Nix. (Den of Mercenaries Book 3) (25 page)

It wasn’t because the room ever stayed that way. Sure, in the beginning there was nothing but the voices to keep you company when you were inside since it was pitch black and soundproof.

It was never the place one wanted to stay for long lest the demons trapped in their heads came rushing back to suffocate them.

After the silence came blaring, high-pitched noise that was loud enough to create an instant headache. Then came the lights that flashed so bright one’s pupils dilated painfully, and only after long, agony filled seconds did it all start over again, creating a vicious cycle of discomfort that broke even the strongest of people down.

Most that came to this place seeking the benefits were already broken to a point that nothing could have been worse than what they had already experienced—and ultimately, the Silent Room had helped to center them instead.

There had been one, Luna remembered vividly, that hadn’t responded well to the room. They hadn’t known at the time, because he had been rather calm when it was time for his release, but the second the door was opened, he attacked with a vengeance, wounding seven before he was finally tranquilized.

His demons didn’t just find him in the dark—they were constantly winding him up.

Syn, his name was.

“Recovering,” Zachariah answered as they rounded the corner toward his office. “I thought you would have known.”

She hadn’t seen much of Uilleam in the weeks since the shooting. Kit was being paranoid, explaining that whoever had come after Uilleam could have been targeting his family, and he wanted to keep her safe.

If it were up to him, he would have kept her locked away in his safe house instead of at the Den.

Thankfully, Zachariah had called with an assignment for her, and only after he explained that it was merely a request to find someone and nothing more, he agreed that she could do it—which both amused and frustrated her.

Despite who she was married to, she wanted to keep the two separate. Though her relationship to Uilleam was never spoken about, Kit wouldn’t hide who he was to her should he ever come to the compound.

And while she was never, and could never, be ashamed of him, Luna still wanted to be more than just the Facilitator’s wife.

Once they reached Zachariah’s office, he allowed her to go ahead of him before he came in behind, closing the door and setting the alarm, as he always did when he brought someone into his office—his way of preventing leaks.

Whether they talked amongst themselves was one thing, but when he handed out assignments, Zachariah made sure it was only to the one listed on the contract.

“I have a job for you,” he said as he handed her a familiar manila folder, then sticking a thumb drive into the port in his desk.

Almost immediately, a projector flickered on, and the very documents Luna was reading with the folder were now displayed on the wall.

“The client’s name is Belladonna.”

“That’s a great name,” Luna muttered to herself, glancing over the woman’s profile.

A woman with an affliction for using the drug belladonna to kill those that stood in her way.

Luna liked her already.

But there was little more information offered about the woman. Usually, the clients were thoroughly vetted and their histories could be traced back decades.

Luna’s curiosity was piqued.

“What’s the assignment?” she found herself asking, the second time within two months.

“She’s looking for someone—Andrei Kanekov. Our intelligence tells us he hasn’t been on the grid financially for the last four years, but his face has popped up within a few databases. Your job is to find him.”

“Sounds easy enough.”

And it did, but Luna was still a little curious about the woman who only seemed to have a name and an affinity for poisons.

* * *

S
itting
in the lobby of the building where she was meant to wait for Belladonna, Luna couldn’t help looking around the place and the sheer beauty of it.

Her offices were mostly steel and glass, with the decors in shades of gray and white. Even the floors were made of a white marble with veins of gray.

It was the click of heels that had Luna looking up at the woman walking toward her, a pair that she wouldn’t have thought possible to walk in until she saw it.

Unlike the rest of the women in the office, she wasn’t wearing bright, fun colors, instead a black pencil skirt, and a sheer and sleeveless blouse that was nearly as dark as her skirt.

Wavy brown hair was bound in an elegant chignon at the nape of her neck, pearl earrings adorning her ears.

“Calavera,” she greeted with a friendly, though secretive smile. “A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance—I’ve heard great things.”

Luna wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. “Belladonna?”

She nodded. “As good a name as any, I suppose. Please, let’s speak in my office.”

Her office was located one floor up, only accessed by a private elevator hidden inside a storage closet.

“I appreciate your enduring my security measures, but you can understand my discretion as an employee of the Kingmaker’s.”

“Sure.”

Over the years, she had seen a great many things when it came to the individuals that sought the aid of Uilleam. They all had peculiar habits, especially when it came to avoiding unwanted attention.

Though this was far more elaborate than anything she had seen thus far, she wasn’t surprised by it.

Belladonna’s office was blindingly white, from the marble flooring, to the massive desk, and even the vase of roses set on top, but curiously, there was a blue rose nestled in the center of the bouquet.

“I understand that you need me to find someone,” Luna said as she took a seat, crossing her legs as the woman mirrored her actions.

“That will come in time, but for now, I would like to get to know you first. Tell me, Calavera, how did you manage to catch the attention of both Runehart brothers?”

Belladonna had a pleasant sort of accent, one that spoke of a life having grown up in the upper echelon of British society. It had crisp, refined edges, while still flowing pleasantly.

It almost felt like talking to royalty.

“I don’t have their
attention
, as you put it. I work for one, and the other—”

“You’re sleeping with him, are you not?”

Her tone hadn’t changed from simple curiosity, but Luna sat up a little straighter. “Tell me about the assignment.”

Belladonna still looked unbothered. “The man I’m looking for is an expert at making people disappear,” she explained. “Six months ago, he was tasked with relocating a man by the name of Roger Tillman. I’ve asked for your services in bringing him to me. I’ve taken the liberty in preparing a file for your perusal.”

Luna accepted it, though her eyes remained on her new employer. “Is there a timeline you would like me to stick to?”

“I’m sure you’ll find him in no time at all. Three days should be plenty of time.”

Luna wasn’t so sure, but she couldn’t demand more time before she had even started. “Understood.”

“And just to make sure I understand correctly, your role as mercenary and lover aren’t mutually exclusive, yes? I value my privacy, Calavera, and I can’t have it compromised because you like to share with your bedfellow.”

Luna ground her teeth. Though she hadn’t been on a great many assignments since they had begun giving them to her, there had only been one other occasion when someone brought up her connection to both Uilleam and Kit.

She wanted to tell them that she was capable of separating the two, but she didn’t bother—she doubted they would care.

And it would be far easier to show them.

“I’ll see it done.”

* * *

“
Y
our girl’s a fucking ghost
,” Semyon said some time later, pushing away from the screens he’d been scanning for the last three hours.

Despite the long hours, Kit had spent the time catching up on emails and going through proposals while he waited. And with Luna gone to the Den, he only had time on his hands.

Closing his screen back out, Kit pocketed his phone, getting to his feet to get closer to the screens and what information Semyon had found—or lack thereof as it were.

“A ghost is about what I expected, Semyon,” Kit returned as tried to make sense of what he was seeing. “It means my brother did his part.”

“Nah,” Semyon said with a shake of his head. “I’ve seen his level of scrubbing and I can still find traces, but with her, there’s nothing—literally. Whoever he hired didn’t just scrub, he made it so that she doesn’t exist.”

The suspicion that had nagged on him since that night in bed with Luna only grew worse. No, it didn’t make sense for Uilleam to go through that much trouble.

But because he had, once again, Kit was asking himself: who was Luna Santiago?

Kit no longer believed she was just a girl Uilleam had stumbled upon, but not knowing what answers awaited him, he didn’t think it best to go to Luna directly—but rather in a way that didn’t inspire suspicion.

After all, she held the key to the whole mystery whether she knew it or not.

Tugging an envelope full of cash out of his breast pocket, Kit set it down next to Semyon’s keyboard. “I’m keeping you on retainer until I finish this—I may need your expertise.”

Semyon kicked his legs up, emptying the contents on the envelope with little care as he fanned through the hundred-dollar bills there. “Whatever you need, Nix.”

Exiting, Kit was almost back to his car when his phone rang. “Nix.”

“Hello, Nix.”

The man spoke with a marked accent, one that made Kit frown. He also spoke with a familiarity that Kit didn’t understand. “Do I know you?”

“You don’t,” the other man said. “But I’m sure you want to.”

Hitting the button on the key fob to unlock his car, Kit asked, “Why is that?”

His answer was immediate. “I tried to have your brother killed.”

D
roplets of sweat
rolled down the back of Kit’s neck as dirt plumed in front of the jeep speeding down the hill toward the row of houses at the bottom. Plush beaches had long given way to poverty-stricken areas where children played in the streets as mothers hung clothes on lines, their eyes quickly drifting to him as he made his way further into the little city.

It was a close knit community, he knew, and any outsider was frowned upon.

Once he reached the green-painted building at the foot of the hill where the windows were covered with cardboard, and two men playing with dice abandoned their game the moment he stopped, Kit took one quick look around, assessing his surroundings.

Fortunately for him, his destination happened to be a neutral place between two rivaling cartels, which meant he would be left relatively unbothered during his visit. His intentions would have been a bit harder had one of them intercept him, but not impossible.

Paying the driver, he made sure to reiterate that he would need to remain there, and should he, there would be more money waiting for him on Kit’s return. The driver, not much older than nineteen, if he had to guess, quickly shook his head.

As Kit ventured inside the building, he took in the peeling walls, the lone television in one corner of the room, three men of varying sizes seated around it as they watched a football match. With beers in hand, they barely spared him a glance before they were engulfed in the game once more. On the other side of the narrow room was an ancient looking computer that looked like it hadn’t run properly in several years.

The screen was dimly lit, as though the lightbulb inside it was slowly dying, but it was on, and that had been enough for Semyon to find this place for him.

A place that Luna didn’t know he had bothered to search for.

Already, so early in their marriage, he was keeping secrets, but he didn’t want to offer her false hope. Already, he could tell that the stories of her life back home were no longer the reality for her family.

He wasn’t seeing the house with the pool, or the dog with the snow-white fur that had done more for her than her family had when she was taken.

From what he could tell, he found nothing of her family except for the man he had come to see—a man that wasn’t sitting around watching the telly.

Venturing up the stairs, Kit removed his sunglasses, hooking them through his shirt as he stopped at the top, surveying the rooms that were left open for scrutiny.

But it was the pregnant woman, partially naked, sitting in front of a fan that had to only be blowing slightly cooler air considering the temperature that Kit directed his attention.

Tendrils of hair clung to her damp forehead as she turned her head in his direction, blurry eyes trying to fix on him.

“Juan Santiago,” Kit said as he drew closer, waiting until he was sure he had her attention. “Where is he?”

Barely raising her arm, she pointed down the hall toward a room whose door was slightly cracked. He thanked her before starting off, drawing in a breath as he laid his hand flat against the wood and pushed.

Luna’s father was meant to be a tall man—as tall as Kit, she had once said—with a head full of thick, dark hair, and an even thicker mustache. He’d had an obsession with old wrangler jeans, she had told him with a laugh, the older the better because that meant he was breaking them in properly.

He also had laugh lines around dark eyes that she had inherited from him.

She had built the man up so much that Kit had felt a surge of apprehension at the thought of meeting the man. He was her father, after all, and Kit had always been raised under the ideal that a man was meant to ask a woman’s father for his permission to marry his daughter.

Of course, that was before Kit had stopped asking for permission when it came to certain things, he couldn’t shake his teachings completely.

But what he found in that room …

He didn’t think he had ever seen the physical representation of ’wasting away’ but that was the first thing that came to mind as he got a look at the man seated in a chair by the window.

A cigarette was pinched between two fingers, smoke billowing out the window as he dragged in a deep, noisy lungful before dispelling the harshly scented smoke into the air. The room reeked of it, as though he spent his days sitting in that very spot, chain smoking until there was nothing left.

There wasn’t much else in the room besides that chair he seemed glued to. A mattress on cinderblocks on one side, a pair of suitcase tucked neatly away, and a small radio that was currently blaring a commercial about buying cars.

Juan’s gaze drifted to him, as patient and uncaring as the flame eating away at the cigarette he smoked. First, there was indifference, then recognition. “You look like him—what was his name? The Kingmaker,
sí
?”

“And you look like
her
,” he returned, inviting himself into the room. “Tell me, how do you know of the Kingmaker?”

Juan chucked, a harsh, pained sort of sound that told Kit he didn’t find what he was about to say funny at all. “The one that offers false dreams,” he said with a shake of his head. “
El Diablo
would be better suited for a man like him.”

The Devil.

Uilleam had been called worse—
Kit
had called him worse.

“And what did he offer you?” Kit asked.

“It wasn’t what he offered me,” the man said flicking ash out the window, “but what he offered
mi mujer—my wife
.”

Kit didn’t want to know.

He was a man of logic and facts, but for once, he didn’t want to know the truth—he didn’t want to hear words that would ultimately make his temper flare.

He knew that whatever the man said next, in Kit’s eyes, he wouldn’t view him as Luna’s father.

“Go on.”

* * *

“
I
want
to be rid of this place,” Carmen said all those years ago, frowning as she often did when she launched into her theatrics, a glass of wine clutched in one manicured hand. “You’re a man, you should want more for your wife and daughters.”

It didn’t matter that Juan worked back-breaking hours, that he spent more time at work than he did at home, his salary was not enough for her.

Nothing was good enough for Carmen Santiago.

It was his fault—he knew the kind of woman he was pursuing that night at the bar—but he hadn’t cared then, and he didn’t care now. He would do whatever it took to make her happy, to prove that he was worthy of her.

Except, she still wasn’t satisfied, not even when he moved them to a better part of the city and finally got her the house she wanted with lush green lawns and a pool that he kept cleaned year-round.

There was always
more
that she wanted—a better car, finer clothes, bigger jewels.

Though he knew there couldn’t be more she needed, he still found himself asking, “What do the girls not have?”

“Ariana has asked for a car—a Mercedes. A friend of hers from school recently got one as a present from her father.”

“And Luna?” Juan asked, eyeing his wife. “What has she asked for?”

Carmen’s expression changed as she waved a hand in the air, as though the answer was immaterial. There was not a part of him that thought his wife didn’t love their children,
both
of their children, but she favored Ariana, if only because she took after her mother in most things.

Especially her greed.

Luna, on the other hand, had the temperament of her father, willing and able to adapt to whatever was thrown at her. Sometimes, Juan felt like they didn’t deserve her.

But Juan also didn’t enjoy arguing with his wife, knowing that it would only end one way when she had a drink in hand. “I’ll get her the car.”

He acquiesced, as he always did, and as he always would.

He had never been good at denying her what she wanted—even at the detriment to himself.

Juan didn’t know how they would be able to afford it, or how he would be able to even get his hands on one, but after he made the promise, he knew he couldn’t take it back.

A car wasn’t the first request, or the last, and before he knew it, Juan was nearly crippled beneath the weight of promises he was finding he couldn’t keep. And the more time that passed as he didn’t deliver, the more desperate he became.

It was no longer about him being a good father, but about being a good provider.

And he was failing, at every turn.

It was in his desperation that Carmen came to him with a proposition, one that he couldn’t refuse.

“Just a meeting,” she said with a cheery smile, as though she hadn’t been spitting curses at him for the better part of several weeks. “You will like this man,” she promised.

At this point, he would have gladly walked into the lion’s den if that meant she was no longer angry with him.

He was weak. Of that, he had no doubt.

It was for her that he sat in his living room, watching as his wife talking business with a man that was hardly older than his daughter with a silent disposition and a shark-like smile.

It was in his living room that a deal was struck.

But it wasn’t for a car, or jewels, or
things
that Carmen asked to receive, but something that sounded impossible.

“I want power,” she said on a purring whisper, attempting to be-spell the man as she had to him.

Had that been it?

Had it always been a game?

“I can give you your heart’s desire,” the man said with an almost elegant shrug of his shoulder, “but there is a price.”

Her body, Juan had thought.

He would demand she sleep with him.

That was what men like him did, but even as his heart seized at the possibility—and the sudden realization that he was sure his wife would accept such an offer—a part of him was glad.

Maybe now that she had what she wanted, she would stop her complaining.

But it wasn’t
her
that the man, this Kingmaker, wanted.

“Those in power don’t always get there because of family lines and privately funded campaigns, sometimes it is enough by just having the public on your side.”

“But how will this help me?” she asked, eager to listen. “Why would they care about me?”

Not them.

Not their family.

Her
.

That was what she cared most about.

If he were a stronger man, Juan might have intervened then.

“Precisely. What would make a community come together and rally behind a woman whose virtually unknown to them?”

Carmen shook her head, waiting for his answer.

The Kingmaker smiled. “The loss of a child.”

* * *

“
T
he price
you paid was the life of your
child
?” Kit asked, interrupting the man’s story, too infuriated to hear any more. Already, the metal of the gun at his waist seemed to heat with such ferocity that he was sure it was a mirror for his anger.

He had always wondered the connection between them. It was clear that Luna didn’t know—he had always been rather good at reading her lies—but Uilleam had learned from the best on how to hide his hand.

He was a master at it.

Juan flicked the butt of his cigarette out the window, already reaching for another as grave eyes swept over the skyline outside. “A small price to pay, he said, for what we would gain in return.”

“Despicable.”

“I would have given him Ariana,” Juan said, as though that justified his actions. “But he didn’t want her—not that Carmen would have been willing to part with her—he asked for my precious, Luna.”

“Who meant so very little to you that you tossed her away,” Kit returned.

It must have been Kit’s tone change that made the other man finally blink and
really
look at him, his gaze narrowed and wary. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“We all have choices.”

“Then you and I are not the same. Who are you, anyway? Why does any of this matter?”

“Who I am is immaterial. Finish your story.”

Confess your sins
.