by Bethany-Kris
Diego took a moment to think about his answer. Was he, as she said, normal? Maybe compared to her. He continued staring out the window because this conversation had turned deeper than he expected, quicker than it should have. Truth be told, that didn’t really bother him.
He knew it should, though.
“Sometimes I want to look inside your world and see what it’s like,” Diego muttered, “but I don’t think I want to live there like you and Ren do.”
Luv didn’t reply.
Diego was fine with that.
• • •
Luv stayed a few steps behind Diego as he used the spare key card to open the hotel room Renzo kept booked throughout the year. He used to have an apartment on the strip, but Diego never got to see it before his brother decided it wasn’t needed when his home was in New York with his wife and kid.
Ren had given him the key to the hotel room the last time he visited his brother in Vegas. It allowed Diego to come and go when his brother had business—or was it work?—to do and he got bored or needed something to do. Ren never asked for it back and in fact, told him to keep it in his wallet to use the next time he was back.
Trailing behind him, Luv peered over the different items his brother had left behind in the multi-room suite. Everything from the picture frame on the decorative table beside the leather loveseat to the pile of forgotten junk—like from his brother’s pockets, considering it was nothing more than crumpled receipts and some loose change—on the dinette table in the small kitchenette. Her lack of familiarity as she surveyed the space wasn’t lost on him.
“Never been here before?” Diego asked as he dropped his bag to the couch. He didn’t wait for a reply from Luv before he ripped open the zipper and started digging for the black hoodie with the logo of his favorite rapper. “I thought you worked with my brother?”
Her soft footsteps had him glancing up in just enough time to watch her exit the far bedroom—the one he typically used when he stayed here—and come to stand directly in front of the couch.
“We’re not really friends like that,” Luv admitted. “That wasn’t part of the deal and Renzo is … You know, he keeps his outside life private. Some of us do. I don’t take it personally.”
Diego knew better than to ask. How many times had he said that since arriving? Too many. Ren told him a long time ago to stop asking questions when it clearly bothered him. His stupid mouth still worked before his brain.
“What deal?” he asked.
She eyed him for a second, deciding on simply, “He’s my mentor. One of them.”
A part of him wanted to ask more. The smart part of him stopped before he could. This time.
“Huh,” he muttered, finally finding the sweatshirt he wanted. Yanking the item down over his head, he punched his arms through the sleeve holes, knowing damn well Nevada was probably too hot this time of year for the heavy clothing. Oh, well. He liked what he liked. Once the hood was pulled over his head, he could see Luv again. She hadn’t stopped staring. It managed to make him nervous and curious at the same time, and that wasn’t something he was used to. “So, you’re gonna be my babysitter, then?”
Luv’s gaze darted up to his, holding strong. “Yeah, why not? Not like I have anything else to do this week now.”
“Were you supposed to be doing something else?”
“I usually make stuff go boom. It’s kind of what I do. Not this time—instead, I’m looking after you.”
He didn’t even know where to begin with that.
Diego just opted for, “I think I want a nap.”
“Anything else?”
“Maybe I’ll find a park later.”
Luv smiled. “Whatever you want, Diego.”
Right.
That was the problem, though. The entire damn point, actually. He was here because he didn’t know what he wanted.
SEVEN
Diego
Diego didn’t get to have a nap.
And so far, he hadn’t found a park, either.
Instead, he trailed behind Luv as he walked through the halls of a building that she’d only called, “The complex.”
If he were being honest, yes, the name did fit the large and ominous building entirely too fucking well. Made up of winding hallways with black doors and overhead lighting that could blind a person, he wasn’t entirely sure what anyone would do in a place like this considering the desolate location.
After Luv’s phone rang with a call that she spent mostly rolling her eyes and sighing loudly at whoever talked on the other end, all she told Diego was that they had to go. Nothing more, and nothing less. They drove for two hours.
Beyond recognizable landmarks. Where there were no buildings. Only miles and miles and miles of desert land greeted them until finally … something began to grow on the horizon. The big and confusing building she called the complex, that was.
Diego finally figured out—whatever the place was—had something to do with The League, the organization his brother worked with, because of the black matte card Luv had flashed at the cameras overhead the doors where they entered. He couldn’t say it was a proper entrance because nothing, not even a parking lot, suggested where they entered the building was the front, side, or back for that matter.
“What is this place?” Diego asked again. “What do you even do here?”
Luv shot a glance over her shoulder, grinning as though she got way too much enjoyment out of Diego’s ignorance. “A bit of everything.”
“Like—”
“Some people live here. Offices are kept here. Training. Work. Whatever, you know?”
No, he certainly did not.
He wondered if that was such a bad thing.
Rounding another long hallway, Diego was surprised to find the few doors they passed in this one were actually open. Black doors. Like every other door in the place. He didn’t spend too much time peering into the rooms they passed, but he saw enough to make his eyes widen a bit.
Like the room with bars of gold.
The one full of weapons.
None had people.
As they reached the far end, clicks started to echo behind Diego. Luv kept walking ahead of him even though he stopped to look back. Behind him, the black doors for each of the rooms started to close one after another.
Fast, but quiet.
Electronic, maybe?
He wasn’t sure why or how they closed the way they did. It just did it. One door after another.
Click, click, click, click.
“Come on,” Luv called, her voice echoing around the next corner she had taken.
The entire place felt cold.
And dangerous.
Definitely not like home. Certainly not like he belonged there. And that was the thing he recognized first and foremost inside the building.
He did not belong.
Diego hurried to catch up.
• • •
“Now, I know you know that when I called and said you needed to come in, Luv, that I didn’t mean you were to bring him.”
Sitting behind a desk made of metal and glass that dominated an already large room, the man who clearly didn’t want Diego to be where he was continued to stare at him like he might be able to make the young man disappear. Even if it was with his thoughts alone and nothing else.
Awkward?
Not even close.
Luv laughed lightly. “Well, you seemed very concerned when you called that he might not be okay, Dare. So, here he is. Perfectly fine. A-okay, even.”
Dare.
Why did that name sound familiar?
Where had he heard it before?
Diego didn’t get the chance to figure it out before Dare’s gaze cut back to him, and all at once, it became a lot harder to breathe comfortably. Just the man’s stare was unsettling. He wasn’t the first person Diego met in his life who could silence someone with just his gaze alone, but it was strange all the same.
“Actually,” the man muttered behind his desk
as he reclined in the chair, “Renzo hounded Cree until the man made a call. I was only trying to get the information needed that would let Renzo feel comfortable about continuing his current …” Dare’s stare drifted to Diego, and he considered his words before finally settling on, “… job. You understand?”
Luv didn’t seem to care. “Like I said, I brought him here, and now you’ve got eyes on him. Tell Ren he’s fine.”
“Just … behave, Luv. And get him the hell out of here. This is not a place for someone like him.”
“He has a name.”
Diego cleared his throat, happy that he’d stayed closer to the door of the office and didn’t walk in further as Luv had. “That’s fine—he doesn’t need to use my name.”
For a moment, Dare’s gaze softened. Just as fast, he reverted to unsettling ice.
“Exit the property, Luv. No detours.”
That was that.
Diego left the office first; Luv was quick to follow. This time as they headed through winding hallways that only seemed like a maze to Diego, more people milled around than before. None spoke to him. All of them wore some variance of black. A few nodded Luv’s way.
“League members,” Luv told him, clearly seeing his curiosity about the people. “Like me, and Ren. Some just got back from a heist in Paris. There’s also two being trained, so a team is here for that, too.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I know.”
Finally, he started to recognize where exactly they were. Or rather, that they were walking down the hall leading to the doors where they had first entered. At the far end, Luv pulled the black card from her back pocket and held it up for the camera overhead to see.
Diego glanced behind him one last time. He wouldn’t come back here. Of that, he was almost certain. Some places just didn’t feel like they were meant for him. This was one of those.
A click sounded. The doors opened to the outside.
This time, Luv didn’t need to tell him to hurry up or follow along. He was all too ready and willing to leave.
EIGHT
Luv
Luv Moore had a great many skills. Her training for The League started just after what was assumed to be her seventeenth birthday, but no one was really sure of her true age because her past was full of shadows that even she couldn’t see through to understand what waited behind the veil.
She didn’t know where she had been born, or who brought her into the world. Just that she had been shuffled from hand to hand until finally coming to The League. A year and a half after finding her way to the organization hidden within the depths of the Nevada desert, she now toted a profile as an up and coming assassin that could do just about any task put in her hands.
She excelled in bombs. Hence her mentor in Renzo. Hacking was her favorite. Put any kind of weapon in her hands, and she could be a man’s worst nightmare. She also had a liking for all things undercover or even … jobs that required infiltration.
What she didn’t do, though?
Tracking, recon, and so forth. Luv found all of that to be slow and boring. And while she was supposed to have an easy week looking after Renzo’s younger brother, she certainly didn’t expect to have to track Diego down because he just decided to up and go MIA on her.
She had much better things to do on a weekday.
A touch-up on her blonde hair; a fill for her nails because they were starting to grow out. Hell, she could have stayed in bed all day and read a book. Literally anything except tracking a guy from New York all over Las Vegas. And yet, that’s exactly what she found herself doing.
Luv showed up at the hotel around noon on the third day of Diego’s stay. He hadn’t done much after their trip to The League’s complex, and he didn’t seem interested in leaving the hotel on the second day, either. She left him be figuring they could meet back up today and maybe his mood would be better.
Except he wasn’t there at all, and the clerk at the front desk simply said Diego had left. Knowing better than to call Dare and say Renzo’s brother was missing when she was supposed to keep her eyes on him, she decided to handle the issue herself. She put out a few calls to some people in the city with boots on the streets and ears to the ground. It was always good policy in her business to have contacts in high and strange places.
It took an hour.
She grabbed lunch while she waited.
Eventually, her contacts came through with the information she needed. Diego—or someone they thought fit his description well enough—had found his way to an indoor and outdoor skatepark a few blocks away from his hotel. Luv made her way to the address without rushing because what was the point?
The guy was almost eighteen. Basically an adult, or soon becoming one. If he wanted to do something, he could. He didn’t need to ask for permission. She just needed to make sure he was safe while he did it, right? Simple enough.
That was how Luv found herself watching Diego from a distance as he laughed with a group of guys who had music blaring from portable speakers while the sound of wheels rolling over cement echoed all around the space. In her shadowed corner, Luv stayed where she couldn’t be seen, both amused and curious about the boy from New York and how he seemed entirely different from the one she met in the airport just days before.
With the people at the skatepark, he seemed a bit looser. Lighter, if that were possible. He chatted with the strangers and flipped over his board while a blunt was passed around the group. At least they were in the outdoor section to smoke, she thought. It was also the first time she noticed all the gear Diego carried in the backpack that rarely left his shoulder.
Camera stuff.
Or something.
He wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Hadn’t found trouble, either.
If anything, he looked like he was having a good time making friends with … normal people. People who seemed, from afar, more like him than her. It was so removed from what she knew—she didn’t really make friends when her life didn’t allow her to keep them for long. She didn’t really bother to try, either.
Luv stayed in the shadows until she decided to get a refill on her vanilla latte. Diego was just fine—they could catch up later.
• • •
“How long have you been standing there?”
Luv glanced up from the screen of her phone, her attention leaving the social feed she’d been scrolling down to find Diego standing only a few steps away from her current position. After coming back to the park, she found a post near the exit where she thought was a good place to lean and wait. So, she did.
“Didn’t really take you for the type,” she said, nodding at the item in his hand. The joint still curled with gray smoke at the cherry-red tip when he lifted it up for another quick pull from the end. “You seem too quiet for that—it’s always the quiet ones.”
Diego laughed, eyeing the joint in his hand. “Favorite part of my day, really. You didn’t answer my question.”
Luv shrugged. “Most of the afternoon.”
“How’d you find me?”
“I said I would keep an eye on you. I’m going to do that.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
She smiled. “You don’t want the real one.”
Diego arched a brow at that, and a slow, lazy smile curved his lips as he pointed his skateboard in her direction. “You know what, you’re probably right about that.”
Yeah, she figured that out.
He didn’t really like her world.
It wasn’t made for him.
Luv waved her phone, but Diego didn’t even glance at the device. “Apparently, it’s not too hard to find you anywhere, though. You put location stamps on all of your social media posts. Isn’t that a little … stupid?”
He worked on stubbing what remained of his smoke and then packed it away in a black case he’d pulled from his pocket. “I meet the coolest people that way.”
He also had a lot of followers. She’d never been the type to have s
ocial media accounts—for one, because she wasn’t really allowed, and they would all be monitored by The League; but for two, because she didn’t see the appeal when she didn’t want to be seen most of the time.
Diego, on the other hand …
He seemed to live his life online.
Every single day.
“Hey,” Diego said suddenly.
Forgetting the phone in her hand, she met his stare to find that lazy smile of his seemed a little … cuter. Sexier, even. He was still a fucking babyface—all smooth and cute and young—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t handsome with all the strong lines that made up his features. From the square jawline that could cut glass, to his dark eyes that always seemed focused and intense, it wasn’t troublesome to stare at the guy. It didn’t hurt her a bit, in fact.
Even she had to admit that.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“I wanna have some fun. Maybe find some music. Do you know somewhere we could do that? I mean, if you wanted.”
Did she?
“I think we could find something.”
Diego grinned. “Awesome.”
Somehow, he looked even cuter.
NINE
Diego
“My place is closer.”
Diego hadn’t thought much about Luv’s offer as the night bled into the very early morning, and the buzz that he’d been feeding for hours finally reached its peak. On one side of the elevator that lifted them to a higher floor, Diego grinned as Luv used the tip of her shoe to scoot his skateboard back and forth on the tiled floor.
“Ever tried it?” he asked.
Her blue eyes widened—a trait of hers that he’d noticed more and more often the longer he spent time with her. Everything was always right in the girl’s eyes. Very little was hidden there. The window to anything she was thinking or feeling at any given time.
“Never,” she admitted.
“I bet you could pull something off—an ollie, at least.”
Luv didn’t miss a beat, replying, “Probably.”
