“You spared all of them.”
“Is that truly surprising to you, Kit?” she asked, mock curiosity in her tone. “I thought I made it clear that I held no ill will toward the mercenaries. I’ve said that from the beginning.”
“Yet while you set out to prove that my brother was the person they needed to fear, you’re not doing that with me.”
“Because you’re well aware of who your brother is.”
“So you needed to find another reason to get me out of the way.” He leaned toward her. “Which tells me this isn’t business for you, Karina, as you might want me to believe. It’s not about me, or the mercenaries, or anyone else. It’s about you and him. It’s personal.”
Her mouth fell open, a retort sitting there on the tip of her tongue, at least until she processed what he had said. Her expression finally registered exactly his reason for being here and what she had inadvertently told him.
“Before coming to see you, I asked myself three questions. Why did you leave him the first time? If you were never a journalist, if the Karina Ashworth he knew had never existed, then why would anyone think you ran because you feared him? You already knew his secrets before he ever told you. You targeted him.”
Her hands clenched, a slight movement he noted before she settled again. “Is this meant to impress me?”
“But whatever you were meant to do, you failed.”
“Are you—”
“Because you fell in love with him,” Kit finished as if she hadn’t spoken. “That was never part of the plan, was it?”
Defiance lit up her eyes—righteous indignation—but she didn’t deny what he said. He wasn’t wrong.
“Perhaps it’s time you leave, Kit,” she said as she stood. She was all of five-foot-nothing, yet she wasn’t afraid to stare him down, daring him to continue.
But he saw now what she didn’t want him to see—the pieces of the truth dangling there for him to put together.
He saw it all.
“Perhaps it was sacrifice or Uilleam himself that made you leave him the first time. Perhaps it was a part of the plan, but something convinced you to try to fix things with him. Someone.”
This time, there was something else gleaming in her eyes. A trace of fear. “Leave.”
Kit already knew he was close to the answer, had known it from the moment he’d arrived on his mother’s doorstep. The answer had been right in front of him the entire time. He just hadn’t been able to put it together.
“August eleventh, you told him, was the day you called but he told you he was busy. That he didn’t need to see you. What did you want to tell him?”
He didn’t know now whether it was fear or disbelief that kept her quiet, but her silence was an answer in and of itself.
“And not even six months to the day, he found what he thought was your broken body on the floor of your home covered in blood,” he continued, “and ever since, you’ve been determined to destroy him. Which brought me to my next question … what on earth would possibly make a woman in our profession fake her death, then stalk the man she wanted to hurt?”
Belladonna didn’t respond, but it was there in her gaze. The truth.
She was just waiting for him to say it.
“For years, you’ve carried this on, baiting him, toying with him, and even going so far as to aid others in their quest to harm him, but no one was allowed to hurt him. Or is that not why you had Elias Harrington fed to pigs? It takes quite a lot of love to hate him the way you do.”
“What is your point, Kit?”
“You spared his mercenaries.”
“As I’ve said, you can’t always blame a man for the orders he takes. They don’t have a choice.”
“But you gave them one. Each and every single one of them. You were the one who found the contingency in the contract. Not Winter. You led her to it.”
She didn’t have to agree for him to know. Instead, she didn’t respond to that at all. “What do you care, Kit? The mercenaries don’t mean anything to you.”
“You told Luna that you didn’t offer her the truth because it would hurt Uilleam. You offered her the truth because you knew what it felt like to have your life manipulated by my brother, isn’t that right?”
“That’s not a big mystery.”
“You’re not offering anyone the truth because it would hurt Uilleam,” Kit said, “you’re offering it because each person has someone to lose. Families. Wives. Husbands. Children. You want us to leave him to his fate.”
The dip of her eyes was almost imperceptible. “It’s what he deserves.”
“Which still begs the question, what would cause a woman to go on a years’ long vendetta offering truths and aids that no one asked for? What would cause a woman who still loves a man to this day to want to hurt him as badly as she does? You see, I know my brother—I know who he was back then. He didn’t think before he acted. More often than not, he said fuck the consequences and attacked those in his way without caring about the collateral damage.”
For a moment, the mask she held so carefully in place slipped. He saw the raw anguish. The pain. The hurt. The tears. He had grown cold over the years, uncaring of another’s pain except for his wife, but at that moment, he felt for her.
He finally understood what she had lost.
Because as he spoke, her hand had lifted to cover her front, an unconscious movement she probably hadn’t noticed, but he understood what it meant. The way a person’s psyche would remember old pain … and what they might have lost.
“I’m sorry,” he said, even before he’d meant to apologize. “I’m so sorry for what you lost.”
He didn’t know how.
He didn’t know when.
But the knowledge was enough to make his cold heart seize.
Kit opened his mouth again to speak but before he could, her voice stopped him.
“Don’t.” She said it with such venom that he immediately clamped his mouth shut. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it.”
That arrogant façade was gone.
She reminded him of Luna at that moment—her pain as visceral to him as his wife’s—and he wished he could take this pain from her.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have come to this if someone had stripped her of the agony she’d turned into armor, but the only person who might have been able to still didn’t understand what he had done.
He didn’t realize that just as Kit had issued an order that almost cost him Luna, Uilleam had done the same at one time or another.
Back before there was a Den when there were only two mercenaries to his name.
One of whom was still missing …
The only one to have gone up against the Jackal and lived.
Only those she deemed responsible would suffer was what Luna had told him when she’d recounted their second meeting together.
One man was the bullet, the other was the executioner.
“I’ve always told him,” Karina said quietly, her gaze now on the floor, “his actions have consequences. He can’t account for human error. He can’t see when a meeting gets changed, and the company his target is with is the last person he would suspect.”
Kit could almost picture it in his mind. He had seen Uilleam with his mercenaries now, carelessly sending them out to carry out his orders and, on the rare occasion, make sure no witnesses were left behind.
But that was the cost of being the Kingmaker.
That was the cost she was making him rethink.
Belladonna tucked her hair behind her ear, her tear-filled gaze still on his face. “Are you going to tell him?”
“This … this is not my secret to tell. This has always been a problem that needed to be resolved between you and Uilleam. It’s time I acknowledged that.”
He’d told himself long ago that he needed to distance himself from his brother’s business. He had to stop helping him clean up messes of his own making.
Now, he had another good reason.
He could no
longer afford to risk Luna, or the life they had created inside her.
“I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you this won’t bring you closure.”
“It’s too late to turn back now. I have to see this done.”
Kit could almost imagine that his brother would have said the same. He was stubborn that way—refusing to bend even when he needed to. Perhaps it was from him that she had learned this.
Either way, he didn’t intend to stick around watch it unfold.
“Then it ends here for us, I’m afraid.” If they wanted to destroy each other, he could no longer afford to stand in the middle.
Kit turned then, intending to leave, ready to leave this all behind him until her voice made him pause.
“Sebastian went home.”
He turned to spear her with a glance, but there was no smug grin on her face, nor did she look thrilled that she had knowledge he wanted.
“That is his name, is it not?”
Kit knew then that even for as long as the Jackal—Sebastian—had worked for her, she hadn’t known the truth about him. He hadn’t been a pawn for her to use against them. It might have been easier to hate her if he was. She could be painted with the same broad stroke of ruthlessness as his brother.
But she wasn’t.
She was just a woman hurt by the man she loved the most.
“When I found him, he didn’t remember much about who he was or where he’d come from. At the time, I thought it might be easier for him, knowing how he had suffered. Sometimes, I wish I could forget.”
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, even as he was grateful.
“Because I would prefer you or your Romanians get to him first. I can’t imagine the Den would be as forgiving as they will. He’s looking for answers, and I’m not sure he’ll find what he’s looking for … or if he’ll even want to.”
“Understood.”
She sighed. “Take care of Luna, Kit.”
“I will,” he answered with a nod.
As Uilleam should have taken care of her.
Kit didn’t look back as he left the building, buttoning his coat as he stepped out into the cold winter air. There was a sort of finality about this moment, and even as he looked back at the building, he knew he wouldn’t see Karina Ashworth again.
Luna, his beautiful wife, the light of his life, was waiting for him in the back of the chauffeured car, her relief paramount as he slipped into the seat beside her.
“Well?” she asked.
“It’s finished,” he answered. And it was.
“What happens now?”
Kit took a breath as the car pulled away from the curb and into late day traffic. “Now … I believe I owe my wife a second honeymoon.”
Chapter 24
“Oh, come now, dove. What’s that look for?”
Iris had tried to hide her disappointment as Synek moved around the room, grabbing everything he would need for his trip and tossing it on the bed next to her.
She should have been used to this by now, especially since she had seen him do this more than a dozen times now, but it didn’t make it any easier. There was still that knot of fear in her stomach at the thought of him leaving and not coming back.
“It’s dangerous,” she said, finally answering his question as she went up onto her knees, reaching for him. “You don’t even know where you’re going.”
Especially when it was because of her that they were going to a place she wasn’t sure was even out there. She hadn’t known why she bothered to look through what little she had left of the ex-governor’s information, but curiosity had gotten the best of her the other day when she had gone to see Winter to retrieve a box she’d said she had for Synek.
While there, she had pulled out the pictures of the maps.
“I don’t know,” Iris said as she stared at the projection of the map, wishing she knew why she found it so interesting. “There has to be something here, though, right?”
Even if it was just a feeling.
There had to be something they could use in the hunt to find Grimm. Though he wasn’t a part of the Den anymore, she could still tell Grimm’s disappearance was the one thing that still weighed on him.
Tăcut, who was lingering on the other side of the room, stepped up next to her, his gaze trailing over the map as hers had, but he didn’t look nearly as interested as she felt. He didn’t think there were any answers on the map.
“But it has to,” she said, answering his unspoken doubt. “Why else would he have two identical maps?”
The first could have very well been a design choice, but two? Especially when, from what she saw, his two offices weren’t decorated the same way. Yet this was the focal point in both.
Tăcut shrugged, still unconvinced.
“They said Eastern Europe, right?” she asked, already walking over to where it was depicted on the map. Instead of the black spots that were still untouched, she focused on the gold where Spader had been. “Maybe there’s a place familiar to you?”
She looked back, waiting on his response. He looked from the map to her and nodded.
Good enough.
She started in Russia, occasionally glancing back at him to see if any rang a bell, but when he remained as stoic as ever, she moved on. Next, because she remembered details Synek had shared with her, she focused on Romania.
“Bucharest, Constanta, Gheenă, do any—”
Before she could even ask the question, Tăcut was suddenly there beside her, his gaze intent where she was pointing. He nodded his head.
“What?”
Confusion marred his face as he scanned the map, but it was clear he wasn’t finding what he was looking for.
“Was it something I said?”
He nodded once.
“Bucharest?”
One shake of his head.
“Constanta?”
Another shake of his head.
“Gheenă?”
He nodded.
Her heart skipped a beat even as she pointed at what she thought was a tiny little city just to the right of Constanta. It might have meant nothing to her—though she had only ever heard of one major city in Romania—but it obviously meant something to him.
“What about it?”
Tăcut didn’t respond, at least not to her. Instead, he snapped his fingers, grabbing the attention of the Wild Bunch member with the skeletal tattoos, Thanatos. He came over without question.
Tăcut signed something, his hands moving fast, but Thanatos didn’t miss a word of it. “Gheenă?” he asked. “Where the hell is that?”
Now, it was Thanatos who was staring at the map in confusion.
“It means hell,” he whispered as if it intrigued him.
Which was what had bothered her the most.
Why did he have an unpopulated area of Romania marked as hell?
That was all Synek had needed.
It was one thing to acknowledge that the ex-governor was hiding something in Romania—if his maps were to be believed—but it was something else entirely when it was Synek going. Sure, the other members of the Den were going with him, and they made a formidable team, but the thought of losing him was too great.
They didn’t know what was waiting for them there. They didn’t even have a precise location, just a general idea of where they were trying to go.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” he said, tossing his duffel bag aside to reach for her, twisting them until he sat on the bed with her straddling his lap.
She traced her fingers over the collar of his shirt before she met his gaze. It had only felt like days ago when she had come home to him, and the look of sheer torture on his face had nearly broken her heart.
As strong and formidable as he was, she had nearly broken him when she had faked her death. But while there hadn’t actually been a threat to her, there was a real one to him.
The former governor might be dead, but she didn’t doubt for a second that his criminal organizations we
re still running just fine.
“It’s not that I’m worried about you,” Iris said, fisting the material of his shirt. “I ... I just don’t want to risk losing you again. Once was enough.”
She felt him shift before he had a hand beneath the fall of her hair and cupping her neck. He dragged her down for a kiss, one that spoke of promises and desire. Of love and triumph.
Synek kissed her as if it was the last time every time, but that still brought a certain level of comfort that had her relaxing in his hold.
“I’ll come back,” he whispered against her lips.
A promise.
But he couldn’t not go, she knew. Not when there was a chance Grimm was still out there. Belladonna might have said that the governor was the only one with the man’s location, and that he was as good as dead once he died, but neither Synek nor the other mercenaries were willing to give up.
Not yet.
Instead, they were going to Gheenă, that nonexistent location in Romania, with hopes of finding Grimm, or at least some indication of his whereabouts.
And if he was dead, they would ensure whoever remained ended up that way as well.
“Be careful,” she whispered back, kissing him one last time. “Now go and do what you do.”
At the end of the day, if she were Grimm—if Grimm was still out there—she knew she would want it to be Synek who came after her.
“Soon,” he said before kissing her forehead, then the curve of her jaw, and finally, her lips again. “I’ll be back soon.”
Iris had no choice but to wait.
“If this is the last job,” Red said as he tossed his own duffel bag over his shoulder, leading the way to the waiting jet, “I don’t think this is a bad way to go out.”
“For fuck’s sake, d’you have to be so fucking cynical?” Celt asked, glaring over at him.
It was amusing to see the difference between them now. Once, Red had been the surly one with a quick temper and need for violence. Now, he was calm and content while Celt looked as if he was seconds from going off on someone.
Then again, he was still recovering from the damage he’d taken from the Jackal. And it didn’t help matters that waiting for them next to the jet was the Wild Bunch.
Iris. (Den of Mercenaries Book 7) Page 27
