Skorpion. (Den of Mercenaries Book 5) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Newsletter

  Also by London Miller

  Meet the Mercenaries

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  CODA

  Curious about the Wild Bunch?

  About the Author

  Skorpion.

  Den of Mercenaries Book Five

  London Miller

  Copyright © 2017 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.

  Contents

  Newsletter

  Also by London Miller

  Meet the Mercenaries

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  CODA

  Curious about the Wild Bunch?

  Chapter One

  About the Author

  Newsletter

  Keep up with all things London Miller, including exclusive cover reveals, giveaways, and more!

  http://eepurl.com/-fxKD

  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

  DEN OF MERCENARIES

  Red.

  Celt.

  Nix.

  Calavera.

  THE WILD BUNCH

  Crooks & Kings

  Shadows & Silence

  SEASONS OF BETRAYAL

  Where the Sun Hides

  Where the Snow Falls

  Where the Wind Whispers

  Meet the Mercenaries

  Uilleam’s Team

  Red

  Celt

  Calavera

  Skorpion

  Winter

  Grimm

  Nix’s Team

  Fang

  Tăcut

  Thanatos

  Invictus

  For H.

  This life changes you—sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. You’re lucky if you get to see the end of it.

  Keanu ‘Skorpion’ Hamari

  Prologue

  Ada Edgar hadn’t always been a thief.

  Since she was a girl, she’d liked to work for the things she wanted, whether that meant doing more chores around her house than she wanted, or babysitting the Jenson twins two houses down.

  It was a person’s work ethic, her father, Charles, liked to say, that defined them.

  Even now, as an accountant for world class criminals, she worked long hours organizing their books and making sure their money was secure. Keeping them rich even as they robbed others blind.

  The very same criminals that wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if they ever learned she was stealing from them.

  They trusted her, after all, to secure what meant the most to them, and that trust hadn’t come easy. Not only had she needed someone to vouch for her—to stake their very life that she was trustworthy—but she had also needed to prove she was the best at what she did by working more hours than anyone at the firm and making sure her books reflected the work.

  Eight years ago, she would have laughed at the very idea of her coming to work for an American accounting firm that helped rich men get richer from ill-gotten gains, but things had been different then. She had been different then. And the very things that seemed so important at that time no longer mattered.

  Four years ago, she had wanted to prove herself—to show the men skeptical of her abilities that she was the best launderer they would ever hope to find, though now she wondered why she had cared to prove anything to people that didn’t think twice about her.

  She also wanted to show her father she hadn’t needed him despite his promise that she would—she had wanted to be right in the choices she’d made.

  She could turn hundreds of thousands of dollars into millions. She made sure the money couldn’t be found by various enemies and governments alike.

  There was no longer a question whether she had been worth it, she was good. Even now as she balanced precariously on the line between right and wrong, there was no question whether she could do her job or not.

  Once, crunching numbers had been something she was proud of.

  Since she was a child, she’d had an affinity for them, and long before she had ever attended Cambridge University, she had even helped her parents manage what little money they made from their respective jobs.

  It had been simple then.

  Before everything had changed.

  Before her parents had lost it all.

  Before she had to become the person she was now.

  Humble beginning were nothing to be ashamed of—she now knew—and for a while, her parents and sister, Marie, had never left her wanting for anything. They were all she had needed.

  Until they moved and her father had promised them all a new start in a bigger house and better things. Their life had been better for a while, until the day the new company he worked for had to downsize and he was one of the first to be let go. She’d learned rather quickly how poverty—true poverty—could change people.

  Her father smiled less. Her mother cried more. And though Marie hadn’t understood the enormity of what was happening around them, she had still felt the staggering effects of it as well.

  Ada, older at the time, had been reminded daily what little they had once she’d started attending her new secondary school with holes worn into the bottom of her shoes and wearing a uniform that was at least a size too small.

  She’d tried to keep her head down and not draw attention to herself, but children were cruel and they’d delighted in reminding her of her shortcomings and what little she had though it was no fault of her own.

  The worse they were to her, the more her resentment toward her mother and father grew. It had been their fault, she’d believed, for the bullying she’d suffered. She channeled that anger and bitterness into her studies, ensuring her marks never slipped, even as everything at home felt like it was falling apart.

  Because her father wasn’t the only one feeling the effects of the change his lack of a job caused—it had slowly seeped into each of them, threading through every thought and emotion until it was all anyone could focus on.

  ‘Why couldn’t he find another bloody job?’ she’d asked herself often in those days.

  It had been her father’s fault that they were so poor, she’d thought.

  His fault that her mother ha
d needed to find another job on top of the one she already had to keep them going as one month turned into two of his lazing on the couch, grumbling as he watched the telly.

  His fault that she had needed to get a job as well once she was old enough, to help to support the family though he was the patriarch and it had been his responsibility to provide for them. While other girls her age had jobs as well, they were able to buy little bits and bobs they wanted while it felt like she was the only one having to hand over the hundred and something pounds she made a week, only keeping a twenty for herself.

  She didn’t care that the evidence of her hard work was all around her—the heat in the water, the running water in the sinks, and food on the table—she only saw that she didn’t have something tangible and fit neatly in her closet.

  Anger had fueled her for months on end until she was finally able to send off her application to Cambridge after graduating. But even then, that anger had only dulled to simmer, like burning embers clinging to life in her being.

  She hadn’t cared that she would have to pay back on loans for ages—she was just glad she could finally escape her family and leave their meager existence behind.

  Her mother, Edna, had never understood why she wanted to leave. No, that wasn’t quite right. Her mother had never minded their life, and didn’t understand why Ada did.

  It’s what’s done, she’d said one evening. You take care of your family no matter what.

  But Ada had never understood that notion. It was because of family that they struggled so much. It was because of family that she felt as if she was drowning.

  The day she’d moved out, she never looked back.

  Not until she was far enough away that she no longer felt the heavy weight of responsibility on her shoulders.

  That day, her father had called her selfish, shook his head in that way that said he was disappointed as she’d loaded her suitcases in the trunk of the idling taxi. The emotion that choked her had nearly prevented her from leaving, but her desire for freedom had far outweighed her need to not be a disappointment to him.

  And, in the end, once she’d graduated a second time and found a decent paying job, she’d been able to send money home. Regardless of his proclamation that he’d never want anything from her, he never sent a single check back.

  Ada thought about that day a lot over the years, especially now as she watched the rain drum outside and slide down the clear glass pane of her office window on the thirty-second floor of the building. She couldn’t get it off her mind.

  Her first day here had felt like she was on top of the world when she sat behind her desk, gazing out at the sprawling city of Los Angeles bathed in the glow of the moon.

  It had been beautiful.

  Enchanting.

  Until it wasn’t.

  No, Ada hadn’t always been a thief, not when she’d been able to afford her lifestyle and send money back home, but desperation could make the strongest of men forget their morals.

  It was a year ago today, in fact, that turned her world on its axis.

  “There was an accident,” Edna had said on a hiccuping breath, her words muffled over the call, but Ada had heard her well enough. “Your father—”

  Those had been the only words Ada needed before she was on the first flight back to London, needing answers from someone other than her mother and Marie who could barely get a word out without sobbing.

  “An accident,” the floor manager of the factory where her father had worked repeated, his brow beading with sweat as he’d regarded three inconsolable women. “Could have happened to anyone.”

  She had barely been able to wrap her mind around the fact that an accident had nearly taken her father’s life, let alone that she had been so out of touch with her own family that nothing he was saying even sounded remotely possible since the last she’d heard, her father still wasn’t working.

  Worse, the floor manager couldn’t have known that because of the accident, her family would be thrust right back into the life they had only narrowly escaped. Bills still needed to be paid, despite the accident, and now that her father was in a physical state that required special supervision, his care also came with a hefty price tag.

  She’d thought that first phone call was bad, but it was nothing compared to the one she’d received nearly a month later.

  “He needs to be moved to special care,” her sister had said over the voicemail eleven months ago that had ultimately set this all into motion. “He’s not getting everything he needs. I don’t … I don’t remember what all the nurse was saying, it was a lot. It costs fifty thousand pounds a month, though. Fifty thousand! Who the hell even has that kind of money? Mum thinks she can buy us some time if we sell the house and move into a flat, just the two of us, but I’m not sure how long that’ll last.”

  She’d paused after that remark, weighted with grief and anger and helplessness.

  Ada knew the feeling well.

  “Could you give me a ring when you get this? You’ve always done well with the numbers.”

  A fact that was both a blessing and a curse.

  A blessing because she had been able to send them three thousand dollars every month without blinking an eye at the amount.

  A curse because she knew that was no longer enough and there was only one way she could get the money they needed. She’d been sitting at her computer at the time, running numbers for a client. Three million dollars was just sitting there, untouched. The man it belonged to hardly checked the account, she’d reasoned, that was her job.

  He wouldn’t notice if a little was missing.

  A little over fifty thousand dollars was nothing to a man like him.

  It was almost too easy shifting money from that first account into a separate one she’d set up minutes before.

  Maybe if it hadn’t been so easy, she wouldn’t have gone back a second time.

  Or a third.

  Fourth.

  Fifth.

  Until she was no longer thinking of the consequences of her actions.

  Until it no longer mattered.

  It started out so small, that first withdrawal, but now she was more than a quarter of a million dollars deep with no way out.

  Brushing that thought away, Ada turned back to her computer as it beeped, signaling the end of the transaction she’d been waiting to process—her last one for the day.

  Finally.

  Now she could go home.

  She blew out a breath, exited the browser and wiped her search history, before closing it all down.

  Pulling on her coat, she shook out her hair before grabbing her purse from the side table and locked up her office as she left.

  It was a short walk to the bank of elevators across from her office, but as she readied to hit the button to head down, the bell dinged and the doors slowly slid open.

  She had no time at all to prepare herself for the sight of the woman standing inside wearing a white, figure-hugging dress and towering heels, or the man standing at her back who, at the very sight of him, made Ada instinctively take a step back.

  Her fingers tightened around the handle of her purse as fear slithered down her spine.

  Suits walked these halls everyday, and if not one of them, there were men in tailored jeans and T-shirts that cost just as much.

  This man, whoever he was, didn’t fit either mold.

  He wore a bulletproof vest with far too many straps, and a pair of cargo pants that molded to powerful thighs with weapons secured on nearly every inch of his body.

  Dark hair hung past his ears, strands falling over his eyes—eyes that were the same dark shade. But the most terrifying aspect about him was the mask that covered half of his face.

  Everything about him was designed to spark fear in whoever he crossed paths with. From the guns, to the muscular arms, and even the way he stood. He practically bled violence. But his eyes …

  There was nothing there.

  No emotion.

  No indication th
at he felt anything at all.

  He was just a weapon, poised and ready to be unleashed.

  But the woman in front of him didn’t appear concerned by his presence.

  Why would she? He was here with her.

  “Good evening, Ada. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time.”

  She tried to pay attention to the woman in front of her, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the walking weapon behind her. “I—”

  “Oh, don’t mind him,” she said easily, a delicate accent coloring her words. “He’s only here to ensure nothing happens to me.”

  With the way he was staring through her, Ada didn’t want to even look at the woman the wrong way.

  Clearing her throat and adopting a smile that she hoped made her look less afraid, Ada asked, “Is there something I can help you with tonight, Belladonna?”

  A clever moniker if Ada had ever heard one.

  There was the traditional spelling of the poison, bella donna, but whenever the woman picked up a pen, she wrote it as if it were her own name. Both lethal and unassuming in its flower form, it also described the woman who bore it well.

  Ada didn’t know the meaning behind it, and had never felt comfortable enough to ask, but each idea she had were all rather gruesome considering the effects of the poison.

  “Let’s speak in your office,” she suggested, eyes sweeping the corridor. “I trust it’s a bit more private in there.”

  Surveillance cameras were installed in the main foyer, audio recorders as well, but for the sake of the clients—and Ada, as it were—all the private offices weren’t bugged in any way.