. English is his third language. And the Architect used it in the recorded clip between them earlier. Amber’s using linguistic forensics as a tool in the investigation. Thought it might be significant.” She shrugged.