He should have been able to find comfort in the knowledge. When his enemy wasn’t a mystery, that made the job easier, but knowing she was out there, manipulating them with the same ease as the man in front of him …
This enemy was worse.
Chewing on her bottom lip, Iris tried to remember what her life was like back when it had been simple and the only thing she gave much thought to was what color Converse she would wear to school.
Those were the better days, when her only worries were fitting in at school and looking forward to the new pair of shoes she received if she got good grades on her report card.
Now, she was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed, unable to look away from the train wreck happening right before her eyes. Every channel, no matter where she turned, reported the same thing.
Governor Michael Spader is resigning from office, effective immediately, after a number of scandalous photos depicting him and a mystery woman were delivered to various news stations across the city ...
Iris didn’t know what made her even look up at the TV as she had come out of the bathroom, squeezing the wetness from her hair with a towel, but whatever had prompted her, she hadn’t been able to look away once she saw Spader’s picture.
Just seeing the signature smirking picture of him that was used for all the press releases felt like a gut punch, but the feeling had faded to confusion when the video of him started playing next.
Within seconds, she’d had the remote in her hand and the volume turned up, but he had already started speaking before she could hear anything.
The next words out of his mouth, however, clarified everything she was seeing.
“The pictures being shown of me with that young woman are not what they seem.”
She hadn’t been able to help the little smile on her face as he stumbled his way through an explanation, not nearly as quick on his feet as he should have been, considering the kind of man he was.
Someone, and she suspected that someone was not the Kingmaker or the Den, had caught him off guard.
Belladonna, she thought suddenly.
She didn’t know how or even when, but she knew that the woman in white was responsible for this.
Her phone chirped then, drowning out another recap of the governor’s confession. She reached for it, not bothering to even look at the screen before answering, already knowing who would be on the other end.
“Yeah,” she said as the call connected, “I’m watching it now.”
“But you don’t sound upset,” Synek returned, sounding as if he was walking.
“I don’t see what choice I have.”
The gut reaction at seeing the governor’s face all over the news had filled her with dread but seeing him lose everything over the course of a few minutes was worse. She didn’t want to give him the chance to go into hiding and practically disappear until the storm blew over.
Now was her time.
If she panicked, she would fail, and she couldn’t risk that.
“I trust you,” she said, finally managing to turn her gaze from the TV.
Unless he said something was wrong or there was a need to worry, she wouldn’t. She believed in him and everything he said he could do.
Synek seemed to hesitate once she said that, but ultimately, he said, “I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“I’m going to send you an address, and I want you to go and stay there until I come for you.”
“Where?” she asked, already getting to her feet.
“It’s a new facility. One the Kingmaker has been … saving.”
The way he stumbled over saying that, she was sure that wherever he was sending her had been built, or at least designed, with one person on the Kingmaker’s mind.
“I’ll get there within the hour, but what about you?”
“Soon,” he promised. “Someone has to grab the governor.” She could nearly hear the smile in his voice as he added, “Might as well be me.”
“Syn—”
“Don’t worry,” he said before she could finish. “I’ll make sure I bring him back.”
“Make sure you bring you back,” she told him with a shake of her head even though he couldn’t see her.
Because even as good as he thought he was, there was still too much they didn’t know. Too much room for human error.
Iris might have been willing to risk many things when it came to her vendetta, but he wasn’t among them.
Breach work had never been his specialty.
Not when Synek knew in the worst of ways how to make a person sing with a shallow cut to a very particular place on their body.
But that didn’t mean his heart wasn’t thumping a calming cadence in his chest as he rode in the back of the black panel van, his rifle pointed at the floor, his gaze unfocused. He had other things on his mind rather than the fact he was out of practice when it came to this.
He didn’t have a clue what he would find once he reached the governor’s estate, but whatever was there, he would have to be ready for it. Not because his life was on the line, but because he had to make sure the governor was brought in.
Whatever deal or meeting the Kingmaker needed to have with him would happen as instructed, but before Spader’s time was up with the Den, he would get that confession by any means necessary.
“Watch yourself out there, lads,” Celt said as he hopped off the back of the van before they did the same.
Like they had done more than a dozen times before, they infiltrated, Winter helping them with the security and schematics from her remote location.
Through the trees and up the path, they entered the back doors, taking out the minuscule security that guarded the ground floor.
It was quieter than Synek was expecting. Considering everything, he had suspected more than a slew of people to be around the governor’s estate, trying to get a statement from him, or a picture even.
But as far as he could see, the governor wasn’t there, and neither was his wife.
Red and Celt each broke off to venture down different hallways while Synek and Skorpion took the stairs to the highest floor.
Only one door at the very end was closed, guarded by a man who startled too easily and died unprepared.
Synek gestured to the door, meeting Skorpion’s gaze.
There was always that moment of suspended time when Synek wasn’t sure what would be waiting for him on the other side of the door, but with his ears ringing and adrenaline coursing through him, he didn’t care about any threat.
He only cared about ending this.
The door crashed open, the wood splintering where Skorpion had nearly put his foot through it. As Synek rushed inside, instinct making him look at the desk where he could only see the high back of the chair and not the person sitting in it, he wasn’t ready for what he found on the other side.
He had hardly taken a full step into the room before the chair spun and all he saw was bare legs before his gaze lifted to the face they belonged to.
“Oops.”
Her smile was too easy for him to think that she hadn’t known they were coming and this moment wasn’t by design. Any doubt she was behind Spader’s early retirement was now gone.
“Skorpion, always a pleasure. Syn, I’m afraid we haven’t been properly introduced.”
“A bit late for that, innit? You had me tortured.”
“Things are rarely ever what they seem,” she said with a dainty shrug. “It looks to me as if I helped eliminate a problem for you.”
Was that how she saw it? Did she think she had done him some sort of favor?
“But I imagine that doesn’t matter now,” she said with a wave of her hand as she stood and held her wrists out. When they all just looked at her, she said, “I’d prefer not to be taken forcefully, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Synek was the first to move, taking out the zip ties he usually carried with him for other work. She didn’t fight him as he fastened them
to her wrists, nor did she give him any trouble at all.
Fucking strange.
“And if you’re looking for the governor, I’m afraid he’s stepped out at the moment. If you want to catch him, I suggest you get to him before his plane takes off. I can’t imagine you’ll find him after where he’s going.”
Red was the one to make the call and gave the Wild Bunch the location Belladonna seemed all too eager to provide.
Even as he led her out of the governor’s mansion and placed her in the back of the van, he couldn’t help but think this, having her, was a mistake.
He just didn’t know why yet.
Iris had gotten used to the compound and its prison-like appearance, but this place, where Synek had sent her to, far exceeded that one in technology.
This one was made of reinforced glass and steel, and whereas the last had a handful of armed guards around, there was far more security here than she expected.
“Safe to say he’s been planning this for a while,” Iris remarked to herself as she walked around.
She understood why—the very idea of the Den was supposed to be a place that was untouchable. Somewhere his enemies shouldn’t be able to get their hands on him.
As far as he knew, no one outside the mercenaries should have known about its existence.
Yet Belladonna did.
And Iris doubted that was the only thing she knew about them.
As she pulled and parked in the underground structure, Iris might not have understood the gravity of what was happening, but she could feel the tension in the air around her.
She could see the way everyone was tense and alert, their weapons at the ready. The Wraiths had been a nuisance for Synek, but Belladonna … she was a different sort of challenge.
Red and Celt walked in front, then Skorpion, with Calavera and Belladonna after, and the Wild Bunch bringing up the rear.
It was amazing how a woman of such small stature commanded attention the way she did. They looked at her the same way they did the Kingmaker—with a healthy amount of respect and a whole lot of fear.
No one spoke as they walked her into the building, staring instead until she disappeared out of view.
Iris couldn’t find the right words to calm Synek, but she suspected there was more to his anger than what he had done.
Something happened when he’d gone over to the governor’s mansion—something that had everyone silent and contemplative—but she just didn’t know what.
As they rounded the corner, the Kingmaker was waiting for them, and unlike the last time she had seen him, he was in a fresh suit, his hair cut and styled, and he wore the expression of a man who was in control of everything around him.
“Uilleam.”
The room seemed to freeze.
Iris didn’t understand the significance behind the word until she saw a muscle clench in the Kingmaker’s jaw, and she realized that was his name. No one, as far as she could tell, ever used his name—not in the months since she had learned of the Kingmaker’s existence, and not even when she and Synek were alone.
It just wasn’t done.
Yet Belladonna did so without so much as a grimace.
It was deliberate.
Iris followed in silence as the woman was led down a series of hallways until they reached a bank of elevators. Two mercenaries and Belladonna disappeared onto it before the doors closed once more.
The glass front allowed an unobstructed view of Belladonna’s cell, if it could even be called that. Iris was almost sure it was the size of her old studio apartment, and not only was there a sizable bed set against one wall, but there was also a sitting area of sorts. A door was off to the side, and she imagined it led to a bathroom.
Just seeing it raised questions in Iris’s mind, but considering the tension in the room and the way everyone seemed hyper focused on the woman standing in the middle of it, she didn’t ask them aloud.
But it did become clear to her rather quickly that Belladonna wasn’t an ordinary prisoner.
No one was yelling obscenities at her, and as far as she could see, Belladonna had been treated far better than the Wraiths would have treated her if they were the ones who wanted her brought in.
That was enough to tell her that Belladonna obviously meant something to the Kingmaker, though what their relationship was, exactly, she still wasn’t sure.
Belladonna stared at the bed a moment before a fleeting smile crossed her face, but instead of walking over toward it, she went to one of the wingback chairs and dragged it across the floor until she had it perfectly positioned in front of the camera.
Only then did she circle around it and sit, crossing one leg over the other and clasping her hands in her lap. As she stared directly up at the camera, her gaze unblinking, a genuine smile that made unease crawl down Iris’s spine crossed the woman’s face.
“Shall we begin?”
Part II
Chapter 10
For a woman being held captive inside a windowless room, Belladonna didn’t look very much like a prisoner.
Iris had sat at the desk watching the feeds for the past couple of hours while everyone else moved around her, lost in their own thoughts, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the woman who had caused the frenzy.
She didn’t issue threats. She hadn’t fought anyone who brought her in here—or at least, she hadn’t when Synek and the others brought her in earlier.
Belladonna was calm. Respectful even.
To everyone but the Kingmaker.
For him, there was genuine contempt in her gaze.
“Hey.”
Iris turned at the sound of Winter’s voice, surprised to find her standing inside the room. Though she didn’t doubt the hacker already knew that Belladonna was here, she wore the same curious expression as Iris when she glanced past her to the monitors.
Iris wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what to make of the woman.
Blinking, Winter looked back at her before jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “They’re bringing him in now.”
“Him?” she asked even as her heart tripped over herself.
Hope was always a dangerous thing, and something she never allowed herself to feel. The thought of the crushing disappointment that would follow, but now … now she was daring to hope.
All because of Synek.
“Spader,” Winter said, probably not realizing how that one name affected her. “Thought you would want to see his perp walk.”
Because it was the only one he would get.
A part of her had been disappointed that he wouldn’t be brought to justice and that others wouldn’t see him for the corrupt bastard he was, but in the end, he would be confessing, so she didn’t mind too much.
Taking one last glance back at the monitors, Iris stood, following Winter out of the room and down the hallway toward the staircase that overlooked the garage bay. None of the men positioned nearby paid attention to them as they found a vantage point that allowed them to see the doors as they came open.
Michael Spader, the bane of her existence and the criminal who had eluded her the longest, came stumbling through the doors, tripping over his own feet. Not because his hands were shackled and his balance was off, but because he was trying to get away from one of the mercenaries who looked as if he was two seconds from trying to take his head off.
Synek.
She probably shouldn’t have felt pride at that moment, but it was there all the same.
But as he went for his knife, the men around him shifting with unease, Iris merely tried to contain a smile as she called his name, just loud enough to be heard over the voices in his head encouraging him to hurt Spader.
His gaze shot up to her but so did Spader’s.
Recognition lit up his eyes before they narrowed. He didn’t know who she was just yet, or how the two of them were connected—he only knew she had been around his wife.
For all he knew, she had been the one to tell the media about his affair.
If only she was that lucky.
He might not have known who she was yet, but by the end of his time here, he would.
Iris was counting on it.
Synek nodded for the others to take Spader away, coming up to her instead.
She should have been thinking about all the ways she would interrogate Spader, or even letting Synek do his brand of interrogation so long as they got what they needed in the end. It was what he deserved, after all. But as she watched Synek jog up the stairs to her, his sweaty dark hair hanging over his face and his bulletproof vest unstrapped on one side, the ex-governor was the last thing on her mind.
He was all she saw.
Iris wasn’t sure who came to who first. The only thing she knew in the next second was the feel of his lips and the utter contentment rushing through her.
She owed him everything.
He smiled when she pulled away, the sight of it making her feel warm inside. “Job’s not done yet.”
No, it wasn’t.
But they were close.
Synek took her hand, walking her back the way she’d come, but when they returned to the room, the Kingmaker was waiting for them. Iris still wasn’t used to being in the same room as him. He had a tangible energy about him. As if she needed to keep her eyes on him at all times.
“As you might be aware,” he said to the room as a whole, “Belladonna has made her demands. Considering I broke one of hers first”—this he said without any guilt or upset at all—“I’m attempting to honor the others before I grow weary of them. There’s only one that truly matters. She wants only to speak with Iris.”
“Me?” Iris asked, looking back and forth between them to make sure she heard correctly. “Belladonna only wants to talk to me?”
The Kingmaker nodded once. “I’m sure she would have asked to speak to Calavera if she thought it was at all feasible.”
But judging from the way Nix stood with feigned casualness across the room, she doubted Calavera was getting within a foot of that room.
“But why would she want to talk to me?”
Of all the people who had come in and out of this place since her arrival, Iris was sure she knew her the least. There had only been that moment back in Rosalie’s office when Belladonna had handed over the file on Synek.
Iris. (Den of Mercenaries Book 7) Page 13
