Iris. (Den of Mercenaries Book 7) Read online

  Iris.

  Den of Mercenaries #7

  London Miller

  LM Books, LLC

  Praise for London Miller

  “London Miller writes with both complex emotion, high paced intensity and a diverse cast of misfits that you can't help falling in love with.”

  Bestselling Author, Mary Catherine Gebhard

  “This series continues to play out much like a chess game with all the players being moved around but with no known end …”

  Amazon Reviewer, Sandy

  “The way the Den of Mercenaries and Wild Bunch series are intricately woven into each other is impressive.”

  Edgy Reviews, Lily

  Copyright © 2018 by London Miller

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design by London Miller

  Edited by Jenny Sims

  Also by London Miller

  VOLKOV BRATVA

  In the Beginning

  Until the End

  The Final Hour

  Time Stood Still

  Valon: What Once Was

  Hidden Monsters

  The Morning

  The City

  DEN OF MERCENARIES

  Red.

  Celt.

  Nix.

  Calavera.

  Skorpion.

  Syn.

  THE WILD BUNCH

  Crooks & Kings

  Shadows & Silence

  SEASONS OF BETRAYAL

  Where the Sun Hides

  Where the Snow Falls

  Where the Wind Whispers

  For my readers

  Take a breath, it will only hurt a little.

  Power is finite. It is something gained and lost, but love … love is more than that.

  Karina Ashworth

  Contents

  Also by London Miller

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part II

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part III

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  CODA

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  The rain was as familiar to Synek as his own reflection.

  Every important decision he had ever made from the moment he left his childhood home in London’s East End, every path he had ever walked, had always been accompanied by heavy showers.

  He had resigned himself to it.

  Yet the sky was a clear expanse of blue today. The sun shone a little too brightly.

  Funny, only moments ago, he had signed his life away to a man he didn’t know, and instead of gray, dreary weather, it was a beautiful day.

  But as Synek sat in the back of a black panel van, running a hand through his messy blond hair—hair he planned to shave off the first chance he got—there wasn’t much fear left inside him as he rode toward the unknown.

  He had already suffered enough for three lifetimes. Seen things that gave even him nightmares. There wasn’t much else the Kingmaker could do to him that he hadn’t already suffered at someone else’s hand.

  Across from him, the mercenary who had been there the day the Kingmaker introduced himself sat with his back against the side of the van, wearing a blank expression. Now that Synek’s mind wasn’t clouded with alcohol and he could think clearly, it was as if he was seeing the man for the first time.

  The mercenary was in the same gear as before—cargo pants and a bulletproof vest with an assortment of weaponry strapped across his body—but unlike the other killers Synek knew, he didn’t look like one.

  There was no question he resembled one, though.

  His dirty blond hair was cut short on the sides, a few inches longer in the middle in that way that said he was in the early stages of growing it out. Definitely the opposite of Synek’s unkempt state, but whereas Synek was anxious to know where he was being taken, the other man looked resigned.

  He knew the feeling well.

  “What the hell kind of name is Grimm anyway?” he asked. Wanting to fill the silence, he remembered the first words the man had spoken to him once he was picked up.

  Idle conversation was easier than letting his thoughts carry him away. He didn’t often like what he found in there.

  If the question annoyed the mercenary, he didn’t let on. Instead, Grimm shrugged as his gaze finally focused on Synek instead of the panel wall behind his head.

  “It’s what they call me.”

  “What’s your actual name?” Synek asked, not liking that Grimm had an advantage over him. He didn’t like the idea of anyone knowing more about him than he did them.

  “Most people in your position don’t talk so much,” Grimm remarked, but a hint of a smirk on the man’s face suggested he knew why Synek was asking. “Curiosity is usually the first thing to go once you come to the Den.”

  Synek didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t bother to ask. Instead, he kept silent as they rode on.

  By the time the van finally rolled to a stop, Synek doubted, if given the opportunity, he would ever be able to navigate his way away from this place.

  By design, he was sure.

  The doors swung open and other men dressed like Grimm stood outside them, but unlike Grimm,, they didn’t share his calm efficiency.

  They smiled … as if they smelled blood in the water.

  Synek paid more attention to the men walking along either side of him than to the building he was being led into. Yet rankling him the most was the unknown man walking at his back.

  His presence was like an unbearable itch Synek couldn’t scratch.

  It wouldn’t make sense for the man to attack him—not if the Kingmaker had gone through this much trouble to recruit him—but that didn’t stop his paranoia. If the Wraiths could turn on their own in a matter of seconds, he didn’t trust that these men he didn’t know wouldn’t do the same.

  No one spoke as they traveled down a lengthy hallway, though a certain excitement electrified the air.

  An excitement that didn’t bode well for Synek.

  But it wasn’t until they reached a partially cracked door at the end of the hall that he finally understood what came next.

  The “training” the Kingmaker had spoken of—how he would learn to fight as Grimm and the other mercenaries had—would happen in this room.

  He didn’t resist as he was shoved inside, ready for whatever they had planned.

  They took his shirt and shoes, leaving him standing in the middle of the floor in nothing but his frayed jeans.

  Torture was just another day in his life, and whatever these men thought to inflict on him would ultimately hurt them worse than it hurt him.

  He wouldn’t break easily.

  Grimm stood in the mouth of the door, light bathing in from behind him, and now, Synek understood how he had gotten the name. The shadows made h
is face appear more gaunt, the lines more severe.

  He looked every bit the grim bastard he was supposed to be.

  “Welcome to the Den,” he said with a nod of his head before he stepped out and closed the door, effectively drenching Synek in darkness.

  The panic didn’t set in immediately.

  For a few short minutes, Synek remembered who he was and where he’d come from, but the longer he sat in the pitch blackness of the padded room, the more the adrenaline started to course through him. Irrational fear started to pool inside him, and as a means to protect himself, anger rose above it.

  Synek didn’t realize he was screaming, not until his ears started to hurt and he lashed out around him—fighting off invisible hands that hadn’t touched him in years.

  He didn’t realize there was nothing left to fear but his own mind.

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Present day …

  A roadmap of hell was easy to come by.

  It wasn’t a place filled with fire and brimstone, but one made of cement and barbwire, guarded by men with guns who were all too human.

  Sitting on the East River between Queens and the Bronx, Sing Sing prison was not a place Iris Adler ever thought she would venture into, but that changed with her father’s murder conviction over eight years ago. After that, she had no choice but to familiarize herself with the place and its procedures if she wanted to see him.

  Not to mention, her discomfort didn’t last for very long compared to what he suffered daily.

  It didn’t help matters that he had once been a police detective—an especially proficient one responsible for putting more than a dozen criminals away in this prison alone. She had worried he would be targeted because of that. That men he had locked away would want him to answer for what he had done though they had been the ones to break the law in the first place.

  But besides the occasional black eye—and he always mentioned that the other guy looked far worse—he wasn’t getting beat on.

  That didn’t mean Iris didn’t worry about him because she did. And she always would until the day he was free to walk out the front gates.

  Until then, her leg would bounce up and down with nerves as she sat in the cramped waiting room, doing her best not to stare at the large stainless steel clock hanging on the wall opposite her.

  She had been waiting for nearly an hour and thirty-seven minutes, the longest she had ever had to sit in this room in all the years since she had started coming here on visitation days. Usually, she was called very quickly.

  But the wait was worth it. No matter how long she had to sit in this uncomfortable folding chair, seeing her father was worth every discomfort.

  “Adler!” called a beefy guard carrying a clipboard in his right hand, his gaze swiveling around the room and landing on her once she stood.

  Iris swiped her sweaty palms along the front of her jeans, her heart thumping harder as she closed the distance between them. Even though she had done this more than a dozen times now, it hadn’t gotten any easier.

  Anxiety still churned inside her as she followed the corrections officer out of the waiting room and down a dimly lit hallway. She always feared that one day, someone would realize the fake ID she used was counterfeit, and her secret would be out.

  It wasn’t that she necessarily needed it, but it provided an extra level of security should anyone look at her father’s visitors a little too closely.

  So far, she had been lucky.

  She didn’t take it for granted.

  They entered an oversized room next, divided in half by a cement and glass partition. Each individual booth afforded just enough privacy not to feel watched and monitored, though that was exactly what was happening.

  All manner of people sat in the room, young and old, clean-cut in tailored suits, or casual in jeans and a plain T-shirt.

  Iris walked toward the booth at the very end, her earlier worry and anxiety dissipating as she stared through the inches-thick glass at the man sitting on the other side, wearing an aged navy blue uniform that was becoming far too familiar for her comfort.

  The dark hair she always remembered fondly had streaks of gray throughout, and now it even peppered the slight beard he had grown.

  But no matter how much time had passed, or how his features shifted and changed with age, her father still looked the same to her.

  His tired eyes briefly lit up as she took her seat, quickly grabbing the phone off the wall and putting it to his ear.

  Even as it hurt seeing him on the other side of the glass, wishing she could hug him, Iris was glad she was able to see him at all. “Have you been working out?” she asked.

  His laugh was immediate and infectious—the kind of contagious laughter you heard from the other side of the room that made you want to join in. The sound never failed to bring a pang to her chest.

  He rested his elbows on the table, leaning in. “I’m happy to see you too. Your hair looks different.”

  Her hair was a shade lighter thanks to a stylist in Hell’s Kitchen, but even if her hair hadn’t been a different color, Marvin still would have noticed something different about her.

  Whether her nails were painted a different color or she had a new tattoo—though he hadn’t been fond of the last one she’d shown him—whatever it was, he always picked up on it.

  She had asked him how he always knew. How he could possibly remember such tiny details.

  He’d smiled then and said, “Because the small details are what keep me going.”

  “It’s for a party,” she said, thinking of the event she was attending soon.

  Seven years she had been waiting for this opportunity—for a chance to get back at the men who’d put her father in here. They had robbed him of his life and everything that meant anything to him.

  She would make Spader and whoever worked with him regret it all.

  A crooked grin spread across Marvin’s face. “Finally getting out there and living?”

  He might have been the one wearing the uniform, but sometimes, it felt as if they were both locked inside a cell, barely existing. He didn’t understand that all she cared about was getting him his freedom.

  And when she wasn’t actively working, she was thinking about her next move.

  There was never any time for anything else.

  Not that she minded.

  This was all she wanted. This was all that drove her.

  At least, it had been all she was until two months ago.

  Before she accepted her final job with the Wraiths.

  Before she had walked into a sketchy bar that changed her life in a matter of seconds.

  Before she ever laid eyes on Synek.

  “Not quite,” she answered, trying to push him to the back of her mind, though that was nearly an impossible task. “It’s a work thing.”

  “An actual work thing,” he asked, his brow furrowed, “or something else?”

  Iris had never told him about her involvement in her old organization, or what she had done for them. He wouldn’t have approved.

  Especially since he had spent over twenty years locking people like the Wraiths away for the rest of their lives because of the crimes they committed. Because of crimes she helped them commit. Instead, she’d told him she was a freelancer.

  A bounty hunter, of sorts.

  “Something else,” Iris said, taking a breath before spilling why she was really there. “Something for us.”

  Marvin’s expression shifted as he sat back in the metal chair, his displeasure clear. “What do you mean?”

  Her father appeared resigned to his fate after having been forced to live the past eight years as an innocent man lost to a broken system. He didn’t ponder what-ifs or even think a day would come when he could walk out the front doors a free and vindicated man. He fully expected to die in this place even as Iris did everything in her power to make sure that wouldn’t happen.

  “He’s not going to be free much longer,” she sa
id, not needing to remind him who she was referring to.

  They both knew who she meant.

  There was never any guarantee her father wasn’t being watched or recorded, so Iris was always careful never to mention any names when she was here.

  But Marvin didn’t look nearly as excited about her proclamation as she did.

  In fact, he looked the opposite.

  The father she used to know would have asked what she was planning to search for any weaknesses in her plans. The man she’d listened to on cassette tapes for years before she was ever able to visit him in person would have fought until the bitter end to find a way out of this.

  At the very least, he should have been proud of her accomplishments thus far. She was close, after all—closer than she had ever dreamed of getting to a man who might as well have been untouchable.

  Instead, the man sitting in front of her now didn’t look pleased at all by what she was saying. He just looked … sad.

  “I—” He caught himself before he said her name, his look of frustration confusing her. “We’ve talked about this.”

  “I know.”

  Or she thought she did. They had repeatedly talked about this day, and even when he’d had his doubts, she persevered. She had dedicated her entire life to this. She couldn’t see it fail now.