Dark Secrets (Dark #2)

by Jessica Gadziala

  "Fuck," he growled a moment later, planting a kiss beneath her ear. "This room is convenient," he added as he slowly slid out of her, reaching down and pulling her pants and panties back up, kissing her ass cheek in the process.

  "Yeah," she agreed, sucking in a deep breath as she looked at the camera to see one of the kitchen guys in the bar. "Except when we need to get out of it without seeming suspicious."

  Daniel snorted, tucking himself away, condom and all, seeing as there was no garbage in the little room- something she would mention to Vin, obviously leaving out the condom thing and maybe saying something about the food wrappers. "Tell you what, you go out and close the door. I'll watch the camera until that guy goes away and then I will come out."

  "Alright," she said, flattening her hair, knowing it would in no way make her look any less happily-fucked, but figuring if they didn't see a man walk out with her that they couldn't possibly pin that on her.

  "Go," he urged, pressing back against the wall as she turned the big circular wheel that unlocked the room and slid out, shutting it firmly behind her.

  She had a short conversation with Marco, the produce guy, who informed her they would be out of strawberries for the night. Then when he was gone, Daniel slid out of the panic room as casually as you please, making his way toward the bathrooms then coming out and getting to work like nothing had happened.

  "How about I do the lemons?" he suggested twenty minutes later as she piled them next to the cutting board.

  "What? Why?"

  "Can't imagine it will feel good to have lemon juice in all those fresh cuts," he explained, hip-checking her out of the way and getting to work.

  "Whatever turns your crank," she said casually, going to grab the juice containers, "but I will be spending all night with alcohol all over them so it really makes no difference."

  He snagged her by her belt loop as she walked past, lips tipped up. "I believe what you meant was 'thank you'."

  She smiled big at that, surprised, and nodded. "Thank you," she agreed and he released her.

  Then he went ahead and proved her wrong about the alcohol on her hands comment, seeming to believe every single customer who walked in was his customer and thereby making every single ever loving drink the entire night- leaving her feeling overpaid and completely useless, but also pretty warm and squishy inside.

  He might be kinda rough around the edges, rather blunt, and the tiniest bit aggressive but in a good way, but he was also sweet and considerate. And, well, he always made her come. Really, that needed to be said. Some guys were really slacking in the "ladies first" department sexually.

  He was an all-around good guy.

  And then Xander and K walked into the bar.

  See, she had known them both long enough to be able to tell when things were not good. It was in their jaws clenched tight, in the firm set to their shoulders, in their stern brows.

  And things were not good from the looks of them.

  They sat down though, ordering drinks from Daniel who shuffled off to make them as she moved over. "This can't be good," she said, voice low, letting her hair fall as a curtain to the side so Daniel couldn't see her face.

  "Depends on how you see the information, sweetheart," Xander said with a shrug.

  She closed her eyes on a slow exhale, knowing that, chances were, she would not see the information in a positive light. That generally was not how she operated. She was not an optimist. She wasn't a pessimist either. She was just a realist. And that damn cup everyone was always arguing over being half full and whatnot, yeah, she realized it was most useful when it was empty. So she never filled it one way or another.

  "You got a break coming up?" Xander asked.

  "I've pretty much been on a break my entire shift," she said with a snort.

  "He doesn't want you hurting your hands any more, huh?" K asked, always way too good at reading the situation.

  "Daniel, mind if I run next door to the diner with them for a bit?" she asked and he was shaking his head before she even finished.

  "Take all the time you want," he said waving her off. "Here, let them throw these back first," he said, giving them their drinks. As he moved in beside her, there was no denying that she stiffened ever-so-slightly. But Daniel being Daniel, he noticed. "You alright?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine. Just have too much energy since someone won't let me do any work tonight," she said with a smile she didn't feel.

  "Don't worry," he said down by her ear, "we can burn all that energy off back at your place later."

  As much as she knew she was supposed to be wary of him, was supposed to keep her emotions under control, inside she thrilled at the promise in his words.

  "Come on, sweetheart, let's get this over with," Xander said, both of them standing and she moved out from behind the bar to follow them.

  "Faith!" Daniel called, stopping not only her but Xander and K as well, all of them turning as a unit as Daniel tossed her jacket across the room to her. "What is with you and the no jacket thing?" he added, shaking his head as he went back to work.

  "Oh, shit," Xander said, a knowing smile in place as they moved outside.

  "Don't," she warned as they went next door to the all-night diner- a tiny little place that looked as dated as most diners did and smelled like old grease and burnt coffee, again, as most diners did.

  They took a booth in the back, Xander sliding in across from her and K taking a chair at the end of the table.

  "I'm just saying, babe. You're involved with him. That shit is clear enough. And that is going to make this suck all the more," he said, reaching inside his jacket and producing a file folder, sliding it across to her as the waitress walked over. They all ordered coffee and Faith stared at the file, her heart a slamming bass beat in her chest.

  "Putting it off isn't going to make it any easier to swallow," K advised, always being more the 'rip the bandaid off' kind of guy.

  But she nodded in agreement as she flipped the file open and, on the first page, learned the cold, hard truth about Daniel Faber. Whose name wasn't Daniel Faber. It was Daniel Joseph Harrison. And he wasn't a bartender, from the looks of it, had never been a bartender.

  She knew that because right there, staring her in the face was a picture of Daniel Joseph Harrison. And his face was right near the words "special agent" and the acronym "FBI".

  "Mother fucker," she hissed, her heart no longer slamming in her chest because she was pretty sure the thing shriveled up and disappeared right then and there.

  "Faith don't..." Xander started to try to console. But he was cut off by K.

  "He's been working for them for most of his adult life- undercover operations all over the country." See, K wasn't the type to console you. K was the type to slap you in the face with the truth and tell you to learn to deal with the sting because you would never in your life get the luxury of not facing the truth and the pain it brought with it. "He did his longest stint in Navesink Bank, playing the part of V to the public."

  "V?" Faith prompted, brows drawing together.

  "Yeah, maybe that was a little before your time. You were probably early twenties at the time she was in power," Xander explained with a nod. "V was a skin trader. One of the worst in the fucking business. But because V was female, she didn't want the world to think she was weak so she used Daniel as her face."

  Faith's head felt like it was spinning, not any single fact seeming to take root. But one thing did ring a bell. "Wait... Navesink Bank," she said, looking over at K.

  "Yeah," he said with a nod. "That's where I sent Maze once I finished training her. To shack up with The Henchmen to keep her safe."

  "Funny story," Xander started, then wiped the amusement off his face at seeing the genuine sadness on Faith's face.

  "No, tell me," she demanded when he stopped.

  "The Henchmen got wrapped up with V a while back. They are actually a reason he lost that job. V took Reign's girl and shit escalated."

  "How did shit escalate?"
she asked, needing to know the details, needing to have every piece of the very fucked up puzzle.

  "Well, The Henchmen and some friends went in there guns blazing and V was never heard from again."

  "K," she started, looking over at him, her voice hollow.

  "Yeah?"

  "What does Reign's girl look like?"

  K shrugged a shoulder. "Pretty little thing. Redhead with..."

  "A love of guns," she supplied, feeling parts of Daniel's cryptic stories align with the parts they were giving her and seeing the whole picture.

  "Hey, you..." Xander started to ask.

  "She shot him," she said, shaking her head.

  "What?"

  "Reign's woman. She shot him during that whole ordeal."

  "How do you know that?" Xander asked, genuinely curious.

  "He has a healed gunshot wound scar on his chest. Right side, right under the clavicle. He said a redheaded woman gave it to him because he asked her to because it would look bad on him if he walked away unscathed or something. And then he said he thought it instilled a love of guns in her that her husband likely didn't appreciate."

  "Well, seeing as Reign is an arms dealer," Xander said with a small chuckle, "I think he'd find that shit almost endearing. But, yeah, that makes sense. If he was trying to help her get out, he needed to get hurt to make it look like he was still on V's side. Fat lot of good it did him since that organization fell apart without V's tyrannical rule. And, you know, losing most of the people in it."

  "This is fucking crazy," she said, shaking her head as she flipped through the paperwork. She found that Xander's new team- Espen and Enzo, they had done some really deep digging, all the way from his financial records and back to his childhood. She found herself almost relieved to realize he hadn't, at least, lied to her about that part. He had been an army brat and his parents had died the way he said they did. She even found an old copy of the apartment lease he had with the girl with the dog obsession, whose name turned out to be Elizabeth Frank.

  "After the Navesink Bank job failed," K went on, wanting to give her all the details, regardless of whether she wanted to hear them or not, "he went off to Cali. Worked some job on imports. Couldn't find too much on that. Sounds like it was drugs though. But that job blew up and fell apart. He came back to this coast and worked another job that hit the shitter. And then..." he trailed off, waving a hand.

  "And then he set his sights on Vin."

  Xander nodded. "Don't ask us how we got this shit because hacking into the FBI system is a whole new world of criminal I don't fuck with," he said, shaking his head, "but they were working on this for a while. I mean the feds have been wanting to pin something on the D'Onofrio family for fucking decades. But this operation has been in the works for a while. They sent him to bartending school. Then he worked at a bar for a while for some real experience. Then they made up a fake resume and sent him in, but not before..."

  Faith took another steadying breath. "Not before what?"

  "Sending in some dipshit to fuck up on the job so they could send in Daniel to replace him."

  "Wow," she said, not seeming to be able to muster anything more than that. Wow seemed to cover it.

  Just. Fucking. Wow.

  But somehow, it made perfect sense, didn't it?

  "No wonder he can sneak up on me, can take me in a fight. He's had his life dedicated to training."

  "Yeah, he was top of his class at Quantico. He's the real deal. They have a lot invested in him."

  "What, exactly, was the mission here? Is he just snooping around, trying to overhear something? Plant bugs? What?"

  "That's mostly up to him and his case manager..." Xander said, reaching for the file and flipping through, "Max."

  Max.

  "Oh my God," Faith groaned, putting her elbows up on the table and cradling her head in her hands for a long moment.

  "Take it you've met him?" K asked.

  "Max is the name of a new associate of Vin's. Good looking Puerto Rican guy. Expensive taste in whiskey. He came in last Sunday."

  "Looks like they're both in on it," Xander agreed, shrugging in a very 'what can you do' way.

  "What are you going to do with this?" K asked bluntly as Faith tried to focus, tried to not freak out too much, tried to be rational.

  "What?" she asked, reaching for her coffee, knowing it wouldn't help her nerves but always finding it helped her concentrate better.

  "With this information," he clarified. "What are you going to do? Bring it to Vin?"

  "Vin would have him, ah, them killed," she said, her voice hollow.

  "You're fucking him, right?" Xander asked suddenly, drawing her attention. It wasn't an accusation. It was just a question. That was the nice thing about Xander- he didn't judge.

  "Yes."

  "Do you think that's a natural thing or is it because he..."

  Fuck.

  Faith slammed back against her booth on a low growl.

  Or was it because he was trying to get information out of her? Had he run a check on her? Dug into her financials? Her medical records? Did he dig through her apartment when she ran out of there earlier that morning?

  Was she just part of the job to him?

  "He cares about you," K told her, reading her mind.

  "Not enough to be honest with me," she shot back.

  "Have you been fully honest with him?"

  "Aside from him knowing Vin's men are the ones to fuck up my life, yes. We haven't had a ton of really deep conversations. Things are new. At work, we talk about bullshit stuff like favorite movies and music and food places and all that little shit."

  "But you told him what happened to your parents?" K asked, being the only one outside of the D'Onofrios and Daniel who knew even most of her story.

  "Yeah."

  "That's a big fucking move," he went on, shrugging. "For you. I mean, this fuck didn't really know the whole story until now," he said, jerking the side of his head toward Xander who suddenly seemed a mix of confused and... irate.

  "Vin? Fucking Vin, sweetheart?" he asked, keeping his voice low, but it still had power behind it. "You let me share drinks with that man and he's the reason..."

  "Xander," she cut him off, snorting. "I work for him."

  "Yeah, well that's another kind of fucked up we need to discuss at a later date."

  "Faith," K cut in, drawing her attention back to his serious face. "What are you going to do? You need a plan before you go back in there."

  "I don't really see there being much of an..."

  "From what I see," K cut her off, "there are three options."

  Since she only saw maybe one and that one was not going to happen, being that it meant Daniel would die a bloody, painful death.

  "What are they?"

  "One, you tell Vin. You might be a hardass, Faith, but I can't see you doing that. Sealing his fate. That's not you. Two, you tell him you know and he better the fuck not show his face again or you will tell Vin."

  "Or three?" she asked, her stomach in painful knots.

  "Three is you pretend shit didn't happen. I see you, honey. I see he's in there. Whether or not you have realized that yet or if you're willing to admit it is beside the point. He's in there and you're hurting over this. So you can just bury your head in the sand and let it happen."

  "I'm not a ostrich, K."

  "She's more like an entire pride of lions in one small body," Xander agreed.

  "So you're going with the second," K concluded. He sat back in his chair, considering her for a long moment. Then he shook his head, his cheek snagged by his teeth. "I think that's a bad move, Faith."

  "You fucking serious?" Xander asked, brows drawn together. "It's the only choice. She can't trust him."

  "What? Because he's a cop?"

  "Of course because he's a cop," Xander said, looking at his friend like he'd lost his mind. "Who the fuck is to say he's not playing her? Weasel in then when she trusts him, try to get information out of her? Whose t
o say he's not building a case against her too? She needs to cut him off."

  The reason those words sent a stab of pain to her chest, yeah, she was trying to not think about why that was.

  But she couldn't help but think Xander was right.

  Maybe it was her conditioning, her knee-jerk reaction to believe most people were generally shitty, always out for themselves. But she couldn't seem to believe Daniel's motives were anything other than ulterior.

  That would just fit the pattern, wouldn't it?

  Shitty guy after shitty guy.

  That was her life.

  "I need to get the fuck out of this town," she said, her voice completely empty as she leaned back against the booth seat and looked down at her coffee.

  "Hey," Xander said, reaching across the table and covering her sore and beat-up hand with his big, scarred one. The two of them, they were full of the scars from all their personal battles. The difference was, he finally got his reward. He got Ellie. He got love and a future and a baby on the way. He got the world out of his struggle. All she got was shit.

  "I don't..."

  "No, listen."

  "If you feed me some cheesy 'it's a bad day, not a bad life' line, I'm going to clock you. You have no idea how shitty my life has been."

  At saying those words, at admitting an emptiness she never even acknowledged alone to herself, she felt the mortifying sting of tears at her eyes.

  Fact of the matter was- she had long ago stopped hoping for a happy ever after. That wasn't meant for girls like her- the ones who were battered and bruised and battle-weary, the ones who had walls fifteen feet high and five feet thick around them, the ones who could never see a silver lining.

  She didn't hate her life.

  That was a bit dramatic and depressive. She certainly was never the woe-is-me type. But there was no denying that she just did what she felt like she needed to. She dangled jail time over Vin's head to keep him paying her mother's hospital bills. She worked so she could sock away money to leave the City and start over somewhere different, somewhere less cold. She taught women self-defense because she wished someone had taught her at a younger age and her mother as well.