Iris. (Den of Mercenaries Book 7) Read online

  All eyes turned to Fang as he stood, his gaze fixed on the screen—not on Grimm, but on the Jackal. He hadn’t spoken besides a brief jerk of his head when Synek entered, but now he sounded strained … confused, almost.

  “You’ve met the Jackal?” Red asked, looking from Fang to the rest of them.

  If they had, none of them had ever mentioned it.

  “No,” Fang said, drawing as close to the wall as physically possible.

  Like he was trying to get a better look at the man they’d hunted for years.

  “He just looks … familiar,” Fang muttered.

  “Then perhaps,” the Kingmaker spoke up, “you can find answers where my mercenaries couldn’t. He’s why you’re here, after all.”

  “Not if he’s responsible for Grimm,” Red said with a shake of his head. “We take care of our own.”

  “They’re not killing him,” the Kingmaker reassured. “He’s to be brought in, but while they’re wrangling him, I need you to bring Belladonna to me.”

  “So not only do you want us to bring in the Jackal,” Synek said, finally looking away from Fang until he reached his handler, “but also bring in the woman he’s protecting. Alive.”

  It was one thing when a target needed to be killed and that would be the end of it. It was something else entirely when they had to fight through the security Belladonna would undoubtedly have and fight the big bastard no one wanted to face.

  It wasn’t fear that had Synek skeptical of this little plan of his but caring about his own damn life.

  This was damn near close to a suicide mission.

  “I trust you can handle yourselves,” the Kingmaker said with a shrug. “After all, there are nine of you.”

  “Eight,” Nix said without looking up from his phone.

  Only one person in the room could challenge the Kingmaker so blatantly without even bothering to meet the man’s gaze—his own brother.

  “I assume you were under the impression that I was asking for opinions? Let me clarify, I’m not.”

  Nix still didn’t look up as he spoke. “I said what I said.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, brother, she’s as much of a mercenary as the rest of them. Her signature lines the bottom of my contract. I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you what that means.”

  Synek looked from the Kingmaker to Nix, then finally at the chair where the person they were speaking about should have been sitting if she wasn’t out with Iris. He could already imagine what she would have said if she were here.

  There was no doubt in his mind that she wouldn’t have turned down the mission just because it might be difficult.

  She was like Iris in that way.

  “If we’re all going to protect our favorites—” The Kingmaker started but didn’t get to finish before Nix interrupted.

  “I’m protecting my wife, and if you’d recall, the last time she crossed paths with the Jackal, she watched you nearly die. I’m not allowing you to put her in harm’s way because you want to play games with your ex-lover.”

  “Curious that I was the one shot six times that day, yet not a hair on her pretty little head was disturbed. I imagine if the Jackal had had her in his sights, she wouldn’t be sitting here for you to argue over.”

  “If you—”

  “Understand me, brother, this isn’t a favor you’re providing me. There is no negotiation here. No discussion. She goes. It’s not personal, it’s business. You know that.”

  “Everything about this is personal,” Nix returned. “It has been from the very beginning. I’m not going to risk her again for whatever the hell you have going on with Belladonna. Twice was enough.”

  The first time had been when she walked away from him—though Synek didn’t know the details why—and the second had been when Elias Harrington attempted to drown her in a giant vat of water.

  Synek had no idea what he would have done in either situation. Hell, he didn’t want Iris near the danger now, and if she wasn’t so bloody stubborn, he would have told her to let him handle it.

  But the likelihood of her sitting this out simply because he asked her to was slim—not because she didn’t trust that he could handle it, but because she wanted to be the one to handle it.

  He couldn’t fault her for that.

  “Then perhaps you’d like to be the one to tell her she can’t do her job because you’ve decided she shouldn’t?”

  Synek coughed to conceal a laugh. He’d love to be in the room for that conversation.

  “Will do.” Nix said before he went back to his newspaper.

  “I don’t care what it takes,” the Kingmaker continued. “If you see an opportunity to bring her in, take her, by any means necessary, but understand me when I say she is not to be harmed in any way.”

  “Sounds a bit counterproductive, doesn’t it?” Synek asked, scratching his brow. “That’s not ‘by any means.’”

  “You won’t need to concern yourself with that, considering your job is as it’s always been—find Grimm. The rest of you know what you have to do.”

  With that being said, the meeting was over.

  “Syn.”

  Synek held back as the others filed out of the room, leaving him alone with not just the Kingmaker, but Nix as well, whose bad mood hadn’t lifted since his conversation with his brother about his wife.

  “Z’s files,” the Kingmaker said, pocketing his phone. “I need you to search through them for anything on Grimm or what he might have been working on in the months prior to Grimm going missing.”

  “I already have—the whole lot of us have. There’s nothing there.”

  He, more than any of the other mercenaries, had pored over those files, searching for any clue as to Grimm’s whereabouts.

  Synek was the one responsible for bringing him home. He was given the task nearly two weeks to the day that they all realized Grimm wasn’t coming back.

  He could still remember the surprise he felt that day, sitting in his flat back in London, twirling a blade between his fingers to pass the time.

  Boredom was as familiar to him as his own name, and in those days, he’d been a touch more destructive whenever he fell into melancholy.

  The last thing he had expected while thinking about what kind of bad shit he could get into for the night was the knock on his front door. At first, he had smiled, thinking the trouble had come to him and made his job a hell of a lot easier, but instead, the Kingmaker had stood across from him with a grave expression.

  “Grimm is gone,” were the first words out of his mouth.

  He hadn’t asked if he was allowed to come in or even waited for an invitation. He had walked right in after dropping that bombshell, and for a moment, Synek had just stood there.

  There were two things he’d known then with absolute certainty.

  Number one: There was no better mercenary than Grimm. They were all good at what they did, their specialties setting them apart from the other killers of the world, but Grimm was in a league of his own.

  And though Synek had always thought of himself without equal, Grimm had even managed to teach him a few fundamentals when it came to their work.

  Even as the news came from the Kingmaker himself, he still hadn’t believed it.

  Which brought him to his second thought.

  The Kingmaker didn’t make personal visits.

  Synek could count on one hand the number of times he had ever received an in-person visit from the man, and that included the first time they met. Usually, they all reported to the other handler in the Den, Z.

  “Who took him?” Synek had asked, closing his door with a push of his hand before turning to face the other man occupying the lone chair that wasn’t near a window.

  “That I don’t know.”

  That fact seemed to bother the man most.

  There wasn’t anything the Kingmaker didn’t know or couldn’t find out. He had someone for everything, and if there was an organization out there of any significance, he kne
w every person in it—especially those at the top.

  Which was the only reasonable explanation for what had happened to Grimm. There was no lone individual who could take the man on and actually succeed.

  Or, at least, that was what Synek had thought in those early days when he didn’t know any better.

  Before he knew the Jackal’s name.

  But in that first year of Grimm’s absence, they had all learned the man’s name responsible for his disappearance. A man none of them had seen in person.

  The Jackal had become something of a myth and a legend—a nightmare people feared as much as they feared the Kingmaker’s mercenaries.

  That had only made their desire to get to the man all the more pressing.

  Synek especially.

  He’d met real boogeymen, and he refused to believe the Jackal was one of them. If he bled like the rest of them, there was nothing to fear.

  Things had changed since then.

  The Jackal had managed to get close to the Den—not just once but twice. The first time, he’d only just taken Grimm and held him captive. The second … he’d nearly cost the Kingmaker his life.

  To say they wanted the Jackal’s head on a sterling silver plate was a fucking understatement.

  “We searched through everything there was,” Synek said, his mind drifting back to the present.

  Files. Receipts. Trying to track Grimm’s footprint digitally.

  For weeks, Synek had searched for evidence of what he had been doing for that last job, but whatever job it was, the secret had remained between him and Z. And considering Z hadn’t come back from that job either, no one would ever know until one or the other was found.

  Since Z was dead, as the Kingmaker had announced nearly three years ago now, the secret was left solely to Grimm.

  “Then look again. Z was nothing if not analytical. It might not have been anything glaringly obvious, but it’s there. Whatever it is.” The Kingmaker gaze went unfocused as if he was thinking of a memory. “Have one of Nix’s Romanians assist you. A pair of fresh eyes couldn’t hurt.”

  Yeah, no. Indebted or not, Synek didn’t want to make it a habit of asking for help.

  “I’ll get right on that.”

  Synek turned, ready to head out the door again, but for the second time, the Kingmaker stopped him in his tracks.

  “Iris is her name, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t mean to tense at the man’s words—it wasn’t as if he didn’t already know that the Kingmaker knew of her and would inevitably ask about her—but even still, he didn’t like the idea that the man was asking questions about her.

  Anyone who fell into the Kingmaker’s sights could be considered prey to him.

  “What about her?”

  “What exactly is her business with the governor?”

  Synek shrugged as he tucked his hands into his pockets. “Couldn’t say. Her business is her own. Yours is yours. Can’t say you’ve told me what your business with Spader is either, could I?”

  If he didn’t know the man as well as he did, he might have mistaken the smile on his face as some form of acquiescence, but Synek wasn’t so easily fooled.

  The Kingmaker wasn’t pleased, but he’d made a career out of pissing people off, so he wasn’t worried about it now.

  “We have an arrangement, you and I,” the Kingmaker said. “Let’s not forget it.”

  Unlike the other mercenaries of the Den, Synek’s contract wasn’t as black and white.

  First, he had never officially signed one. Though he had always thought of that day he’d run with Winter from the Wraiths as the day he signed his life away, it hadn’t been that way in the traditional sense.

  Instead of a certain amount of years he had to work for the man, their deal was that, in exchange for Synek’s loyalty and work, Winter wouldn’t just be kept safe, but she would also be given every chance to live a normal life.

  A family in New Mexico had raised her as their own for years and made sure she completed her education. She could have even attended college, but she ultimately chose a life in the Den.

  Sometimes, he wondered whether that was his fault. Whether he should have kept her more distant from this life, so she wouldn’t have decided to follow him.

  But whether she was a part of the Den—even unofficially, beforehand—the Kingmaker had been a man of his word. No one had ever come looking for Winter nor did any harm come her way.

  For that, he could never repay that debt.

  “Yeah, all right,” Synek said with another shrug. “Not that it matters, but I’m fully capable of getting everyone what they want so long as you follow Belladonna’s rule for you anyway.”

  The man clearly didn’t want to be reminded of Belladonna’s rules for him. Here was someone who routinely set the rules, yet now he was expected to follow them.

  Synek wasn’t surprised at all that he was figuring out a way to bend them.

  “Work quickly,” the Kingmaker said instead of issuing a threat that wouldn’t have bothered him anyway. “We’re running out of time.”

  They were, judging from that video.

  Which meant there wouldn’t be enough time to do what Iris really wanted—embarrassment and a public trial—but even if he couldn’t get her that, Synek would get her the rest.

  No matter the cost.

  When Calavera said they were shopping for more than just tonight, Iris assumed they would be at the boutique for the duration, but instead, they’d gone to three different stores until she had a wardrobe that she wasn’t sure would fit inside the Maserati, and an empty envelope that she only felt moderately bad about.

  She’d taken care of herself for years now, and even when her life was normal and her father was home, Iris had always been rather independent. She liked it that way. There was a certain freedom in being able to take care of herself, which had ultimately helped her survive once Marvin was gone.

  “Don’t worry about Winter,” Calavera said as she drove them toward a salon. “She’ll come around. They can just be a bit … protective of each other. She means well even though it doesn’t seem like it.”

  Iris figured as much, but that didn’t make it any easier.

  Synek had said as much too, that his relationship with Winter was, for lack of a better word, complicated. She couldn’t argue with that.

  Considering what they both had been through and the event that ultimately brought them together, she would be more surprised if they weren’t as close as they were, but a small part of her envied that sort of bond.

  A bigger part of her was glad that Synek had had someone to help keep him level. If he hadn’t, maybe they wouldn’t be here now, but the only person she’d had was Rosalie, and that relationship, or lack thereof, had been as problematic as the reason she’d gone to the Wraiths in the first place.

  “It’s fine,” Iris found herself saying, reaching up smooth her fingers over the length of hair covering her shoulder. “I understand.” And she did even if she didn’t like it.

  “Oh, it’s not about that,” Calavera said in a tone that made Iris glance in her direction.

  “No?”

  “For a while, Winter had a bit of a thing for Syn.”

  Iris bit the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from responding. It made a lot of sense, and a part of her had wondered whether they had been a thing, but she’d dismissed the idea once she saw how in love Winter seemed to be with the big Romanian.

  But judging from the way she phrased it, Iris thought she had an idea of what happened. “Syn probably wouldn’t want you telling me this.”

  Never mind the fact that he hadn’t told her himself whether something had happened between him and Winter, but Iris didn’t think she wanted to know.

  “Syn has always been a little intense when it came to Winter. He wanted to protect her from everything and refused to even let her come around us mercenaries for a while. And when she started doing jobs with the Den? He made sure she was the highest paid hacker
there was.”

  Would her skin be green if she peeked down at her arm?

  “But you know what? As much as she used to look at him as if the sun rose and fell over his head, she doesn’t look at him like that anymore. Why? Because she has her guy. And after Syn saw that—though there were a couple of attempts to kill him—he accepted it.” Calavera was smiling when she looked at her now. “Syn has only ever given a shit about two people in the entire world—that’s Winter and you. Winter’s a little blind right now, but trust me, she’ll see what I do soon enough.”

  Somehow, despite the start, that had been exactly what Iris wanted to hear even if some details surprised her.

  It did, however, make her wonder how the others saw them and whether Synek cared. These were, for all intents and purposes, his closest friends. The people he called on when he needed someone.

  And now that she was with him—actually with him as more than just two people trying to solve a problem—she wanted them to like her as well.

  As they arrived at the salon with the frosted glass doors and overhanging sign with the owner’s name scrawled across the top, Iris was lost in her thoughts, trying to remember the last time she’d wanted to belong somewhere.

  She hadn’t ever really been a part of the Wraiths, and not just because she’d been more focused on getting her father out of prison. She had never truly felt like one of them. The things they revered had always rubbed her the wrong way, and for that reason, she always felt like the odd man out. One foot in, and one foot out.

  “Calavera!” another woman called, just as excited as Joanne had been, as they entered the salon.

  “Is there anyone you don’t know in this city?” Iris whispered.

  “Give it time,” she said with a light laugh. “You’ll know them all too.”

  Once she hugged the other woman briefly, Calavera said louder for her to hear, “We’re running late, Rachel. Give her—”

  “Something that’s unforgettable,” Iris finished for her.

  The woman was already spinning for her chair as Calavera smiled with a nod, but it wasn’t the fundraiser Iris was thinking of.

  She wanted to be unforgettable for Synek.

  Chapter 4