A Life Of Shadows (The Redemption Saga Book 1)

by Kristen Banet

  “Why did that piss you off so badly?” Sawyer narrowed her eyes on him.

  “That’s Liam’s older brother,” Charlie mumbled. Sawyer clenched her jaw and looked back to the door. She hadn’t recognized him, but she also had never met him in person. He’d walked out on Liam two years before Sawyer had met Liam. “He came back into town while you were off in LA. He’s trying to get back into Liam’s life, but then he started showing up at Fight Night saying our gym trained his brother to fight and he wanted to learn.”

  “Liam doesn’t fight,” Sawyer whispered coldly. “He only defends himself.”

  “Exactly.” Charlie nodded. “So, how does Carson know Liam can fight?”

  “Fuck,” Sawyer whispered. “I’ll deal with it.”

  “I was waiting on you to get home. Liam is still making it to class and work, and he’s keeping his grades up, so he’s not really giving me a reason to talk to him. I figured you would know what to say where I am failing.”

  “Yeah,” Sawyer nodded. She could handle it. She would handle it, but five am and injured wasn’t the time. “Now, for why I’m home early…”

  “You’re burnt out, you have several minor injuries, and I need a closer look at that shoulder…and that knee, holy shit.” Charlie walked toward the front of the gym and locked the door. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  She followed him up slowly and put Liam out of her mind for the moment. She was good at compartmentalization, and it came in handy. She couldn’t get riled up over the kid right now. When she had moved in four years earlier, she had agreed to help Charlie out once she was back on her feet. She dealt with kids, that was what she ended up with, and it worked really well for her.

  She also was the enforcer for Fight Night, a semi-illegal fighting ring they had started to give people a chance to use their skills and have a good time. The cops ignored them because they were small time and B.Y.O.B. No illegal alcohol sales, and the gambling wasn’t organized. There was also an entry fee for anyone who wanted to hang out and party. That wasn’t illegal, and it was how Charlie made his money from the event. That, and fighter buy-ins.

  She sat down in their fairly classy apartment at the dining room table, gingerly pulling her black shirt off. She winced at the sight of the bruises on her shoulder. They looked fucking awful, and she wondered if even Charlie could do anything about them at this point. He was an exceptional healer and was once a successful doctor because of it, but this was bad. Also, he was getting up there in age.

  “Go deal with Travis first,” she told him softly as he eyed her shoulder. The guest room was open, and Travis wasn’t on the couch. She would have bet money that the addict was already asleep, but she still wanted Charlie to keep him out for a long time before she started talking. Hearing what she was about to say would freak Travis out, and she didn’t need that.

  She unbuttoned her pants and slid them off next. She looked at her fucked right knee and tenderly tried to bend it. Adrenaline was a glorious thing, but it was leaving her system. The pain was really starting to set in.

  “Charlie!” She called, realizing the apartment was too cold to sit in just her underwear. “Bring me some sweats!”

  “Alright,” he called back.

  She waited silently for him, leaning back in the chair, continuing to try and use her right knee. It was the size of a softball, and she wondered if she had fractured anything.

  “Well, you really fucked yourself up,” he sighed, throwing his medical kit on the table and tossing her the sweatpants. He studiously ignored her in the thong as she stood up and slid them on. She rolled up the right leg, so he could see the knee, and slowly sat back down. “Sawyer, I think you need to retire.”

  “I can’t bring myself to,” she mumbled. “We’ve had this talk. The money goes to mostly helping these kids, and, let’s be real, this gym doesn’t make a profit, Charlie.”

  “Yes, but you’ve never come back looking like this, and you can’t say it wouldn’t be safer just to stay here in New York. What you do here isn’t nearly as bad as what you do outside of the city.”

  “Charlie…” she groaned and shook her head. “It’s worse than you think.”

  “You aren’t killing anyone, are you?” Charlie glared at her, and she shook her head. That was their deal. He was one of two people on the planet who knew everything about her: who she was and what she used to be. The only other person was Axel, who had kept her far away from the rest of his organization, the Ghosts, so his underlings wouldn’t learn to much about her. Didn’t stop most of them from hating her though.

  “No, Axel showed up during my job tonight.” She winced when Charlie put his hands on both her shoulders. She felt the heat from his palms, but it was unnaturally hot, meaning he was healing her as best he could. She knew he probably couldn’t remove all the bruising and soreness, but she had hope that he could bring it down to something manageable.

  “Explain everything,” Charlie whispered.

  She did, walking him through the mission and what Axel had said. She told him about her escape, to help explain the injuries. The entire time, Charlie got more and more tense.

  “You need to find help,” he told her when she was done. “But, yeah, you should lay low while you heal. Stay here in New York, live your life. We’ll get through this. We both knew it was coming.”

  “I can leave, Charlie,” she told him, but he shook his head.

  “I’ve sheltered you for four years since you ‘died’. Even if you left now, they would still come after me if they figure it out,” Charlie smiled at her. “I accepted that when I took you in, Sawyer. The only deal we have is that you never go back to being…”

  “Yeah,” she sighed. He was all she had, the old fart. He had opened up her world of death and pain into something half decent. “So, retirement.” The word sounded a little distasteful, but what did she have to lose? If Axel did this again, remaining active was going to get her killed. She’d gotten lucky twice, now, when it came to him, and she damn well knew that luck would run out eventually.

  “Yeah. You’ve got something like forty million dollars in off-shore accounts, live off it and walk away. If things get hot, turn yourself into the IMPO or something to get protection. You made a deal with them once, you can do it again. But the Ghosts haven’t found you here, yet, so if you don’t go off causing trouble…”

  “The Ghosts never will be able to trace me back here,” Sawyer grinned at him. “He won’t come here, even if he did. The IMAS and IMPO are both run from this city, by the World Magi Council. It’s just too hot for him, especially after he went to number one on the Most-Wanted list. No Magi criminal plays around in this city except me, and I get away with it because I don’t work in the city.”

  “You were number seven on that list, at one point, if I remember correctly. I still think you could get away with joining the IMAS,” Charlie chuckled. “They would give anything to have someone with talents like yours.”

  “I’m not joining the International Magi Armed Services,” Sawyer groaned, shaking her head. “I’m not going within a hundred yards of the Police Organization, either, so don’t ask.”

  Charlie laughed, pulling his hands away.

  “This could get ugly, Sawyer.” He touched her chin, and she nodded.

  “Yeah, like your face, old man.” She laughed, and he whacked her on the side of her head. “Charlie, I love you! I’m sorry!” She kept laughing as he threw a few more playful swings at her.

  “People are trying to kill you, and here you are making fun of my damn face,” Charlie huffed, but she could hear the laughter in his voice, too. Charlie threw a hand towel at her. “Look, you’ll have a week or so with a sore shoulder and some minor bruising. Two weeks off the knee. I repaired the ACL tear you had. Everything else is taken care of, so if you give it a few weeks, let your Source recharge, then you’ll be fine.”

  “A couple of weeks?” Sawyer sighed happily. “I thought it would be worse.”

  “I might
be slipping my old age, but I’m still a strong Magi,” Charlie reminded her.

  She snorted. Slipping? He was an accomplished doctor and fighter with years of experience. He was in the IMAS for a decade and only left to settle down with his wife, who had passed away a year before Sawyer met him. He’d sold off everything when she left this life and had opened the gym, a lifetime dream of his. And he could still kick the ass of any punk who walked in the doors.

  Charlie wasn’t ‘slipping’, he was getting lazy. There was a difference.

  “Thanks for talking to that guy,” Charlie finally told her. “I know you don’t like dealing with them when they come in on occasion, but I appreciate it. You prefer the kids who genuinely need help, not the punks.”

  “That one really pissed me off,” Sawyer chuckled. “But it’s not a problem, really. I’ll figure out what’s going on with him and Liam.”

  “Get some rest.” Charlie smiled at her. “I’ve got to get a nap in before the gym opens. And Fight Night is on Friday. You won’t be one-hundred percent, but I’d like to have you around again, so hurry up and get healthy. I can’t have an enforcer that limps around.”

  “Alright, I’m going,” Sawyer stood up slowly, testing her shoulder and knee. A little physical therapy and rest and she would be as good as new. She had gotten lucky when she met Charlie, that was for damn sure.

  She walked out as Charlie went to his own room. She moved quietly to her room and sighed happily at the vanilla scent that filled it. She lit her favorite candles and moved into her bathroom.

  The apartment used to be shabby and cheap, but when Sawyer moved in, she convinced Charlie to let her bring it up-to-date. She paid for millions in renovations, doing a lot of work, herself. She liked living in nice places, and she didn’t see any reason that Charlie shouldn’t enjoy a nice place when he was helping her out by letting her stay.

  She put her candle down on the edge of the large jacuzzi tub that she called her own. Once she got the water running, she stripped down and looked at herself in the mirror.

  She was sure every person had a moment when they didn’t recognize the person in the mirror, but with Sawyer, it was becoming a daily occurrence. Her eyes were a dark brown that looked like obsidian in the dim light. Her face wasn’t soft, but it was feminine. Defined cheekbones and thinner lips that would be beautiful if she could ignore the scar on her bottom one. Her hair was coffee-colored. It was thick and textured, and a mess when she didn’t use the right products. It curled wildly, and she stupidly kept it longer then she should. It fell to the middle of her back. She liked straightening it on occasion, especially for Fight Night, when she couldn’t be bothered to deal with the curls.

  When her eyes left her face, they moved over her body. That was more recognizable than the face. An even, golden, dark tan skin tone that reminded her of a light caramel or topaz. She was proud of the body she had: defined arms, a solid six pack, and toned legs. She had broad shoulders for a woman, though that was due to the strength she built into them. Squats had given her a great ass. There was only one thing she had a problem with: the few scars she had were hard to miss. One down her breastbone, courtesy of Axel. Another along the right side of her rib cage, courtesy of Axel. A third on her left hip bone, thin and long, and, guess what? Courtesy of Axel. The two bullet holes weren’t from Axel, though. Missy had given her those, the bitch.

  She had smaller scars on her knuckles from fighting and work. Those didn’t piss her off as much. They were hers, and she owned them. The missing finger did bother her to the point of irrational anger though. She knew why Axel chopped it off, and that reason was still enough to piss her off.

  She sighed and shook her head, trying to dispel the face that popped up in her mind. Suave, Italian, with olive-green eyes and a beautiful face. Not handsome. He looked too refined for handsome.

  “Fuck me,” she hissed as she sank into the tub. She didn’t need to be thinking about him. She needed him to stay the fuck out of her life. Four years, and she’d never made a mistake. How did he learn she was even alive? And if he knew… who else did?

  That guilt welled up in her chest from earlier, finally breaking past all the barriers she had built around it.

  Sawyer was once the rising star in a world of darkness and death. She would have done anything for him. She did do anything for him, for a variety of reasons, from fucked up hero worship to just plain fear. By twenty, she had a reputation for silent and bloody death. Five kills in two years was all it took for her to gain such a dangerous reputation that she had found herself on the IMPO’s Top Ten Most-Wanted list. She’d started out as just his thief, but by the end, she was so much more. So much worse.

  Until she was declared dead four years ago. Four years and three months. The events that led to her ‘death’ were both a nightmare and a blessing, but nothing she did, from helping abused kids and Charlie to retiring from that work, could clean the black stain on her soul. Nothing would bring back the people she had killed or the ones she got killed with her failures.

  She leaned back in the hot water, angling her back into a jet and sighing as it worked the tight muscle.

  “I need a fight,” she mumbled. “A clean fight. A couple weeks to heal up? I’m going to go mad with cabin fever.”

  She closed her eyes. She didn’t know how long she was soaking in the tub when Charlie knocked on her bathroom door.

  “Sawyer?”

  “Yes, Charlie?” She called back, refusing to open her eyes.

  “The boys and I are going out for breakfast,” he told her, sheepishly.

  “And I’m your mother, old man?” She chuckled. They always told each other when they were leaving. It was a safety thing, but they also gave each other hard times over it. His laugh told her that everything was fine between them, for now. “Have a good breakfast.”

  “Well, you know the rules. Keep the door locked and don’t accept any injured, fevered, dying people in to use the bathroom. You know how that ended last time. Just send them to the hospital.”

  She heard him walk off and chuckled to herself for a long time. She did know how it ended last time. She was still living in his apartment. She owed him everything, and he never expected more from her then she was willing to give. It took nearly a year for them to even talk regularly, but she never regretted meeting him. He had saved her life, in every way.

  She rose out of the tub, since the water had cooled down. She blew out her candle and left it at the side of the tub as she dried off. Blow dry the hair, towel off the rest. She strolled into her room and grabbed her favorite pair of oversized gray sweats and a black tank top. By the time she was settled onto the couch in the living room, she was half asleep and didn’t even make it through a single episode of Grace and Frankie.

  Blood seeped onto the tile. Her eyes locked on the cracked and dented plaster where his body had hit the wall. Her vision doubled, and she swayed. She couldn’t look down at the figure that was laying there. She couldn’t. This was her fault. He was dead, and it was her fault.

  A whimper filled the room.

  It was hers.

  Sawyer gasped and jumped off the couch, wincing as her knee buckled from the sudden weight. Fucking nightmare. She hadn’t had it in months. Fuck.

  She staggered into her room, wiping her face. Tears drenched her cheeks and slid onto her lips, salty and bitter. She collapsed onto the bed and pulled a pillow over her face. Of course, seeing Axel would bring back the nightmares. She sobbed into the pillow, letting it muffle the noise.

  “I fucking hate you,” she cried, not sure if she was talking about Axel or herself.

  3

  VINCENT

  Vincent and Elijah landed in LA only hours after the Axel incident. They got on the first plane out of Atlanta to get on the scene as quickly as possible. They had tried getting a Magi to make them a portal, but no one had been available, so Delta had been their only option.

  “I hate Delta,” Elijah groaned, kicking a cowboy boot out
onto the rental’s dashboard. Vincent resisted the urge to knock the foot down. Seven years as friends, and they still had problems. “I mean, it was a six-hour flight, and I only got two drinks? What the fuck?”

  “Calm down, Cowboy,” Vincent sighed. “We’ve got a lot to do, and we’ll be flying Delta back, so just get over it.”

  “You wound me, Vincent,” Elijah placed a hand over his heart, feigning a chest pain. “But you’re right. What did our contact say?”

  “Axel set up a high-end, reclusive thief,” Vincent mumbled. “But no one really knows why. She’s not a high priority for us, since she’s not really a danger to the public. Axel has never hired her before or shown any interest in her. I was told that the security footage is fairly interesting.”

  “Maybe he’s just losing it?” Elijah tried to shrug. In the compact rental car, Vincent equated it to a giant squeezed into a tuna can. How he got his foot on the dashboard was a mystery to Vincent. At six feet five and a wall of muscle, Elijah wasn’t exactly a contortionist. “I mean, Axel’s been slowly slipping for years now, ever since he lost that little pet of his.”

  “Yeah,” Vincent mumbled. “I remember that. He’s always been a little mad,” Vincent shook his head. “I think that incident just brought it to the surface.”

  “Yeah, well, now he’s going after fairly innocent thieves and blowing holes into office buildings. Messy for him. I think it’s a pattern,” Elijah pointed to a building, and Vincent turned into the building’s parking lot.

  There were only 3 black Range Rovers there, all IMPO. They had realized it was a Magi incident and had taken over, kicking the LAPD off the scene entirely. Vincent would feel guilty over it, but the non-Magi law enforcement services really didn’t have the talent or the resources to handle Magi criminals known for torture, mass murder, and a variety of other things.

  “You know,” Elijah continued as Vincent parked them. “Maybe there is a pattern.”