Crooks & Kings: A Wild Bunch Novel Read online

  Unless it was about someone and not something.

  A memory of the rooftop when she’d shared her grief with him popped into her head. He had been understanding about her loss, more so than anyone she had ever met.

  At the time, she had been sure he had felt loss too.

  Now, she wondered just who he’d lost.

  A rapid set of staccato beeps sounded, making Mariya look at Tăcut in confusion, but it was Thanatos who offered an explanation.

  “Looks like the gang is back.”

  She didn’t hesitate to follow him out of the room and back down to the main floor, but whereas she had felt anxious about him taking so long, now she felt anxious because he was back.

  By the time she got downstairs, Christophe was inside, carrying a box he set on the kitchen island as he spoke rapid Romanian to Invictus.

  She searched for any sign of injury on him or Invictus, but they looked as they had before they left.

  “Eventful day?” Thanatos asked.

  “We met her Russian,” Invictus responded, making her heart sink in her chest. “He was a cunt.”

  Mariya cringed, knowing this didn’t bode well. “What happened?”

  Christophe shrugged, folding his arms across his chest. “I introduced myself, but he didn’t like that very much.”

  “What—”

  “He did the thing,” Invictus cut in, and even as dry as he sounded, she detected a hint of humor in his voice.

  Mariya looked back and forth between them, even as Christophe rolled his eyes. “What thing?”

  “His catchphrase,” Invictus went on.

  “He has a catchphrase?”

  Thanatos’ smile grew as he dropped down on the arm of the couch. “I’d bet money he used it on her too.”

  Now, she was really confused. “Used what on me?”

  Thanatos looked over at Fang, giving a shake of his head. “Go on and tell her. Inquiring minds want to know.”

  “Fuck off, Than,” he replied, but there was no heat behind the words. In fact, he looked rather amused despite the straight face he tried to keep.

  Even Tăcut was smiling.

  “Will someone explain, please.”

  Invictus finally did. “When he introduces himself, it’s always the same thing. ‘Call me Fang,’ he says. Half the time, no one believes what he says the first time around, so they repeat it back. Every single time, he’ll grin like a fucking idiot to show off that metal in his mouth.”

  Thanatos was shaking with suppressed laughter as he added, “And that’s not even how he got the name.”

  “No?” she asked, genuinely curious, her earlier worry about what she didn’t know forgotten for the moment, realizing this was exactly what he had done when he’d told her to call him Fang. She’d also thought it was because of the silver that he’d earned the name. “How did he get it?”

  “He bit out a chunk of a man’s throat back in Constanța when he was twelve. Grisly business.”

  Mariya put a hand up to her own throat, trying to imagine a much smaller Christophe latched onto someone’s throat hard enough that—she cringed at just the thought.

  “You done yet?” he asked Thanatos. “‘Cause I have shit to do.”

  “Go on, then. Don’t keep us in suspense.”

  “Feliks wasn’t alone,” Christophe went on, eyes cutting to her. “Alexey was with him.”

  “That’s not possible,” Mariya denied. “He’s—”

  “When was the last time you spoke to your sister?”

  “Not since that night,” she said softly, knowing he would know which one she meant.

  He studied her a moment before he came over to her, grabbing her hand to lead her out of the room. Thanatos complained, but Christophe didn’t stop, and Invictus began talking to recapture his attention.

  Once they were in the room alone, Christophe said, “We can find out when he woke up later, but for now, I need to know what Feliks is looking for. It’s not just for you—if it was, he wouldn’t have come back this morning after you weren’t there last night. Whatever it is, he wants it more than he wants you.”

  Swallowing, Mariya reached into her pocket and pulled out the USB, feeling a bit nervous as she passed it over to him. She’d kept this on her every day for the past five months, and this was the first time she had ever shown it to another person let alone hand it over.

  “It’s my insurance policy,” she said.

  Mariya might have been detached from the life her family led, but Temuri hadn’t always kept his work away from home as Inna had always wanted.

  Oftentimes, she would find him in his office, working—which was mostly spent behind a desk going over contracts and agreements she didn’t understand—but once, during one of his more somber moods, he had thought to show her something new.

  She had always noticed the set of old filing cabinets in his office, but without a key, she had never been able to peek inside and sate her curiosity.

  “Do you want to see how I stay on top?” he had asked her that night, gesturing for her to come to him from her position on the floor where she had been doing homework.

  It was her curiosity, Inna had always said, that would get her in trouble. But this was her father, and he offered to show her.

  How could she refuse?

  When he removed the key from his pocket and unlocked the cabinet, she had waited with bated breath, ready to see whatever he had hidden inside.

  Was it a gun?

  Bloody clothing?

  Something else unsavory?

  A part of her was terrified at whatever secrets he had been readying to show her, but the other, much larger, side of her was desperate to know.

  Then she had been more fascinated by his world before she’d grown to despise it.

  All the excitement inside her died, however, when she came to see only a thickly packed folder.

  “How can papers help you?” she asked, trying to hide her disappointment while gazing up at him with all the confusion of an eleven-year-old girl.

  “They’re my insurance policy,” he had said proudly, rifling through a few before he pulled two sheets from it.

  One was folded neatly down the middle, and the other had faded with age. Now that he was holding it, she could see a name and number stamped on them.

  “What’s an insurance policy?” she asked, not sure she understood.

  She knew they had insurance on their cars, and even on their house, but she doubted this was what he meant.

  “A man like me has enemies,” he said with a tap of his index finger against the folder. “To ensure they do not act against me or come after the things I love most, I make sure I have something that prevents them from doing so.”

  “Like what?” she had asked, eager to learn.

  He had seemed pleased she wanted to know and had even spent the better part of two hours going through one of the files with her, and explaining just why, if she were ever in trouble, this might come in handy.

  He couldn’t have known how right he was.

  “I’m assuming,” Christophe said, drawing her back to the present, “it was because of this he hadn't shown his face here before, since he obviously knew where you stayed?”

  Mariya nodded, though she wasn’t any more sure than he was. “It has a conversation between him and the man he contracted to kill my father.”

  Christophe blinked in surprise. “How’d you manage that?”

  Feeling the heat rushing to her face, she said, “I was watching an episode of that police procedural—I can’t remember the name— and that’s what gave me the idea. It only cost a couple of hundred dollars to get the bug for his phone. I didn’t think I’d actually get anything from it since he was always so careful.” She shrugged, feeling a bit proud. “But I did.”

  Originally, her intent had been to find something, anything, incriminating she could use against him. The last thing she had ever expected to learn about was his involvement with her father’s death. />
  She still wasn’t sure who the man on the other line had been. She only cared about the words that left Feliks’ mouth.

  How callous and confident he’d sounded as he spoke of the details, not knowing that eventually, she would hear every word.

  It was the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her.

  “I kept it so he would stay away from me, but now that Alexey is awake, I can just go to him. He’ll believe me when I show him this.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this the night before?” he asked.

  She wanted to lie and say she didn’t think it would be needed—even she knew how crazy that sounded—but she couldn’t think of a reason she hadn’t.

  Whatever he saw in her expression made him glance down at the thumb drive in his hand. “Getting to your grandfather shouldn’t be a problem, even with Feliks standing in our way.”

  “But if they’re together, there’s no way I can show him without Feliks intervening in some way.”

  “Let me take care of that. Don’t worry yourself.”

  She wanted to believe he could. She wanted to believe he could do anything, but a part of her still doubted despite how good his words sounded.

  As much as she wanted to trust he could do this for her, Christophe could see she still doubted him.

  He knew firsthand how hard it was to put faith in another human being, to trust your very life with someone you’d only known for a short time.

  Even Nix, who had done more for him than anyone, hadn’t completely won him over until several months after he’d met the man.

  Yet it bothered him that Mariya clearly didn’t.

  She couldn’t, not if she was hiding things from him.

  Though, wasn’t he doing the same?

  Not only had he put her up in a guest room, but he still hadn’t mentioned a word of Aidra to her. Something he still didn’t have a mind to do.

  He understood her reasoning—she was scared her USB would fall into the wrong hands, and all the running she’d been doing would have been for nothing.

  He was … he didn’t know what the fuck he was.

  He left her under the guise of needing to talk to Tăcut, but instead, he walked to the other end of the loft, his heart thumping with every step.

  Christophe wasn’t sure what he would find once he had his hand on the door and finally pushed it open.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as he was assuming.

  Maybe before they’d left for California, Aidra had taken it upon herself to clean up his shit as she tended to do when days passed with him leaving it as it was.

  But as he got his first look at a room he hadn’t seen in more than six months, he wasn’t that lucky.

  It almost felt like a time capsule as he peered inside. No one had stepped foot inside since he’d left.

  There were a set of knives on the table across from his bed—a bed in which his sheets were twisted and hanging off the end.

  But he didn’t care about the knives. Hell, he wished there were only the knives. Instead, the peek of lace from beneath the cover, a bra resting on top of a clothes hamper in the corner.

  A pair of sunglasses.

  A dress hanging by the door.

  A laptop with stickers of her favorite musicians.

  A jacket she had refused to throw out because it meant everything to her despite the tear along the back.

  She was everywhere. He could almost smell the delicate fragrance she’d loved and worn every chance she got.

  It still hurt to see the evidence of her mortality, but it didn’t send him spiraling like he’d expected. He wasn’t quite numb—the pain was still there, but as he ventured further into his old room, he also knew his mourning was over.

  Very slowly, he began picking up the pieces of his old life.

  Chapter 12

  July 27, 2017

  Walking into the kitchen early the next morning, Mariya only caught the tail end of the conversation Fang was having with Tăcut, and only one word stood out.

  “Why would you need a hacker?” she asked, accepting the chair Christophe pulled out for her. “I can tell you anything you want to know.”

  “It’s not what you know that I need,” he responded, reading something on his phone. “It’s what you don’t. We need access to the shit Feliks doesn’t want anyone knowing. And if it’s stored electronically, a hacker can get to it.”

  She knew only one thing he was hiding—the last little detail she hadn’t bothered to share with Christophe yet—but depending on what his hacker could do, maybe they wouldn’t need it.

  “Okay, so where do you even find a hacker?” she asked.

  To this, Christophe shot Tăcut a look full of meaning she didn’t understand. “Apparently, we already have one. We’re just waiting for her to arrive.”

  Tăcut merely looked unbothered.

  Over the next hour, they ate and made idle conversation, Mariya mostly listening to them go back and forth as she watched on in amusement.

  Christophe was loosening up again, his odd behavior having changed over the course of their days together.

  It could have been that he was nervous about introducing her to them. She knew how much they meant to him, and maybe he had worried what they would think of her.

  Mariya knew she did.

  Here she was, asking for help while offering nothing in return, but they didn’t seem particularly bothered by her presence—though even they acted a bit strange too, like the first day she arrived—and she thought they liked her enough, considering everything they were doing for her.

  Thanatos was just launching into a tale of when he’d first learned how to properly wield a knife when a knock sounded at the door.

  First looking at Christophe then at the door, Mariya didn’t know what to expect. She’d never met a hacker, and the one her sister had dated before she’d met and married Akim, she’d only ever heard of what he could do, but he wasn’t around long enough for her to learn more.

  As Tăcut crossed the floor and opened the door, the last thing she expected was the person who walked through the door.

  Standing in a pair of white Doc Martens with red paint splattered across them was a girl who couldn’t be more than eighteen, if that. Bright silver-dyed hair hung down her back in two thick braids, and there were enough earrings in her ear that they sparkled when she turned and smiled up at Tăcut.

  “Hey, big guy.”

  Genuine affection colored her words, enough that Mariya glanced in Christophe’s direction to see if his expression would give anything away about the two of them, but his face was a blank canvas.

  “I totally wasn’t expecting to meet any of you since Tăcut is keeping me his dirty little secret.”

  She had been with them for a little more than a week now and had seen nearly as much of Tăcut as she did of Christophe, but not once in the entire time she’d been there had she ever seen the man look as shocked as he did at that moment, even as his cheeks turned an interesting shade of pink.

  “I’m kidding,” she said, laughing at his expression. “Mostly. So let me guess,” she added, looking at Christophe. “Fang, right? Yeah, Tăcut’s told me a lot about you—Calavera too. She ranked you at like a nine. Don’t worry, though, only Nix gets a ten from her, but I’d say you’re more like an eight? Eight and a half, maybe? It’s not your fault, though—Tăcut has these cheekbones and all.”

  A startled laugh left Mariya before she slapped a hand over her mouth at the glare Christophe shot her. She might not have known who Calavera was, but she definitely liked this hacker.

  “Thanatos and Invictus—the two halves of a whole? Is it really true you two share everything?”

  Tăcut snapped his fingers in front of her face, the quickest way to grab her attention without saying her name. Once she looked at him, he shook his head.

  “What?” she asked innocently. “I only meant the interchanging masks.”

  “Introductions are over, no?” Fang step
ped in, sounding bored. “Because I have a job for you, and talking isn’t required.”

  That quickly, she lost her smile as her eyes narrowed. “Did you know I’ve been hacking government databases since I was twelve? If I could do that then, imagine what I can do now while I’m inspired to see how much money you have tucked away in accounts you think no one knows about.”

  She might have only been five-foot-five on a good day, but it was clear whoever this girl was, she wasn’t going to let anyone bully her.

  “And no, dipshit, introductions aren’t over.” The girl turned away from him to turn gray eyes on Mariya before her face split into a grin, as though she hadn’t just threatened someone more than twice her size. “I’m Winter. I’m ready to get to work.”

  Mariya liked her already.

  When Christophe mentioned he needed a hacker, he’d been thinking of one Nix had used before on a job, not whoever the hell this was Tăcut had suggested.

  She was the last person he’d ever expect Tăcut to call on, and after only a few minutes in her presence, he didn’t know whether to be annoyed by her or charmed as Tăcut seemed to be.

  This was the same Tăcut who wasn’t charmed by anything or anyone and had a rather grim outlook in general, but as he stood next to the girl who was smiling up at him like he was the greatest thing in the world, he looked like a different man.

  Just what the hell had happened after he’d left?

  Winter took up residence in Tăcut’s favorite chair, folding her legs beneath her as she then pulled out a large laptop and opened it up.

  “So Russian Bratva, huh?” she asked, looking over at Mariya—the girl had no filter at all, it seemed. “I know somebody who has the stars on his chest, so I totally know what it means,” she added with a tilt of her head to the tattoo Mariya was unsuccessfully hiding.

  Christophe couldn’t shake the need to find a good plastic surgeon who could remove the fucking thing so she wouldn’t have to be self-conscious about it. And the meaning behind it didn’t sit well with him either.

  But one thing was for damn sure, she wouldn’t be his possession for much longer.