“I’m assuming you wanted something?” she asked as she ventured farther into the room, dropping her bag on the table and going over to the mini bar.
This time, she wasn’t drinking because she wanted to forget any and everything. She drank because the day had been exhausting. It was all too much too soon, but this time, she at least grabbed one of the glasses sitting upside down on the counter and poured vodka into it before going in search of something to mix with it.
“You already know the answer to that,” came his response, his voice closer than she was expecting.
She remembered to breathe before she turned to face him, drink in hand. She had walked into Belladonna’s offices without blinking an eye, stared across the room at someone who was more than capable of murdering her with one hand, but only Synek managed to make her feel nervous.
Only he was able to get beneath her skin and make her feel things she never had before.
It should have been easy to quit him, to walk away from this complicated mess that they had between them, but instead, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to.
Some part of her had known that Synek would find her again. That if she didn’t outright tell him what new hotel she had moved into for the moment, he would go out of his way to find her and make it quite clear that there was no point in doing so.
She couldn’t hide from him.
Not now. Not ever.
She couldn’t quit him.
“Do I?” she asked, punctuating the question by sipping her drink to try to buy herself time.
To what, she wasn’t sure. She was only delaying the inevitable.
“I want you,” he answered.
No hesitation.
No stuttering.
He said it with absolute conviction.
And sitting right there on the tip of her tongue were four words that she shouldn’t say if she wanted to keep her focus. He spared her from answering by asking, “Where were you today?”
“I went to see my father.”
“After?”
“I don’t understand your question,” she answered, looking away.
But he didn’t let her evade him for long before he was turning her back to face him. As demanding as ever. “I know you went to see him, but where did you go after?”
“How could you have known that?”
Not only had she made sure to get out of the room without waking him, but she had made it a point to take the bus out to the prison rather than her own car. Unless he was superhuman, there was no way possible he could have caught up with her in enough time to know what she had been doing.
Unless ...
“Are you tracking me, Synek?”
“You’re bloody well right I am.”
She barely checked the urge to roll her eyes. “So if you were tracking me, you should already know the answer to that question.”
“You went dark an hour after visitation hours were over. That tells me nothing.”
Iris glanced down at her drink, swirling the contents around in the glass before she put it to her lips and tipped it back. “That tells you everything.”
She had considered, on her way back to the hotel from her meeting with Belladonna, not telling him about it. She knew he wouldn’t like it, and judging from the darkening expression on his face, she hadn’t been wrong.
But whatever hunt Belladonna was sending her on, Synek was a part of it.
“Have you gone mad?” he asked, reaching up to pluck the glass from her hand and set it aside before pressing the back of his hand against her forehead. “Finally fucking lost it, have you?”
She swatted his hand away, attempting to step around him, but unable to move at all when he struck an arm out and flattened his palm against the wall, caging her in exactly where she was.
“What’s she asked you to do? Betray me in exchange for getting your father out, is that it?”
“Of course not,” she responded, glaring at him.
Betraying him had never been an option, but his boss, however, was another story.
“Which part?” he asked, knowingly. “Her aiding in releasing your father or betraying me?”
Now or never ... “I wouldn’t betray you.”
“Then who ... no.”
Iris attempted to speak, to explain as best she could, but the grip he had on her face shifted until his hand was cupping the nape of her neck, and she had no choice but to face him.
He might have been merely curious before, but now something was rather fierce about his expression. She couldn’t look away even if she wanted to.
“Iris, luv, you need to walk away.”
“I can’t. You know that.”
“Iris.”
“Synek,” she shot back, knowing that his name would get his attention. It always did. “Don’t ask me to do that,” she said, her voice low.
Because if he did, then she would be betraying him, and she hated the very idea of that.
But Synek wasn’t hearing her, even as he stared down at her with such an expression that she could almost feel what was reflected in his face. “You don’t know what he’ll do to you.”
“It isn’t that I don’t know,” Iris answered, curling her fingers around his, holding tighter than she meant to. “I just don’t care. If I didn’t live in fear of a man who took everything from me, I’m not going to live in one because of him.”
The Kingmaker.
The man everyone feared, so much so that they wouldn’t even say his name.
She could see, on any given day, the power he possessed. It wasn’t just the money and the facilities and the way people whispered his name with awe. He had mercenaries. Men, and even a woman, who were willing to do his bidding. He only need ask for it.
They killed for him.
Bled for him.
She knew, if only partly, the sacrifices Synek had made for him.
There was all the reason in the world to fear what his retaliation might be, but that was the thing about sacrifice. It wouldn’t matter, in the end, what happened to her. It only mattered that she had done everything she could for the only family she had left.
“He would send me,” Synek said after a moment, his voice like a caress against her skin. The tension in his shoulders had eased, his stance loosening. He even brushed her hair over her shoulders, his fingers skimming her throat.
Calming her.
“If he ever thought for a second that you were trying to betray him, he would send me after you. He wouldn’t make it painless. It wouldn’t be simple and quick.” His gaze darted over her face, his eyes now blank. “He would want to make an example out of you. You get me, Iris? He would send me.”
Even if Synek didn’t want to go. “Because you signed the contract.”
At one point, she was sure he had been glad that he had signed the contract in the first place just to be free of the Wraiths. The Den wasn’t a burden the way the Wraiths had been. He quite enjoyed the people he worked with.
She didn’t think he had ever hated that contract until now.
“It’s null if he dies,” Synek said, meeting her eyes again, a sort of calm clarity filling his gaze and replacing his momentary fear. “It won’t be easy, considering our last row, but ... I could convince them.”
She had no idea what he meant, but she also didn’t like that look in his eyes. One that promised bad things.
She wasn’t the only one willing to make sacrifices.
“I don’t think she wants him dead,” Iris said, twisting her fingers into the front of his shirt, unable to help herself.
“If she wants to use you for bait against him, then she must, ’cause it ain’t a secret what I’ll do if he tries to send someone after you.”
And as much as Belladonna seemed to know—not just about them but the entire Den as well—Iris wouldn’t be surprised if she had already accounted for that fact just as she had accounted for the Kingmaker killing the governor.
Synek had another role to play.
“She promised that in the end, you’ll be free too,” she whispered. “He won’t be able to come after either of us.”
“And you believe that?”
“I believe that if she’s going out of her way to distance everyone else but him from her line of fire, she believes that.”
He still didn’t look sure. “You trust her?” Synek asked.
“Not even a little.”
Iris wasn’t a fool. She knew that her usefulness to Belladonna was selfish at best and at worst ...
No, she didn’t trust the woman.
But she did believe that Belladonna would be willing to do anything if it meant she took down the Kingmaker, and Iris knew she could use that in the future.
“Everyone has a role to play,” Iris said, thinking back over everything that had happened over the past two weeks. “We just haven’t figured out the extent of ours yet.”
Synek didn’t think twice before he was out on the balcony, a cigarette tucked between his lips as he inhaled the calming nicotine into his lungs.
He’d been doing well, limiting his intake and trying to be less of a prick than he’d been over the past few years. Despite a few setbacks along the way—others’ doing—he’d been doing well to keep a lid on his anger and not lash out.
He wanted to think first before he acted.
Now? Now, he wished he didn’t have to think at all.
This time, it didn’t come down to a choice, and even if it had, there was only one logical choice to make. But that didn’t make it any easier knowing that soon—and he wasn’t quite sure when it would be—he would have to choose between duty and the woman he loved.
It wasn’t the challenge that stressed him, or even that he would have to live as a fucking nomad if he wanted to evade the Kingmaker after betraying him, but it was something else entirely when he had more than himself to risk. It wouldn’t just be him running if the Kingmaker ever got word of what they were doing.
Synek would give his life to protect her and slaughter anyone that tried to stop him, but he was only human. There was only so much he could do.
And the Kingmaker wasn’t the type of man to stop at either of them. He went after family. Friends. Children. Anyone if it meant a lesson would be taught.
Synek ground out his cigarette, tossing it in the trash on his way back inside, but as he started for the bed, he paused.
Iris was there, bundled up on the left side, but he could still see the way her arm was stretched across the bed where he usually slept. That fear wasn’t in her face when she slept. Nor was the anger. The disappointment.
He realized, at that moment, that he would do anything to keep her happy—even if that meant risking everything.
Chapter 21
Winter
The loft was quiet for once.
Fang had taken off somewhere with Mariya. Thanatos and Invictus were locked away in a room somewhere, leaving the television off for once instead of being parked in front of it with controllers in their hands. And though Răzvan had done his best to stay up with her and wait for her to finish her work before he’d gone to bed, he’d been too exhausted to stay awake any longer than a few minutes.
Not that Winter blamed him. She understood why. She saw the evidence of his exhaustion just as clearly as she did the others.
These were the moments when she felt the difference the most. Unlike the others, Winter didn’t feel tired or worn down. She wasn’t bruised with scrapes that needed to heal and sore muscles that screamed for an ice bath.
She’d had one measly little cut on her brow, hardly enough to cause a fuss over, though Răzvan had treated her like glass for the first few days after. But beyond that insignificant little mark, she was fine.
Completely fine.
The Den had suffered in ways she couldn’t imagine, yet she was untouched.
Răzvan and the boys were all silently suffering because they didn’t just feel physical pain anymore. They now had to face the reality that the brother they thought had died in the Romanian wilderness was alive and well.
And an enemy of the Den.
That didn’t mean she didn’t feel the emotions going on around her with a weight on her shoulders. She did, but it wasn’t the same, and she couldn’t stand the idea of everyone around her hurting more.
She needed to do more.
Blowing out a breath, Winter stood, turning her back on the set of monitors surrounding her new office—a room in the loft Răzvan had spent weeks converting until it was the optimal space for her. Not only was there a complete wall made up of more than a dozen monitors, but there was special tech newly built into the walls that helped her internet speeds go ten times the regular speed. Another wall had every bit of equipment she could think of organized and stored.
It was a hacker’s haven.
But it didn’t feel much like a safe space anymore, not when this room had become all about her work. Each monitor had a continued and uninterrupted feed of not just outside the loft, but also outside every residence where her mercenaries were staying.
She didn’t give a second thought to their privacy then as she activated the tracking software she had embedded on their phones to find their location—she just needed to assure herself they were fine. That Belladonna hadn’t gotten to them again.
The first time was enough and more than her conscience could bear.
It made her feel better that she had a visual, that she would be able to see anyone coming before they could breach the house, but it also meant that she had to constantly monitor the feeds. Set up alarms should facial recognition software find Belladonna or any of the few men who Winter had been able to catch on film coming near their homes.
But the variables were plenty.
Not only could Belladonna have other people carry out whatever job she wanted, but there was no physical way possible for Winter to be there twenty-four hours out of the day, which only added to her stress.
Between this and hunting down the men responsible for taking Răzvan’s voice and making the boys’ childhood hell, she was surprised she was even awake long enough to function.
Closing her eyes, she allowed herself a moment to breathe. To clear her thoughts until her mind was blank.
A second, just to recharge. To remind herself that if they could put their very lives on the line, she could manage to fend off sleep for a little while longer.
Coffee was what she needed.
Winter turned, putting a fist over her mouth as she yawned and headed for the door, but she barely stepped a foot outside it before each of her monitors chirped then blacked out, one by one, so quickly that she didn’t have a chance to even make it back to her desk before each feed was dead.
Coffee forgotten, her heart dropped out of her chest and panic seared through her veins as she tried to pull back up the footage, fearing the worst. But no matter how quickly she typed, no matter what code she used, nothing changed.
“No, no, no, no ...”
As quickly as the fear had engulfed her, it dissipated when the monitors all lit up at once. But instead of the security feeds, all she saw was Belladonna’s face.
“Hello, Winter.”
She was smiling, the white dress she wore wrinkle free and her hair immaculate. She looked less the Kingmaker’s prisoner and more the criminal mastermind she had always been.
“Did you hack me?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t possess that skill, but an associate of mine does.”
That wasn’t possible. Not because of hubris, but because it was just fact. Not many hackers in the world possessed the same level of skill that Winter possessed. She had cultivated her skill for years since she was a child.
“Who?”
Her smile was soft, kind. A contradiction to the woman Winter thought she was. “Her name isn’t important.”
“Then what do you want? Are you sending Sebastian to grab me like you did the others?” She very purposely used Sebastian’s name.
Not the
actual or other colorful names that the Den liked to call him—Sebastian. Because that was who he was even if she had never met him. He meant something to the man she loved, which meant he meant something to her.
Winter had hoped to see her react, maybe even see her get angry, but besides a downturn of her lips, her face was carefully composed. She didn’t know what to make of it.
The silence stretched on a moment before Belladonna spoke again. “You don’t like me very much, do you, Winter?”
Uh ... “Why the hell would I? You’re the reason for all of this.”
As if they had all the time in the world, Belladonna sat back and folded her hands in her lap, regarding her with that sort of uncanny focus the Kingmaker possessed. Though she hadn’t wanted to admit it, simply because she actually liked the Kingmaker, they really did remind her of each other.
The careful, nuanced way they spoke.
The “game” they were playing.
The way they looked at each other when they thought no one else was watching.
Winter had never thought anyone would be as good as the Kingmaker at what he did, but she was. She made it look as effortless as he did.
“Is that what he’s told you all these years?” Belladonna asked. “I’ll even wager a guess that he told you all he formulated this team of mercenaries to exact vengeance for what he believed was my murder.”
“It’s a good enough reason as any,” Winter said with a shrug, slyly moving her keyboard onto her lap.
The beauty of typing for so long was that the keys were muscle memory. She didn’t have to look down to plug in an algorithm to trace Belladonna’s hack.
“Did that make it easier?” she asked. “Doing his bidding because you thought you were trying to heal a man’s old wounds? I’m sure you know all about that.”
Was she trying to be funny? “Again, what do you want?”
“I have a task for you. Something that will prove important in due time.”
Winter couldn’t be sure she had heard her correctly, not when it sounded as if she was asking her to do something for her. As if they were associates.
Iris. (Den of Mercenaries Book 7) Page 24
