Droplets 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 intercepted 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, and 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 didn’t see 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, where 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 chuckled, 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 backbreaking 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. Not one 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 had made the promise, he knew he couldn’t take it back.

A car wasn’t her 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 that 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 talked business with a man that was hardly older than his daughter was and had 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 who’s virtually unknown to them?”

Carmen shook her head, waiting for his answer.

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

---

“The 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.

Juan hesitated a moment before continuing. “It was all very simple, he said. We would leave, run an errand, and when we came back, we would find the house ransacked. He told us Luna would be gone, that there would be nothing left of her. I-I,” Juan stammered, emotion clogging his throat, “didn’t think it through. I didn’t understand it all.”

“But you agreed all the same …”

Juan hung his head in shame. “I agreed. We called la policía—we did everything we were supposed to. I didn’t have to pretend to grieve when we were being filmed for the news report because I was grieving. I realized too late the mistake I had made, butI couldn’t change my mind. Days later, whispers of the Contreras Cartel being responsible made the rounds. They were well known for trafficking—young girls like my Luna were always going missing—they assumed she was just one of many.”

Juan took a breath, placing a fresh cigarette between his lips as he felt around his pockets for a lighter. Kit pulled his own from his pocket, igniting the flame as he held it up for the man.

He wasn’t one to smoke—the habit didn’t agree with him—but he kept a lighter on him for moments like these. Though he was rather methodical when it came to what he did, if requested, he allowed those that crossed them this moment.

The last cigarette.

“Carmen became this activist—this warrior against the trafficking of young girls. As he had said, many were willing to stand behind her. Though most had children, even if they didn’t, at one time they had felt the unforgiving hand of the cartels.”

Kit might have hated what he was hearing, but the cold, logical side of him understood Uilleam’s intention. If you put enough support behind a person, they had the potential to do more than a person with all the money in the world would.

“He told us it was quick,” Juan went on, not noticing Kit’s musing. “That she didn’t suffer—I didn’t feel as guilty then.”

“When?”

“What?”

“When did he tell you that it was quick?”

“A couple of weeks after, just before Carmen got the call.”

That didn’t make sense.

Why would Uilleam lie?

It didn’t matter at the moment because Kit would find out soon enough. “And where are they now? Carmen and the other daughter?” Kit made a show of looking around the room. “They’re certainly not here.”

“They moved away, somewhere far from here. She got a better offer from another man.”

He had the gall to look hurt. “D’you expect to inspire sympathy within me?” he asked with a shake of his head. “If you’re looking, you won’t find any in me.”

“Why does this matter now? Why are you here?”

“I came for Luna.”

Those words were partially true.

“Is this my punishment then? He sends you to take care of another job for Carmen—the last little flaw in the life she’s trying to forget?”

“Almost five years to the day, The Kingmaker too came to me with a proposition. He asked that I take a girl into my home. Could you guess who that girl was?”

When Kit didn’t get his answer right away, he pulled the gun from his belt, and the silencer from the pocket of his trousers. Slowly, methodically, he twisted it into place.

“Go ahead and guess.”

“He told us she was dead.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kit said. “You shouldn’t have given her up in the first place.”

There were tears in Juan’s eyes as he sniffled. “Who are—”

“Her husband.”

His gaze flickered down to the gun in Kit’s hand. “What kind of man are you that you would murder her father?”

“The kind that won’t feel any remorse.”

Kit aimed and fired, plugging a bullet into the man’s chest, closer to his shoulder. He didn’t want to hit his heart, not yet.

“Luna believes that her family was spared, that perhaps you all wait for her return with hope in your hearts—she doesn’t know about the greed.” Kit pressed the smoking silencer against the man’s wound where his blood seeped. He cried out in pain, but Kit ignored him. “And if I can help it, she’ll never know.”

She didn’t deserve more pain.

Though he generally hated illusions, for once he was willing to sacrifice his own code—he hated to see her in pain.

“She was spared?” Juan asked, despite the pain he was in. “She’s—”

“No longer your concern.”

“Then if you’ve come to kill me, get it over with.”

Kit raised his gun once more, intending to do just that, but before he could, Juan spoke once more.

“What would you have done?” he asked, almost desperately. “He offers a deal or death? What choice did I have? You would have done the same thing!”

Kit shook his head, shifting his aim to the man’s forehead. “You should have died. When it comes down to your life, or the one you love, you face death with a smile. Luna deserved better than you.”

Acceptance shone in his eyes. “She deserves better than all of us.”

Kit pulled the trigger.

Stowing his gun away, Kit ventured back out with a backward glance, removing an envelopes of money along the way—one for the pregnant woman who had never seen his face before, and one for the men around the television that would swear Juan Santiago had enraged a smuggler that decided to kill him for crossing him.

But as he climbed back into the truck and started back out on the road, Kit was already thinking of his next move.

It was time he and his brother had a conversation.

---

There were two kinds of men in the world—those that fixed problems, and others that were the cause of them.

Most days, Kit fell into the latter—even if by fixing, it meant taking someone’s life—and for a time, he thought Uilleam fell into that category as well. But when he returned from his trip to Mexico, armed with damning knowledge, he realized that his brother fell more in the middle.

And that was not a good thing.

“Perhaps you should have invited The Wild Bunch on this littler excursion,” Aidra said as she checked the slide of her gun. “Confronting your brother in a compound full of his mercenaries doesn’t seem like a rational thing to do.”

Kit had sought Aidra’s aid, not in just coming with him to the compound—though he wouldn’t have needed her for this, really—but in her thoughts. He’d needed someone to confide in, and she was the only person he knew without a shadow of a doubt that wouldn’t break his confidence.

She had also thought there were ulterior motives behind Uilleam’s interest in Luna, but even she hadn’t pictured this outcome.

No one could have.

“I never thought I would see the day when you were afraid to face a mercenary,” Kit said as they drove beyond the gate to the compound and parked. “I taught you better than that.”

“They are being trained by Z, no? I don’t put anything past the man.”

It wasn’t often that Uilleam listened to reason. He liked to think he was infallible, but for once, he hadn’t attempted to stay in the open after the shooting. Instead, he went underground, and there was no better place than a remote facility that was guarded by men he paid large sums of money to.

“Besides, it’s just a conversation,” Kit said, though he knew that was a lie. It wouldn’t just be words he gave his brother.

“Those usually don’t go well for the two of you. If you recall, you threatened to throw him off a roof in Berlin because he made a few million pounds off a contract you were negotiating. In answer, he decided to torch three of your cars and allowed a family of homeless tweakers to take up residence in your loft in the city—they ended up condemning that place, didn’t they?”

And back and froth it went until they grew tired and moved on.

It was what they did.

But this …

This wouldn’t be nearly as pleasant as that time.

“Uilleam may not answer to anyone else, but he will answer to me.”

Kit would ensure it.

Abandoning his car, he had no trouble getting into the building and up to the floor where Uilleam was reclining in a bed with his phone in one hand, and his gaze on the television set up on the other side of the room.

Gone was the hospital gown, and though he didn’t wear a suit as was his custom, he was still better dressed than the last time Kit had seen him.

Besides the lack of color in his face, Uilleam didn’t look as though he had been in a firefight mere days ago, or that during the operation to save his life, his heart had stopped beating for a few seconds.

Those that raised hell often lived the longest.

“Twice in one week, I’m shocked,” Uilleam said, his voice groggy as his gaze moved from the TV, to Kit, and stopped on Aidra. “At least you’ve brought beautiful company. Aidra, you look lovely as always.”

Despite her efforts, his assistant wasn’t immune to Uilleam’s charm. She offered a shy smile, though she didn’t move from Kit’s side.

“What can I do for you, brother?”

“I know, Uilleam.”

“I’m sorry?”

“About Luna,” he reiterated. “I know what you did.”

A wheel of emotions that played over Uilleam’s face in the wake of Kit’s statement. First, surprise, then anger, and finally a hint of smugness that Kit hadn’t expected.

“You think you know?”Uilleam laughed, the sound harsh and grating. “You know nothing.”

“What did you hope to accomplish? Did you think to use the truth of what you had done to make her upset with me?”

His jaw hardened in pain as he climbed out of the bed, but Uilleam didn’t let it show. “The fact that you’re asking me that question only proves my point.”

“You’ve yet to make one.”

“I assume you found Juan, did you not? A man too stupid to realize that he meant nothing to the woman that would rather see him destitute than at her side, despite everything she had given him?”

Kit folded his arms across his chest. “If there is a point to this, you’re not making it.”

Uilleam was smiling, smiling as though the entire thing was a joke. “They paid me to kill her, yet you haven’t asked yourself why she’s still alive, have you?”

Kit scoffed. “I know your schemes, Uilleam. You wanted to use her against the woman, no?”

“Yes, I did. I wanted to train her as a mercenary—I wanted her to thrive on the knowledge that her mother was a cunt, and when the time came, she would have no problem putting a bullet in her mother’s head.”

“Then why did you—”

“No, let me finish,” Uilleam demanded, his gaze never straying from Kit though they were no longer the only three in the room. At some point, Zachariah had entered, but he didn’t interrupt.

“I had her taken, smuggled into the US, and left in a warehouse until I could make the proper arrangements. The first time I brought her to you, I hadn’t lied when I said Zachariah refused to take her until she was older—I hadn’t accounted for that in my original plan—but I hadn’t the time to babysit a kidnap victim while I worked. Do you know who I turned to, brother?”

Kit thought of Luna and everything she had ever told him about the kidnapping and the ensuing days after.

I woke up to smoke, she had told him once.

Because the warehouse she’d been was set on fire …

The warehouse …

“Putting the pieces together, I see,” Uilleam said smugly. “I called my dear brother to do me a favor, one that would have cost you nothing. Instead, you betrayed me, and for what? To stoke your own ego? Pathetic.”

Kit didn’t think, nor could he hear the cries of alarm as he grabbed his brother by the throat and slammed him back against the wall, holding him there.

Uilleam winced, his pain to great for it to be ignored. “Have you realized your mistake? Have you realized that it was because of you that Luna ended up in the hands of Lawrence Kendall? Imagine my surprise when I found her at that party—after all, you were the one to tell me no one had survived the fire at the warehouse.”

The fucking warehouse.

It was so long ago that Kit almost didn’t remember, but there had only been one of Uilleam’s safe houses that he destroyed.

That fucking warehouse.

He could almost remember the day Uilleam called him, asking for a favor as he often did. It didn’t matter that Kit had grown tired of his schemes and wanted to take a break from Uilleam, the man was relentless.

Especially because it was one of the few properties they owned together and worked out of.

More and more, Uilleam began making demands, carrying out his own agendas that put Kit’s work in jeopardy.

At that time, Uilleam had been unreasonable—it was either what he wanted, or nothing at all.

Kit had thought to put a stop to it. No one had ever made a move against the infamous Kingmaker before, but he would. After all, he wasn’t a match for Kit, not really.

Once when they were children, Kit had asked his brother whether or not he was afraid of fire. Uilleam couldn’t have been more than six years old at the time, but it was clear whenever he walked past the hearth and stared with apprehension while the flames licked at the iron gate.

He was petrified.

Kit had shown him the freedom in fire—in its purity.

From then on, Uilleam had made a bad habit of destroying things by fire when the mood suited him.

This was also why Kit had thought to burn the warehouse down.

The message was clear if one knew how to read it.

“So what have you come to say?” Uilleam asked, his voice only loud enough for Kit to hear. “I’m waiting.”

Kit licked his lips. “Who all knows?”

“I assume you would know the answer to that question, but by all means, share the answer with me. Because whoever thought it would be better to work with you and betray me, I owe them a present.”

“About you being behind the kidnapping,” Kit retorted. “Who all knows?”

“If you’re asking about my mercenaries, the answer is none. I made a deal with her, Carmen, and Luna’s father, only.”

Then he could contain this.

“You will not, under any circumstances, breathe a word of any of this to Luna. Are we clear?”

Uilleam pushed his hand away. “Why not? Afraid that she’ll grow to hate you?”

He didn’t think that.

He knew it.

He was responsible for everything that had happened to her.

“We need to go,” Kit said to Aidra, starting for the door, ignoring his uncle’s presence entirely.

“Give a man enough rope,” Uilleam called after him, “and watch him hang himself.”

Kit was panicking despite his outward display of calm. His intentions had always been to bury what Uilleam had done, not wanting Luna to face the horrors of it all, but that was before he knew it was his fault.

Now, it wasn’t about burying the secrets.

He had to destroy them.

Removing his phone from his pocket, he dialed Fang. “I have a job for you.”

“Again? I’ll call—”

“No, you. Only you.”

Fang was quiet a moment. “What do you to be want done?”

“I’m going to send you information on three men, and I want them dead within the next seventy-two hours. No witnesses.”

Fang whistled low. “Who pissed you off, boss?”

“Just see this done, and tell no one.”

“Right.”

“Nix?” Aidra called his name as he ended the call with Fang.

“What?” He was distracted, thinking of his next step.

Thinking of Luna and where she was.

Thinking of how he would sleep next to her this very night without breathing a word of what he knew.

“I have someone who wants to speak with you.”

He only just noticed that Aidra was on the phone, her mobile extended in his direction now. She looked a bit paler, but that was understandable considering what they had just learned.

“I’m not taking calls right now.”

“He insists—”

“What part of that did you not understand?” Kit snapped as he dropped into his seat and yanked on his seatbelt.

“He says he’s the one that’s responsible for what happened to Uilleam,” Aidra said in a rush, shoving the phone into his hand before he could say anymore.

“You must have a death wish,” Kit said the moment he had it to his ear.

“I’m afraid not,” the caller said, a smile in his voice. “My name is Elias Harrington and I was hoping to have a meeting with you at nine tomorrow morning.”

No, the man definitely had a death wish.

“I’ll send you my information. Oh, and please be on time, sometimes bullets fly when I’m being kept waiting.”

In the span of an hour, Kit’s entire world had become fucked.

---

The world was full of killers—people willing to pick up a gun and end the life of someone that crossed them in some arbitrary way.

Then there was Kit.

He wasn’t just a killer, nor could he be compared to any other man that called himself that. There was no power exchange for him, no sexual pleasure elicited when he took someone’s life.

It was cold.

Methodical.

He did what the assignment asked for and nothing more.

But sometimes, that cool exterior cracked, revealing the darker monster that concealed itself beneath his skin. If there was one thing to be said about the man, he considered his family sacred—no matter how much he often thought about hurting his brother.

No one crossed his family without answering to him.

So whoever this Elias Harrington was, he would soon learn that lesson the hard way.

Uilleam wasn’t like him. He had remained at home, learning the trade of their father as opposed to the teachings of their uncle. While Kit still had the knowledge to work as a fixer of sorts in the business, he was gifted when it came to executions.

Assassinations.

It was just as easy for him to make the killings look like accidents, as well as to make sure the message of that person’s death reached the right people.

He was good at it.

His brother didn’t take revenge by simply taking a life, he made them suffer for years until he was tired of playing with his enemies’ lives, and only then would he put them out of their misery.

Kit was satisfied with a bullet to the head.

For the first time in a long time, as Kit dressed that morning, he didn’t select a suit for its visual appeal. He ventured to the back of his closet where custom threads hung in a special cabinet.

The seven suits inside had cost him a fortune, but he had willingly handed over the money because to him, they were worth it.

These wouldn’t show the lines of the bulletproof vest he strapped to his chest. They also concealed any weaponry he had on him.

On the outside, he appeared as any other businessman might in a city like Manhattan, but beneath the fine clothes lay an arsenal and a man that knew how to wield them well.

For his meeting with Elias, he’d opted to go alone, leaving Aidra with The Wild Bunch who he’d explicitly instructed to shadow Luna wherever she went. He couldn’t hold her captive in the safe house—she wouldn’t stand for it—and because he was relatively sure that it hadn’t been about her the day Uilleam was shot, he allowed her to resume her work.

Even if it didn’t sit well with him.

His desire to protect her, and her desire to be independent clashed. She liked to think he was overprotective, that he worried for nothing considering he had been the one to teach her everything she knew, but she didn’t see herself the way he did.

Luna wasn’t weak—he knew this. But he also knew that despite what she thought, her heart often led her actions.

Fortunately, this hadn’t been much of a problem over the years for them, but he knew with some certainty that it would eventually.

Stepping out of his car, Kit eyed the villa in the distance. Either Elias was incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid since Kit could only see three men standing outside of the home.

It only took a moment of sizing up to see that they were ill equipped and lacked the skills needed to truly act as security for someone.

Kit didn’t mind proving that point.

Before any of them could notice his approach, he withdrew his guns, one in each hand and fired off rounds, head shots for two, and one in the chest for the man closest to the door.

He was still breathing as Kit came near, rattling breaths leaving his chest as he clutched at the wound as though that might help keep the blood in his body.

Kit also noticed that it was the same man that Caesar had with him in the lounge.

“It’s not personal,” Kit said as he aimed at the man’s forehead, watching his eyes widen before the life left him once he fired.

Someone was shouting over the walkie-talkie the man carried, but Kit paid it no mind as he ventured inside, gaze seizing on the men that were rushing toward him, guns at the ready.

They had no idea who they were up against.

Eighteen seconds.

Eighteen seconds was all it took for Kit to cut through every man in the room, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake as he finally found the man, he assumed, was waiting for him.

Elias Harrington sat in a blue velvet wingback chair, a saucer and teacup in hand as he watched the brutality with a blank expression. He didn’t move, nor did he attempt to placate Kit with words as though they might help save his life.

He didn’t say anything at all.

Kit holstered his guns in favor of the knives he had strapped to his wrists. As he turned one over in his hands, he said, “Whatever you think to say next, let it be the reason why I shouldn’t cut you into fucking pieces.”

Elias blinked, bringing his tea to his lips before taking a sip. “And to think, I thought you were more reasonable than that brother of yours.”

“Wrong answer.”

“Still upset about Uilleam, are you?”

Not particularly. Especially not after everything he had learned the night before.

As the blade was about to fly from his hands—and Kit could already see it sinking into the man’s chest, and blood welling around the white of his shirt—Elias set his drink down, with his other hand raised high as though to say he was not a threat.

“I assure you that you will want to hear what I have to say next—your wife’s life depends on it.”

His words made Kit pause.

Elias smiled. “Don’t worry. I know how you Runehart brothers are with idle threats—which is why I thought it best if I showed you.”

He produced a tablet, very much like the one Aidra carried with her at all times, but this one played only a video—no, a visual feed from whomever wore the camera it was depicted from.

In it, he could see Luna, oblivious to whoever it was following her as she walked the streets of New York. She wasn’t distracted by a phone, or any of the sights—it was clear to him that she was observant of her surroundings—which could only mean that the recorder didn’t appear to be a threat.

“But if that does not suffice, I also have a man on that lovely assistant of yours—Aidra, is it? And don’t worry, I’m assured that the fellows you have monitoring the pair of them are easily dispensable.”

There was a feed for each of them.

Luna.

Aidra.

Fang.

Thanatos.

Invictus.

Tăcut.

If The Wild Bunch hadn’t noticed the threat, whoever Elias had on them were very good.

“There will also be a package delivered to the compound your brother has locked himself away in with enough C4 to level the block. So if you would,” he said, the first real trace of annoyance flaring in his gaze, “please have a seat so that we can discuss matters properly.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Kit said tightly, “I think I’ll stand.”

“Very well. I understand that you’ve recently traveled to Santa Monica to meet with a man by the name of Caesar Rivera.”

Kit didn’t blink. If the man was able to track as well as he did, it wasn’t much of a surprise that he knew about Kit’s dealings. “Yes, the trafficker.”

“He proposed a deal, but you declined.”

“And you think to change my mind on this?”

Elias shrugged. “It is a viable business opportunity. I don’t want to see it wasted. Despite this,”—he waved his hand, searching for the right word— “unpleasantness, you are, as Caesar explained, very good at what you do.”

“How is trafficking with the cartels of any interest to you?”

Who was he?

Kit had done his homework, or at least had attempted to, before he came to this meeting, but despite his expansive network, no one had been able to tell him a thing .

It was as though the man didn’t exist.

“That is merely another arrangement that’s paramount to what I’m trying to accomplish. You see, Caesar Rivera is of little interest to me. He offers his men,”—this he said with a gesture to the bodies lying on the floor—“and in exchange, he receives my good will.”

“Then what is that you want?”

“Protection, of sorts, for my client.”

Kit was growing frustrated, his temper flaring. “Who is your client?”

“Carmen Santiago.”

There were a dozen other names that Kit had expected, but not that one. Not Luna’s mother.

“I understand you went to see Juan shortly after The Kingmaker was shot,” Elias said with a slight smile. “I found it quite amusing, the secrets you and your brother keep. If you’d spend less time working against one another, perhaps you wouldn’t be here now.”

“Then regale me. Why am I here now?” Kit asked.

“Before his unfortunate accident, Uilleam had plans to expose Carmen—it was why he was sending your wife to California. Both she and Ariana were meant to be in attendance at the meeting, but I intercepted the intel of Uilleam finding out and had them removed. If he’d had gotten his way, things would have gone very bad, very quickly. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Go on.”

“In a sorts, while Carmen is a client of mine, I also utilize her services for a few private matters, and should she be exposed, that will come to an end.”

Elias spoke with an almost clinical air, as though he were reading from a manual or a textbook. If this were about anyone else, Kit might have been willing to do business with the man.

Elias reminded him of himself.

“As I’m sure his doctors can attest, though there was significant blood loss, no major organs were hit. I wasn’t trying to kill him, you understand. It was merely a deterrence—to keep him and that girl away long enough for you to accept the contract with Caesar.”

“Because of our arrangement,” Kit said, realizing what the man was hinting at.

Had he agreed to take on Caesar as a client, that would then make the man off limits to Uilleam. Nor would he be able to send any of his mercenaries after him.

Their attempt at a peace treaty.

Now, Kit regretted it.

“Precisely. Since Carmen is Caesar’s wife, that extends your protection over to her.”

Fucking Uilleam and his need to think he was better than everyone was.

Holding the table up, Kit asked, “So you think to blackmail me in order to force me to agree to a protection deal for Carmen Santiago?”

“That is merely an insurance policy,” Elias said. “I didn’t think you would be in a very pliant mood once you arrived—and I value my life. I’m asking you to take on the assignment, not for them, but to protect you. There is a reason you thought to murder your wife’s father, is there not? You’re trying to bury the truth. You don’t want her finding out about your brother’s deal and the hand you played in it, and I don’t want my client exposed. For the moment, our interests are aligned.”

Shit.

Not once since he was a child living under his tyrant father had Kit ben backed into a corner.

He was tempted to decline, to still walk away and risk Luna finding out the truth, but he also knew that should he say no, Elias would kill them all anyway, and his pride would be for nothing.

Kit willing took risks everyday—he believed in himself that much.

But was the risk worth Luna’s life?

“What do you want?” he asked, even as the words ate at him.

“Whether your wife finds out the truth is immaterial, but I need your assurance that nothing will touch my client. Not your brother, not his mercenaries, nor anyone else. Should you agree, you’ll be free to continue business as you were, though you will be accepting a contract with Caesar as well. If it makes you feel better, we are willing to pay a generous fee for your services.”

No, that didn’t fucking make him feel better.

Kit couldn’t offer a response, not when he didn’t have anything to say.

He would never express gratitude, nor was he happy that he couldn’t see a way out of this deal.

Yet.

“Also, under the terms of our agreement,” Elias said as he removed an envelope from his breast pocket, along with a pen, “you are not to mention anything I’ve said here to Uilleam—not even my name. Should you, you will be in violation of it and I will consider the contract void. Should that happen, then you will get a firsthand look at what the Jackal can do when actually given a kill order.”

Jackal.

He would store that name away for later.

“Now, if you could,” he went on as he set the packet on the table, pen on top. “The papers inside require your signature. Tomorrow, a jet will be waiting for you at the address I send. Don’t be late as your clients will be waiting for you to land.”

Though every bone in his body rebelled against what he was about to do, Kit had no choice but to cross the room and remove the pages, the pen already in hand.

“Do smile, Kit,” Elias said with one of his own. “I thought you Runehart boys loved your games.”

Kit scrawled his name before he could do something volatile like shove the pointed end into the meaty part of his neck. Even after he had gone back out to meet Aidra who was waiting for him, he was still in a dark mood.

“Nix—”

“Not now,” he forced out between gritted teeth.

“But—”

“I said leave it.”

“Let me remind you that I know seven different ways to kill you right now and I’ll make it out of this car just fine,” Aidra snapped, fiery eyes glaring at the side of his face.

He took a breath.

It wasn’t her fault. None of this was her fault, and he didn’t need to take this out on her.

His fuck up.

He just needed to figure out how to fix it.

“Apologies.”

Her shoulders relaxed. “Fang and I aren’t like you and Luna, but don’t you think it would better to just tell her the truth instead of trying to hide it? It wasn’t done intentionally.”

“Wasn’t it?” Kit shot back, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Would an apology be enough for what I caused her to endure? It’s not.”

Aidra didn’t roll her eyes, nor did she act as though he were exaggerating. “We forgive those we love, Nix. Isn’t that what you’ve always said?”

He had.

That was the reason he had always been willing to put aside the numerous occasions when Uilleam had done something to piss him off.

But there were just some things one couldn’t slap an apology on and think it would all be the same in the end.

Not this.

And if he could help it, she would never find out the truth about that day.