Wicked Games: The Complete Wicked Games Series Box Set

by J. T. Geissinger

  Chuckling, he holds me tight against his chest, rocking me and reassuring me he’s all right, everything is all right, everything is going to be so much better from now on.

  Only his words are wrong, all wrong, so wrong that my sweet relief quickly turns to bitter, choking ashes in my mouth.

  Because the words he speaks are in Italian.

  A language Reynard doesn’t know.

  I pull away abruptly and stare at his face. His smiling, uninjured face.

  The Sea Fox.

  Reynard, who borrowed his name from the trickster fox from medieval fables.

  Reynard…the fox.

  In blossoming horror, I whisper, “No.”

  Reynard cradles my face in his hands. “What was the most valuable lesson I taught you, my darling?” he asks gently. “The one lesson you never could have eluded your enemies without?”

  The answer burbles up from inside me on a wave of dizziness that almost makes me fall. “Disguise.”

  Reynard nods slowly, holding my gaze, the meaning in his eyes unmistakable, and all that I am or ever thought I was is gone with an intake of breath.

  I push him away, screaming, “NO!”

  “I told you she’d overreact,” says Capo, moving around me to stand beside Reynard. Standing next to each other like that, looking at me with identical expressions of calm inevitability, the resemblance is clear.

  If I hadn’t just regurgitated the contents of my stomach, I’d do it now.

  “Impossible. Impossible.” I keep repeating it in a ragged whisper as I back away, my mind going a million miles per hour in a desperate quest to make sense of this insanity.

  Reynard takes a step toward me. “Mariana—”

  “You saved me from him!” I scream, pointing at Capo.

  “Yes,” he replies calmly. “I did. Were it not for me, you’d have been chewed up and spit out years ago, like all the others. Like your sister would’ve been, had she not taken her own life.”

  The tears are coming now. I can’t stop them, or the ugly way my voice breaks, betrayal and disbelief warping my words as they’re coursing like poison through my body. “This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. You raised me like your own daughter!”

  Reynard nods, and his eyes are kind. “I always wanted a daughter. My wife died giving birth to our only child.”

  He lifts his hand and rests it on Capo’s shoulder.

  The sound I make is one of pure anguish, ripping from my throat the way my heart is being ripped right out of my chest. I stagger backward, my hands pressed to my ears, shaking my head and sobbing.

  Aroused by my distress, Capo licks his lips. He takes a step forward, but Reynard stops him with an arm held out over Capo’s chest.

  “Have you ever wondered what stayed my hand all these years?”

  Here, then, is the answer.

  Reynard, who isn’t Reynard, but Vincent Moreno’s father, the real capo di tutti capi, boss of all bosses, head of the snake, power behind the throne, secret leader of an international empire of human and drug trafficking, master of disguise and man I have loved my entire life.

  The man responsible for my sister’s death and oceans of human suffering.

  Tears stream down my cheeks, blurring my vision and dripping from my jaw. My chest heaves with my hitching breaths. I’m hot and cold, sick with rage and heartbreak, everything inside me screaming NO! straight down to the marrow of my bones.

  I bump against the glass coffee table with the bowl of grapes. I pick up the bowl—it’s crystal, heavy—and hurl it at Reynard with a guttural roar of pain.

  He and Capo jump aside, easily avoiding the bowl and the flying grapes. With a crash, it shatters into a million glinting splinters on the marble floor. Reynard sighs as if I’m testing his patience. “I want you to listen to me now, Mariana—”

  “Why? Why would you do this? Why would you save me and raise me and pretend to love me?”

  He blinks at my screamed accusation, genuinely surprised. “I do love you, my darling. I’ve always loved you, from the moment you were dropped at my feet. You looked up at me with those huge brown eyes like I was a god, like I was your savior, and I was moved. I’d never felt a thing for any of the other girls in my stable, but you touched me.”

  When I groan at the way he refers to his victims as stock—like horses, only less valuable—his expression hardens.

  “Your problem, my darling—aside from a ridiculous sentimental streak I was never able to train out of you despite my determined efforts—is that you think only in terms of black and white. Good and bad. People aren’t black or white, and neither is life. It’s like the title of that book, Fifty Shades of Grey. Everything is a sliding scale of gray, some paler, some darker, but nothing pitch black or pure white. Those extremes don’t exist, except in your mind. Take me, for example. Haven’t I cared for you? Haven’t I shown you love, given you skills, a job, a life?”

  “Lies,” I whisper, breaking apart, piece by jagged piece. “All of it was lies.”

  “No,” he says firmly, shaking his head. “It was real. And when you get over this little shock, you’ll realize it.”

  “Little shock?” I repeat, a crazy laugh bubbling out of me. “Little fucking shock?”

  He makes a dismissive motion with his hand, like he’s tiring of the conversation and my lack of cooperation in moving it along. “You took an oath years ago, and now by bringing us the Hope, your marker is honored. Don’t pull that face at the mention of honor, Mariana. It’s second only to family in importance to me. I grant that the blood oath you took was under clouded circumstances—”

  “I thought I was saving your life!”

  He smiles. “But in reality, you were saving your life. You were proving your loyalty to me and your worth to the organization. You were earning your spot at the table.”

  I have an inkling where he’s going with this and I can’t help but stare at him, speechless, powerless to grasp the real scope of his plan. But he lays it all out for me neatly so my battered brain doesn’t have to do any work at all.

  “Outsiders aren’t allowed to do business with the family, except in very rare circumstances where their loyalty and value can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Once you’d grown to adulthood and I’d seen countless times how clever you were, how quickly you learned and mastered all the tasks I set before you, I decided it was time to see if you could be trusted. Not trusted the way thieves or criminals trust each other, trusted the way family is trusted.”

  Trust. Fucking trust. I think if I ever hear that word again, I’ll lose my mind.

  His tone slightly more somber, he continues. “But there are rules that govern these things. Even I must abide by them. So an oath was made and your name was entered into the logbook. Now there’s only one final thing you must do to close the log and satisfy the marker, and properly join the family. Only blood can pay for blood.”

  When I just stare at him, he says, “You need to kill your American.”

  My mouth falls open. Every drop of color drains from my face.

  Capo chuckles. “God, look at her. She didn’t see that coming.”

  “Prove your loyalty to me,” murmurs Reynard, his gaze hypnotic, “and inherit an empire.”

  I whisper, “You’re insane.”

  He flips his hand. “Hardly. I’m a businessman. You know me, Mariana. This is me.”

  I snap, “Yes, I do know you! And you’re nothing but a pimp and a liar and a despicable piece of shit!”

  He strides toward me. Before I can lift my arm to defend myself, he slaps me hard across the face.

  It’s so sudden and violent, I lose my footing and fall on my ass, the breath knocked out of my lungs in a gust. Shocked, I touch my fingers to my nose. They come away bloody.

  Looming over me with a red face and wild eyes, Reynard thunders, “Show some respect for your father!”

  Behind him, Capo is excited by seeing me stricken and bleeding on the floor. He reaches betwe
en his legs and fondles himself, stroking his growing erection through his trousers.

  Something inside my mind snaps.

  I feel it go, like a tether unwinding and pulling free, a spool abruptly spinning out of thread. In an instant, I’m blank and emotionless, a robot with no heart or soul, no past or future, no hope or love or fear. I look up into Reynard’s face, feeling as calm as morning.

  “I’ll show you the same respect you showed my sister, Dad.”

  I curl my hand around the gun shoved into the waistband of my jeans, in the small of my back, hidden under my sweatshirt. I pinched it from the assassin on the plane when he forced me to press against him and point it now at the chest of the man who taught me how to expertly steal things right off people’s bodies without them ever knowing.

  Capo screams, “No!” and lunges at me.

  Without a breath of hesitation, I pull the trigger.

  31

  Ryan

  I’m an hour behind her. Only a single hour, but sixty minutes has never felt so goddamn long.

  I’m at the rinky-dink airport in Abruzzo, Italy, where Mariana touched down briefly before taking off again, heading east. I hitched a ride out of New York with an old military buddy I once took a belly of lead for in a firefight against insurgents in Iraq, who now flies a transatlantic run for FedEx. But this is as far as his route goes, and I need another plane.

  Fast.

  “She’s on a yacht in the Adriatic Sea, just off the island of Vis, in Croatia,” Connor tells me over the sat phone. “We’ve got it up on the satellite now. I’m sending you the coordinates.”

  “A yacht? Fuck.”

  “Yep,” says Connor, sounding grim. “You’re gonna have to jump in. And watch your six, brother, because some of these big-ass megayachts like the one we’re looking at are equipped with surface-to-air missiles.”

  “Jesus! Why the hell would you need a missile defense system on a nonmilitary boat?”

  “Because, as a for instance, you’re the paranoid head of an international criminal empire and lots of people would like to see you dead.”

  “Good point.”

  “Even if there aren’t missiles, there will definitely be a bunch of hired guns. Wait there for the rest of the team, I don’t want you going in alone. They’ll be to you in less than—”

  “No.”

  Connor growls. “Goddammit, Ryan—”

  “Twelve guys in combat gear parachuting out of a plane’s gonna get a lot more attention than one. I’m going in alone. Have the team rally on Vis and wait for my call.”

  He’s silent for a moment. I know he’s pissed I insisted on taking off on my own before the rest of the team was assembled, because that’s not how we do things, but this is one time I wouldn’t—couldn’t—wait.

  My woman’s in danger. If God himself told me to wait, I’d tell him to suck my dick.

  “Copy that,” Connor finally says. “But when you get back, we’re gonna have a chat about teamwork, Rambo.”

  “If you’re done lecturing me, Grandma, can you send me the number of the nearest skydiving outfit? I’m gonna need to rent a rig.”

  Connor mutters, “This shit is so much easier in the movies.”

  “You’re tellin’ me.”

  “Tabby’s pulling up the info. The number’s on the way.”

  “Thanks, brother.”

  “No problem. And Ryan?”

  “Yeah?”

  There’s a pause before he speaks. “Keep frosty, brother. This guy Moreno’s a real piece of work.”

  “I will, brother. See you soon.”

  I disconnect the call, thumb over to my texts, and click the link to the phone number of Skydive Italia that just popped up on my screen.

  32

  Mariana

  A deafening bang, a blinding flash of light, and a violent recoil jolting up my arm are the three things that happen simultaneously when I shoot Vincent Moreno at point-blank range in the chest.

  He staggers back, arms flung wide, eyes bulging. He lands on his back with a whump that shakes the floor. Blood flowers from the hole in the center of his chest, quickly seeping crimson through his pristine white shirt.

  Reynard is frozen, staring blankly at his son. I don’t know if his shock is due to finding himself standing when only seconds before my gun was pointed at him, or if he’s still trying to understand what happened.

  In case it’s the latter, I provide him with an explanation. “He lunged. It was instinct.”

  Reynard shifts his gaze to me. His eyes are so wide, they show white all around the irises. His face is the color of the marble floor.

  I stand slowly and face him. My body feels like it’s a thousand years old. As if the words are coming from someone else, I say in a hollow voice, “Only blood can pay for blood?” I gesture to Vincent, still alive but gasping for air, his hands fluttering uselessly at his sides. “Consider us even.”

  Alerted by the sound of a gunshot, four assassins slam through the closed doors. They see Vincent on the floor and me standing there with a gun, and all of them pull up short, draw their weapons, and point them at me.

  “Stop!” shouts Reynard in Italian, holding out a hand. “Don’t shoot! This is my daughter! You will not hurt her!”

  They freeze. They glance at each other, then at me, then at Vincent, who’s making awful gurgling noises, desperately trying to suck air into lungs that are most likely collapsed.

  I can tell by the expression on Vincent’s face—past the pain and panic—that he’s unhappy with this development.

  The men slowly lower their weapons. Reynard turns his attention back to me.

  “You were the son I should have had,” he says, his voice shaking with emotion. “You were always the strong one. The dedicated one. The one without the sickness in the head.” He gestures to Vincent, who wheezes in outrage.

  Blood seeps from one corner of his mouth, and has gathered in a slick, shining pool under his body. His eyes are like a rabid dog’s, rolling viciously in his head. Even fighting death, he’s full of rage.

  Reynard says, “You were always the one I intended to pass everything to, Mariana. You are my true heir.”

  I blink, the assassins gasp, and Vincent roars like a wounded lion.

  Then everything takes on the quality of a dream. It all seems to happen in slow motion. I see Vincent reach into his jacket. I see him withdraw his silver pistol. I see him point it at his father. I smell the acrid stench of gunpowder in the air, still lingering from the shot that took him down. I see another burst of brilliant light, hear another bang, and a crack like thunder.

  Reynard’s head explodes like a pumpkin. He spins a fast half circle, then crumples facedown to the floor.

  An eerie stillness follows. I’m untouchable, inside a cocoon of unreality that’s softening all the hard edges of things, keeping my pulse even and my mind clear, removed from it all, like I’m a spectator watching a movie, serene and safe behind a gauzy screen.

  Vincent takes one last, ragged breath, shudders, then closes his eyes. The gun drops from his hand and clatters against the floor. After that, he doesn’t move, his chest stops rising, and I gather from all the evidence that he’s dead.

  I feel nothing.

  I feel nothing when I look at the mangled pulp that was Reynard, either. I’m aware I must be deeply in shock, that my body is responding to severe trauma by instinctively defending itself with psychological detachment, and that later I’ll probably develop PTSD, but right now, I don’t care.

  When I look at the armed men standing frozen and gaping at the doors, I still don’t care. My utter lack of fear or feeling must show in my face, because they stare back at me in obvious trepidation.

  Then one of them whispers, “Capo di tutti capi,” and slowly takes a knee.

  He isn’t looking at Vincent or Reynard, lying there motionless.

  He’s looking at me.

  One by one, the other assassins sink to their knees.

 
; Then they bow their heads, paying their respects to the new leader of the empire.

  33

  Ryan

  “Which one is it?” I shout over the roar of the engines as I stare though the Cessna’s window at the ocean, fourteen thousand feet below me.

  And the three fucking megayachts floating within a mile of each other off the coast of Vis.

  This was as far as the GPS got us before the final working tracker blinked offline. One mile of ocean, not five feet.

  Serves me right for only attaching four trackers to Mariana’s clothing.

  When I get my woman back, she’s not going anywhere without a dozen.

  “We can’t dial down tight enough on the satellite images to get the hull identifiers to see who owns them, but there’s a huge heat signature coming from the one farthest west,” Connor says in my ear. Our connection is shitty, and his voice is cutting in and out, but I can still hear him when he says, “There’s gotta be hundreds of people on that craft.”

  Which would make sense if your business is trafficking bodies.

  Imagining a ship full of scared little girls in addition to Mariana, I seethe with anger. I can’t wait to bury a bullet in this sick motherfucker’s skull.

  “Copy that. Out.”

  I hang up the sat phone before Connor can say anything else. At this point, there’s nothing else that can be said. Except maybe good luck.

  Or sayonara.

  I zip the phone into a pocket in my jacket, shove a pair of tactical goggles on my face, and give the thumbs-up to the skinny guy with the dreads from Skydive Italia. He was more than happy to take me up solo when I gave him five thousand cash, plus another few thousand for the chute and rig he won’t get back, but he isn’t too happy now, after watching me pull a shit ton of guns and ammo from my ruck and strap ’em all over my body.

  He’ll get over it.

  He yanks open the door and steps aside. Freezing wind slaps my face. The roar of the engines becomes deafening. At this altitude, I don’t need supplemental oxygen, but breathing’s still gonna be a bitch until I’m under canopy. I sit on the overhanging platform and scooch all the way to the edge, then arch my body and kick my feet back as I jump.