It was impossible for her to love him any more than she already did.
“He needs to know you’re in good hands,” Synek said with a nod, taking her hand back in his.
“He will.”
Up ahead, one of the reporters broke off from the others, holding a phone to her ear. Her expression shifted from confusion to elation before she was racing to her van, signaling for her camera guy to come along with her.
Iris blinked in confusion, watching as the others did the same, each answering a call one by one until they all drove off, leaving smoke in their wake.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“I suspect someone called and told them the Kingmaker was spotted in Manhattan leaving the Beaumont Hotel. Probably even got a grainy image of a mysterious man wearing sunglasses texted to them too.”
“Who ...? Winter,” she realized.
Synek nodded. “She didn’t want the vultures asking your father how he felt about your death before we got a chance to explain.”
Iris would have to thank her for this. “Where are they now?” she asked, thinking of the conversation they’d had the night before.
“Romania,” he said, and though he undoubtedly knew Winter was in good hands, he still got that worried little notch between his brows. He probably always would.
Just as the Den had gone their separate ways, the Wild Bunch had ventured off too, for answers, she was sure, about the Jackal. She hoped they found what they were looking for.
Up ahead, Iris could just see a guard in the watchtower waving his arm, a signal for the gate to open, and the sound of the alarm ringing just as the metal fence slid open was music to her ears.
“Go on,” Synek said, drawing her gaze to him. There was that smile she loved so much on his face, but there was also a touch of nervousness.
She didn’t have to be told twice.
She slipped out of the car, making sure her hat was still pulled low as she started toward the prison’s gate where she could just make out a man in jeans and a white T-shirt, carrying a bag under one arm.
He was trying, she thought, to look confident, as if he had always known that this moment would come. That the relief he felt wasn’t substantial.
But it only took his eyes finding hers across the lot for that expression to waver. For her to see the way he tried to withhold his tears as he hurried toward her.
She could see it all in the way he took a shuddering breath—the way he scrubbed a hand down his face and glanced back as if he expected someone to tackle him to the ground and tell him he had to go back in.
But he wouldn’t because all of it was finally over.
Iris wasn’t sure which of them started running first, but it didn’t matter, not when she could finally wrap her arms around him and feel the comfort of his embrace.
This time, she was crying happy tears.
“Who’s this?”
Iris pulled back just far enough to see that Synek was upon them, looking adorably awkward. He plucked at his bow tie, trying to straighten it even though it had been perfect.
She might have laughed had he not looked so serious. Of all the things that could make him nervous, she had never expected it to be him meeting her father.
“Dad, this is my—” She paused, considering. Boyfriend sounded too simple, lover too intimate. “My one. Syn is my one.”
She could see what those words did to him, and knew, later, he would express that in a dozen different ways. She was looking forward to it.
“Syn, meet my dad.”
Synek cleared his throat, extending his hand. “It’s a pleasure, sir.”
“You’re the mercenary, right?”
Synek froze, his gaze darting to her for a moment, seeming at a loss for words. “I am.”
“She’s told me a lot about you,” Marvin went on, and it was taking everything in her not to laugh at the way he was so obviously trying to give him a hard time.
“Nothing too bad, I don’t think,” Synek muttered, still pulling at his bow tie.
“Enough that I know you love her, and that’s the only thing that matters to me.”
“Yeah, there’s no question about that,” he said, smiling at her.
This ... this moment was better than anything she had ever dreamed about. “We should get going,” Iris said, starting for the car. “We have a plane to catch, and I have a lot of explaining to do.”
Gray skies and drizzle.
Synek was happy to be home.
Once, London had looked bleak, a place he had longed to escape from, but that was before the sheer terror that was fucking New York, and he soon realized there was no place like London. Which was why it hadn’t been hard at all for him to miss being in the States. Here, no one hunted him, and he didn’t have very many enemies.
Here, it was quiet.
Here, he could breathe a little easier.
And he couldn’t think of a better place to start over with Iris than here.
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” Iris asked as they pulled away from the hotel and entered the flow of traffic.
“Oh, he’s gonna love it here.”
If he wanted, Marvin Spencer would be able to start over from scratch—or rather, start over with a new identity. Synek had contemplated what would happen once the man was freed from prison from the moment the paperwork started changing hands.
It didn’t matter that the former governor had been corrupt or that he had done a lot of bad things. Her father would never truly be innocent in the eyes of the public. Sometimes the action, whether committed or not, tarnished a person’s image indefinitely.
Here, though, he would get another chance to lead a different life.
Synek had fully expected the man to want to live with them until he at least got a feel for the city, but he’d very kindly—for Iris’s sake, he imagined—declined. So Synek had put him up in a B&B not far from them, granting him his independence while ensuring Iris would have peace of mind.
He had been living with more than a hundred other people for the past eight years. He wanted a place to be alone.
Now, there was just one last surprise up his sleeve.
“I can assure you, dove,” he said, leaning over to kiss the curve of her jaw before nipping the same spot. “Your father ain’t gonna want to hear the sounds that you make when I get you on your—”
She covered his mouth with her hand before he could finish. “Must you?”
He laughed even as she rolled her eyes at him.
“Tomorrow,” he said as he turned on his turn signal, spotting a familiar building in the distance. “I’ll show you around to my old flat. Tonight, though, I want to take you somewhere special.”
“Oh?” she asked, her smile growing as she leaned in his direction. “What kind of surprise?”
The kind that had him a little nervous, if he was being honest.
He had never done anything like this before, and there were probably some steps he was skipping, but he didn’t care.
He’d never been one for rules anyway.
Synek turned into a subdivision, found the address, and pulled into the driveway. He did his best to ignore the curiosity and wonder on her face as he unsnapped his seat belt and hurried around to her side to get the door for her.
“What’s—?”
“Not yet,” he said, fumbling with the keys a bit before he got to the right one and inserted it into the lock.
Clearing his throat, he finally got the door open and let her walk in ahead of him, praying to anyone who would listen that the inside looked the way he hoped.
Iris stood in the middle of the floor, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide as she scanned every inch of it. He waited for the distaste, for the unhappiness.
He had already been thinking he should have spent more to get her a better place somewhere in London that was modern and fully updated.
“This is amazing,” she said instead, the very words he had longed to hear.
“It’s your
s,” he said quickly, before amending, “ours. Not as nice as the brownstone, mind you, but it’s—”
“Perfect,” she finished for him, turning to face him. “It’s perfect.”
“You can decorate it however you’d like,” he said with a nod, pulling her back against him.
“You are good with your hands,” she muttered so low he almost hadn’t heard her.
He was glad she was happy. He wanted that above all else. “Where do we go from here?” he asked, reaching for her hand, intertwining their fingers.
“There’s only one thing left to do,” Iris answered with a smile. “We need to find a mattress store because I refuse to sleep on that couch of yours, and we need to get you a pillow.”
“You’re still on that pillow bit?” His smile was contagious.
“You deserve nice things too, Synek.”
He wanted to deserve her.
He smiled, loving this moment more than he could ever put into words. “I love you, Iris. You know that even if I haven’t been saying it nearly fucking enough.”
“You say it plenty,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “I love you too, in case the pillow doesn’t make that perfectly clear.”
It did.
More than she could ever know.
Epilogue
Three years later ...
There was no place like home.
It didn’t matter if he had been gone for an hour or a day, Synek always looked forward to the moment when he was driving down the quiet street toward the old Victorian, knowing Iris was waiting for him.
All his life, he had gone from one room to the next, surviving off scraps and accepting it as his due, but once they left New York and put an ocean between them and the past that no longer mattered, she hadn’t given him a choice in the matter.
This time, when he walked inside his place, there wasn’t a stale odor from being locked up for so long, or decades-old furniture that should have never been bought in the first place. The furniture was modern and clean, including a fucking rug that she had spent a fortune on just because it looked nice.
But if it made her happy, that was all that mattered in the end.
The crackle of wood drew his gaze to the fireplace, mesmerized for a moment by the flames licking at the iron cage, but before he could get too lost in it, Iris came stumbling out of the kitchen, a mixing bowl in her hands and flour covering nearly every inch of her.
“What’s this?” he asked, one corner of his mouth tilting up as he drew closer.
“I’m making cookies,” she said as if the answer was obvious, tipping the bowl in his direction to show him the contents. “Chocolate chips, Macadamia nuts, white chocolate, and a pinch of salt.”
His teeth hurt at the thought, but he had learned rather quickly not to question her food choices. She wasn’t just eating for herself anymore.
Unbidden, he lifted his hand to rest against the curve of her stomach, feeling a welcome sort of contentment as he felt the wee bump. He was almost as bad as she was, wanting to feel every change and watch as the baby grew.
At twelve weeks along, he would have thought he wouldn’t need to do this every time he left and came back, but it was a reminder that he had everything in the world to look forward to when he was home.
“How’re my girls?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her forehead, sweeping his thumb across the expanse of her stomach.
“You’re still convinced it’s a girl?” she asked in return, smiling up at him, shyly tucking her hair behind her ears.
Pregnancy was a good look for her. It did crazy things to him. “Let’s hope for your sake. I couldn’t imagine how you’d handle two of me.”
He had meant the words as a joke, but Iris set her cookie dough mixture to the side before reaching for him. “I would love to have a miniature you walking around.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course.” Her gaze softened as she said, “You’re going to be a great father, Synek. The best. You have all this love to give and he—”
“Or she.”
She rolled her eyes, though she did smile now. “They will know it.”
Synek had thought of a million ways his life would go the day he set out from his childhood home in the East End. He’d expected the pain of the Wraiths, the grueling training of the Den, and the drunken recklessness that followed, but never in all his musings had he ever imagined he would find Iris.
The love of his life.
The soon-to-be mother of his child.
His one.
He wasn’t sure what he had done to deserve her or their life together, but he was thankful. And grateful.
“Let’s go feed you,” he whispered before kissing the top of her head and leading her back into the kitchen.
When the fight was over, and the dust settled, Synek had finally found his happy place.
CODA
The Final Episode
Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
Silence surrounded Uilleam as he sat on the balcony overlooking his property, trying desperately to find solace in his surroundings. Wales was beautiful this time of year. When the frost was beginning to melt, and the first signs of spring started to form.
He was glad, for once, that he had the foresight to restore Runehart Castle to its former glory, that his solitude wouldn’t be as miserable as he’d first expected it to be. This was the one place in the world that no part of his Den had touched. Even Skorpion, who had been with him from the very beginning, had ever stepped foot inside this place.
Until a year ago, the castle had remained abandoned and collecting dust, the walls crumbling and vines climbing up the sides. A reflection of what the Runehart family had become.
Now, it was all he had left.
Three days.
It had taken her a matter of three days to destroy everything.
Three days when he hadn’t been thinking clearly and had forgotten who he was. But that had always been his conundrum with Karina—he didn’t think when he was with her. He wasn’t cold and jaded and lacking empathy.
He felt.
And she had used that against him. It was laughable. Had he been anyone else, knowing that should he have listened to her, he wouldn’t be here, run off to lick his wounds in private. If he had left her be instead of having his mercenaries—former mercenaries—bring her to him, he might not have called them all in and given her exactly what he hadn’t realized she needed.
Opportunity.
With her finally in his grasp, he hadn’t considered anything else.
Like how he’d needed to have Winter track any incoming flights for passenger manifestos that didn’t match.
Or that he’d need more security to watch over his business properties to ensure no one who wasn’t supposed to be didn’t carefully walk the ground until an optimal spot for a bomb presented itself and it was planted without anyone being the wiser.
If he had listened, she wouldn’t have set fire to it all.
Every property he owned, over various cities, in three different countries.
She burned it all.
If that hadn’t been enough, the act had brought so much attention to him that he’d had to shut those locations down permanently, and no amount of money or prestige would get them up and running again. Their covers were blown.
And because of the scrutiny on the bombs, it had driven the few mercenaries still left working for him underground and unreachable.
For the first time in a long time, Uilleam had no protection. No one to call and aid him. No one to barter and call in favors to do his bidding.
He was back where he began all those years ago, except now he had far more enemies.
And worse than the enemies he knew were the enemies he didn’t.
It was a game well played.
But even as he knew it was probably in his best interest to avoid New York for the foreseeable future, he couldn’t bring himself to stay away. Not when the answers—the truth�
�still eluded him.
Uilleam stepped out of the back of the cab after tipping the man, watching him drive off and disappear around the corner before he approached the brownstone with police caution tape tied off in front of it. He barely spared it a glanced before slipping beneath it and twisting the knob with one gloved hand to let himself inside.
The acrid scent of soot still hung in the air, but Uilleam ignored it as he ventured farther into the house, his gaze scanning over the charred remains of what had been inside.
But even as he looked around, he didn’t see the present; he saw what once was.
He remembered the jewel-toned armchairs that sat perpendicular to each other, a dark-stained coffee table dividing them from the velvet couch that had once sat there.
That was one of the aspects of this place she had been most excited about, his Karina. She had talked fondly of the decorating she wanted to do, of how she had always envisioned their home. Now, he wondered whether that excitement had been real or had it all been a part of the image she’d created to trick him into loving her.
He remembered the very first night they’d spent in the kitchen, the cake she’d set in the oven baking while he fucked her on top of the dining table, both of them covered in flour.
It almost felt like a lifetime ago that he had been that carefree.
That he had been happy.
Uilleam hadn’t been happy for a long time, just fleeting moments of contentment and usually at someone else’s expense. But in all this time, there was only one thing his unhappiness hadn’t touched.
Here.
Their home.
The one place he could never bring himself to destroy. Though the living room floor had been desecrated, the rest of it had held such fond memories that he couldn’t bring himself to burn it as he did everything else that brokered such strong emotions in him.
Uilleam walked through each room on the ground floor, following the fire from the back door upstairs and through each of the rooms on this floor.
But as he came to the last room, he paused. Unlike the others inside the brownstone, this one’s door was closed. Curious considering every other door had been open to cause as much damage as possible.
Iris. (Den of Mercenaries Book 7) Page 29
