White Rabbit: The Rise (The Kingmaker Saga Book 1) Read online

  That the task she had thought would be entirely impossible was sitting right in front of her.

  “Looks like someone has an admirer,” Samantha called as she joined her, handing over a mug of coffee identical to the other one she carried.

  Radio silence, then this.

  Tucked among the blooming flowers was a single black card. She plucked it free and ran her fingers over the wax imprint on the back before turning it over to read the back.

  Promises are promises. — U.

  Some part of her had suspected that whatever she asked of him would go in one ear and out the other—that was, in part, why she had asked for something so obscure. She hadn’t expected him to take it seriously.

  Let alone deliver on it.

  But with this arrival came the knowledge that this was only the beginning.

  Uilleam would be paying her a visit very soon.

  Seven days.

  Seven bouquets.

  Seven tiny notes tucked away for her to find with his stamp across the back of them.

  If he was trying to make sure he was at the forefront of her thoughts at all times, he’d accomplished that and more.

  Every morning when she came in to sit at her desk and every afternoon when she traveled home after work, carrying a fresh bouquet, fighting the ridiculous smile that had yet to wane.

  Today was no different.

  She could practically smell the fragrant scent of roses from the moment she boarded the elevator upstairs. It was becoming the highlight of her morning, but she did wonder how long he would keep this up.

  Noon came around far too quickly.

  Most of her morning had been spent taking various phone calls, entranced by the flowers she couldn’t look away from. Others on the floor came by to inquire about them—it wasn’t as if in the entire year she had worked here, a man had ever sent her flowers—but she had merely smiled and didn’t say a word.

  Back from lunch, she was ready to get back to work until she saw him. Sitting beside her desk, as if conjured from the deep recesses of her mind,.

  Had no one else noticed him? It wasn’t as if she had male visitors every day. And something about him refused to blend in with the world around him. Yet, no one seem to pay him any mind.

  He could have been doing anything—rifling through her drawers or even the files on her desk—but instead, he was just sitting there as if he had all the time in the world to wait.

  For her.

  The thought was welcoming even as it was baffling.

  She waited until she was standing behind her chair before she spoke to him. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Did you like the gift?” he asked with a tilt of his head at the flowers that were still sitting on her desk once she neared.

  Saying she liked it was a bit of an understatement. It didn’t matter that he had sent a bouquet every day after, or that those flowers littered her apartment. That very first batch of blue roses he sent were the ones she kept here at work.

  She changed the water daily and made sure it was the perfect temperature before adding food to it.

  Karina cleared her throat, trying not to show just how much they meant to her. “They’re very lovely.”

  Now that she was here with him, he didn’t mind reaching for the files on her desk, tipping one open to read the contents inside. She swatted his hand away, pulling the manila folders further away from him.

  “I can guess you didn’t come here about my work.”

  “No? That seems to be what connects us, isn’t it?”

  She dropped her elbow onto her desk, resting her chin on her palm as she looked him over, finding far too much enjoyment in seeing him there.

  “I don’t think that’s true at all.”

  Uilleam had a way of looking so confident that for a moment, she thought she was going to give him what he wanted.

  A part of her desperately wanted to.

  “When would you like to leave? I’m flexible.”

  “Lovely flowers or not, my answer hasn’t changed.”

  His smile was a little smug. “You like me.”

  “As all people like dangerous things. That doesn’t mean I want to get bit by the wolf.”

  Her phone chose that moment to vibrate across her desk, Orion’s name proudly displayed on the front of the screen.

  An acknowledgment that she did, very well, entangle herself with bad men.

  Just not with him.

  “Him again,” he said with a twitch of his lips. He didn’t look particularly happy about the fact that Orion was calling her.

  “Work is calling,” she answered, opting for the truth instead of alluding to something more.

  For whatever reason, she didn’t want him to think it was anything other than what it was.

  But he didn’t seem to buy that.

  Nor did he seem particularly fond of Orion at all.

  17

  Final Warning

  Showing his face more than absolutely necessary was the last thing Uilleam needed at the moment, considering how vital it was for him to stay under the radar, but for tonight, he was to making an exception to that rule.

  “So at what point do I get to say you’re becoming a pain in my ass?” Skorpion asked as he shoved the car door open and stepped out, managing to both look bored and menacing.

  “Tonight should be easy,” Uilleam said with a shrug, trailing him.

  “Right … because you didn’t come here to fuck with the dude dating your obsession?”

  Annoyance flared to life inside of him, so swift and sure that he wanted to affirm the man’s words—that he wasn’t here because of Karina—but as quickly as the emotion clogged his every thought, it faded.

  He was too involved.

  Too utterly affected by a woman he hardly knew.

  He wasn’t even thinking clearly … yet that thought wasn’t the one that bothered him most.

  If anything, she was the reason he felt alive again.

  And if for only that selfish reason, he wanted to keep her to himself until he found a way to scratch her presence out from beneath his skin. The easiest way to ensure that was to eliminate any distractions not of his own making.

  Including her Orion.

  Unfortunately, his spies hadn’t been able to give him much in the way of information about the man. He kept too low of a profile, and besides a few burner phones he kept on his person, there was no other way of getting in contact with him.

  No social media.

  No work history that Uilleam could find anywhere over the past several years.

  The man didn’t even have a bloody email.

  So for lack of any better options, he’d asked around until he had gotten a name and location so he could attend to this problem in person.

  “I don’t think I’ve been obsessed with anything since I was a boy.”

  In those days, he’d had a fondness for sweets and pastries.

  This feeling he had now … it was something else entirely.

  It was something dangerous and foreign, and though he knew it was in his best interest to leave her be, he wanted her.

  He had hardly cleared the entryway onto the warehouse’s main floor when he spotted Sergei Yurinoff standing in front of a row of tables, each one holding identical M-5 assault rifles, all polished to a shine and awaiting inspection.

  It was hard to miss a man like Sergei, just from the sheer size of him, not to mention the dark tattoo stamped on the side of his neck in black ink. Despite its bold and rather prominent placement, the man had no other visible tattoos.

  Turning ever so slightly, Sergei speared him with a glance, his chin tipping up in greeting before he placed the assault rifle he was holding back in line with the others, wiping his hands across the front of his jeans.

  “I didn’t expect to see you back here so soon,” he said by way of greeting, his accent thick and his stare flat as he watched Uilleam cross the floor toward him.

  He hardly spar
ed Skorpion a glance, though his mercenary had more than seventy-five pounds on every man in the room. But Sergei had never been one to show fear.

  It wasn’t the Russian way, as he would say.

  “Fortunately for you, Sergei, you’re not who I came to see.”

  He cocked a dark brow, wordlessly waiting for an explanation.

  “There’s a man who works for you—Orion. I need to speak with him.”

  This wasn’t the first time Uilleam had made such a request, and judging from the way Sergei’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly, he was also remembering the last time he had come seeking one of his employees.

  “Kanoff was a shit and caused more trouble than he was worth, but Orion does good business.”

  “This won’t be one of those conversations,” Uilleam assured him.

  While he liked putting an end to his problems on a more permanent basis, Uilleam also knew with some certainty that he wasn’t ready to get rid of Orion just yet. Not because he feared any backlash from Sergei—he could find him a dozen good men if needed—but because he wasn’t sure how Karina would take the news of his death.

  She would suspect him first without question, and while he manipulated the truth to fit his own needs more often than not, he never outright lied.

  And should she ever ask, he would tell her what he had done.

  Best to avoid that scenario entirely.

  “He’s back in the stacks,” Sergei said with a nod of his head in the right direction.

  Uilleam nodded before turning to leave, mindful of the way he had become the subject of attention as the other men gazed on.

  While most people in his line of work had their own sort of war room—the place in which most of their business was conducted—Sergei only had a place he affectionately dubbed “the stacks” due to the sheer number of wrapped bundles left inside.

  Though weapons accounted for more than seventy percent of his operation, the other thirty came from four different hair salons across the city, all of which he used to launder his illegitimate gains.

  One side of the room had already been processed, each ten-thousand-dollar bundle of cash neatly stacked. The other had a number of duffel bags, buckets, or whatever else was handy, all filled with loose bills. Some crumpled, some not.

  There were even a number of which covered in what appeared to be blood or some other substance Uilleam really didn’t want to think about.

  Orion sat behind a table wearing latex gloves, alternating between the trio of machines cycling through the cash he stacked in them.

  Even without the warning, he had heard in Sergei’s voice earlier, it was clear the man trusted Orion implicitly. The other man Uilleam had seen in this room had been stripped down to nothing but the watch on his wrist.

  Orion still wore dark jeans, boots, and a cotton gray T-shirt. A testament to how much he was trusted.

  He briefly glanced up when Uilleam entered the room, doing a double take once he realized just who was standing before him.

  His reputation preceded him.

  “Evening. I thought I’d find you here.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, pausing momentarily to wrap a rubber band around the bundle of bills in his hand. “What can I do for you?”

  “What’s your interest in Karina Ashworth?”

  His response was immediate and guarded. “What’s it to you?”

  “My reasons are my own.”

  Orion made a low sound in the back of his throat before he stood, walking around the table. If nothing else, Uilleam admired his fearlessness.

  “Perhaps it would be in your best interest to stay away from her.”

  Had he merely been a lowly soldier and not someone who held Karina’s interest, Uilleam might have admired the completely emotionless mask on the man’s face. As if he didn’t know the danger he was courting the longer he stood there defiant.

  “Yeah? And what are you going to do if I don’t?”

  If he thought the man would walk away if he paid him, Uilleam might have offered him an obscene amount of money to make sure he never showed his face again. But he could see in a glance that that wouldn’t be enough.

  Interesting.

  He’d always liked a challenge.

  “Consider this your warning.”

  Finished with him, Uilleam turned to leave, not caring for the man’s response. He’d said what he had come to say, and now he was done.

  There was nothing else to be discussed.

  But his light chuckle was enough to make him pause for a fraction of a second, his hand on the doorknob.

  “You might want to be careful.”

  Uilleam turned to glance over his shoulder at him, more curious than he was willing to admit. “Sorry?”

  “What do you think, she’s just a conquest or some shit?” His smile was mocking even as he gave a light chuckle. “You’ve no idea who she is or what she’s capable of. Should be me giving you the warning.”

  Orion moved to his feet, boldly staring him down as if they were of equal footing. “Everyone else might fear you, Runehart, but I don’t. Don’t ever fucking threaten me.”

  It was the little things that could dig their way beneath his skin. That resonated within his bones and inspired him to react.

  Violently.

  He would make Orion regret those words.

  Yes, he fucking would.

  18

  Edge

  One week passed in the blink of an eye.

  A week since she had last seen Uilleam and he’d made her an offer she was finding hard to forget. It didn’t matter that she had declined and had every intention of sticking with that answer, she still found herself thinking about him when she shouldn’t.

  Everything about him was a bad idea, she knew, but that didn’t stop her curiosity from running rampant. It didn’t stop her from imagining just what a date with Uilleam would be like.

  Because while one part of him seemed the perfect gentleman—opening doors for her, sending flowers, and saying all the right things when he wanted to—there was the other side of him. A darker side she had only gotten a few glimpses of.

  Which part was pursuing her?

  She understood the allure of what could have been—it was impossible not to feel it. That animal desire to get close to the predator that was both beautiful and dangerous.

  The need to see just how far over the precipice she would lean before she fell.

  It was ridiculous, especially considering how she had even learned of his existence these past several months, but she just couldn’t bring herself to care.

  He was quickly turning into a drug.

  Shutting her laptop screen for the seventh time that night, Karina rubbed her tired eyes, wondering why she was even bothering to try to get any work done when there was only one thing that occupied her thoughts—one person.

  Isla would have called her a hopeless romantic, too blinded by matters of the heart to see reason. And while she might have clucked her tongue at the very idea of falling in love with a man because she didn’t think she was capable of it, she wouldn’t have dismissed Karina’s feelings outright.

  Rather, she would ask why.

  What could she possibly see in a man like Uilleam Runehart? Someone who possessed the very traits she condemned others for.

  It wasn’t because he was attractive—there were more than a few attractive criminals out there to pick from—though that was part of it, there was something else.

  Figuring there was no better time to grab dinner since it was already late, Karina slid off her bed and headed for the kitchen, hunting through the drawer for the number of menus inside. She had almost settled on one when her phone’s soft chimes echoed back in her bedroom.

  The number wasn’t already saved in her phone, but it looked oddly familiar.

  “Hello?”

  “You have a collect call from—” the automated voice cut off as a gruff and very familiar voice came over the line and grunted a name before the robotic
voice started back up again, asking whether she was willing to accept the charges.

  She didn’t even give it a second thought. It only took a few seconds of drumming her nails against her comforter before the call connected.

  “Glad you—”

  “Orion? What the hell are you doing calling me from—”

  “I’ll explain later,” he said quickly, cutting her off before she could ask the most important question. “I need a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  And she would, in fact, give him anything he asked of her. Whenever she had needed someone or help with a particularly difficult assignment, he had always offered his services. Without hesitation and without fear of what might happen to him if anything went wrong.

  She listened, without interruption, to what he needed from her, memorizing the list of tasks before ending the call and walking into her closet to get dressed before leaving her apartment.

  Her first stop was to a drop box on the other side of the city, located inside one of those places that didn’t ask any questions about its renters so long as the monthly fee was paid on time. Inside, she found a small bag filled with fifty-dollar bills.

  More than a few thousand, for sure.

  Her second stop was to a bail bondsman. The process was pretty straightforward, the actual filling out of the paperwork and waiting in the cramped space made it all feel tedious.

  But three hours later, as she waited at the corner for Orion to step out of the building across the street, she didn’t care how long it took for it to happen—she was glad he was out.

  He was still sorting through the plastic bag of his personal effects when the door was opened by a guard, and he walked out. She wasn’t even sure he saw her coming before she was in front of him, throwing her arms around his shoulders.

  “Ready to tell me what you did?”

  “Your new stalker.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He fished out a pack of cigarettes, practically ripping one in half as he placed the stick between his lips. “Sorry, your admirer—the jealous motherfucker.”