Even the most brutal events rarely imprinted themselves on Uilleam Runehart.

Since he was a boy and watched a man get shot to death right in front of him—had even felt the fine mist of blood on his face—nothing tended to make him react. A thousand dollar an hour therapist had once told him he was desensitized to violence, that the part of his brain meant to process the ugliness of it all couldn’t discern it.

It wasn’t until years later that he realized that doctor was wrong. He’d learned rather quickly that he wasn’t as emotionless as he’d thought.

First came the day Kit had murdered their father.

Alexander had been a tyrant his entire life, and while Kit had suffered the brunt of his abuse he liked to inflict, Uilleam had still relished the day he finally stopped breathing. Uilleam had a tendency to look back on that day with a certain fondness that probably wasn’t healthy.

Second was the day ‘the Kingmaker’ became more than just a title—when everything he’d hoped and strived for came to fruition. The day when he no longer lived in the shade of his father’s legacy.

Third, and notably the day when he had changed the most was the day he’d come to find the love of his life beaten to death in a pool of her own blood, nothing left of her face but brain matter and broken bits of skull.

Even now, sitting on the terrace of Kit’s restaurant, he could still smell the coppery scent of her life’s essence mingled with the cloaking smell of death.

His chest tightened at the memory of the all consuming grief and disbelief, and even the way his knees had felt when he’d hit the ground, struggling to breathe.

Nothing in his life had ever affected him quite like that.

They paled in comparison.

The pain of it had been worse than anything he’d ever felt. He could still remember the heartache—the agony. Cutting his heart out would have been less painful.

In the years he’d spent building an empire, nothing had wounded him quite like that day—not even the day when a hired assassin put six bullets in his chest.

The day he’d lost Karina and whatever humanity he had left at the time, the jagged pieces left behind had never been put back together properly.

But the tiny, delicate note tucked away in his trousers’ pocket was another reminder that the pain he’d felt and let consumer him had been for nothing.

Did you miss me?—K

An innocent question, yet it burned all the same.

Most assumed the initial tattooed on his finger was an homage to himself—that his arrogance called for it. He’d never bothered to correct them.

Karina had been his strength and his weakness, one he had never wanted to give another the chance to exploit. He’d thought he’d be able to keep her safe from the myriad of enemies who would harm her if they knew it would affect him.

But he’d never suspected she was the one plotting against him.

Losing her had been enough to send him spiraling for years, wracked with guilt until he’d returned with a vengeance, swearing to avenge her, but all of it—the scheming and plots of murder—had been for nothing.

Karina was alive.

Alive and targeting him.

He should have been furious at her deceit, but his foolish heart only felt relief that she was still alive and unharmed.

‘Nothing but a weakling,’ Alexander would have said if he’d seen him now. ‘Always have been.’

Uilleam had strived to scrub that description from his mind—had become ruthless in the process—a hardened veneer covering the kindness he used to possess.

But she had always been his weakness, even from the very beginning when she’d challenged him with a smile on her face that never failed to thaw the ice around his heart. He hadn’t minded then.

After building the image of what others saw, she’d made him feel human again.

“I’ve never liked that look on your face,” a voice called thoughtfully as it approached.

The voice—her voice.

After he found her on the floor of their brownstone, he’d heard it within the chords of songs, a whisper in the wind, even in his own head until he was sure he’d gone mad from it, but he’d never thought he’d hear it again.

Until now.

A small part of him had wanted to believe this wasn’t real, that someone—who would die painfully—was attempting to play a game with him and Karina hadn’t come back from the dead.

But as he turned, his gaze finding the woman in the white dress walking toward him, he knew once and for all the rumors, the speculation, all of it was true.

As beautiful as the day he saw her that very first time standing in front of her old office building, Karina Ashworth stood before him. Her face had been free of any makeup, her ears and throat clear of adornments. She’d been in a pair of tight white jeans, a grey tank top, and an oversized red cardigan.

Innocent and corruptible had been his first thought, like the journalist she’d pretended to be.

Nothing like the woman standing in front of him now.

Just as Luna had said, she wore all white—from the pantsuit that clung to every curve, to the white lace peeking out from beneath the labels, and even the towering heels she wore, a flash of red along the soles as she walked.

Maroon colored her lips, and the long, sable-colored hair he’d loved to run his fingers through wasn’t in the messy bun she’d loved to wear. It was straight as a pin and spilling down her back.

He didn’t recognize the woman she’d become.

Was this all part of the new role she’d stepped into all those years ago.?

Was this Belladonna?

The Karina he’d known had never shied away from color of comfort—she’d hated heels and only wore them when absolutely necessary—the woman standing behind him now did.

She tilted her head to one side as she regarded him. “Did you miss me?”

Those words …

The note she’d written him felt like it was trying to burn a hole right through his pocket to reveal that he’d still clung to it like a prized possession over the six months since he’d received it.

He clenched his hand into a fist in his lap—not because she was here and he was finally seeing her, but because of how desperately he wanted the curiosity in her voice to be genuine.

He shouldn’t have cared at all.

Calling on years’ worth of practice, he smoothed his expression, following her with his eyes as she stepped closer, wrapping her manicured fingers around the neck of the champagne bottle resting on ice at his table before refilling his glass, then pouring one for herself.

“What look would that be, Karina?” he asked, ignoring her question entirely.

Would she be annoyed by his use of her name? If she was, her expression didn’t change at all.

“Frustration,” she answered. “You always get this little wrinkle between your brows when you encounter a problem you don’t have an answer for. Am I that problem?”

How calm she sounded, as if there weren’t lost years between them—as if for the last seven years, he hadn’t felt her loss like an open, festering wound.

As if there were mere friends running into each other.

“Considering you’re supposed to be dead, you can see why your being here would be a problem for me.”

She took the seat opposite him, crossing her legs before folding her hands in her lap. Every bit the proper lady. “Did you mourn?”

“What game are you playing, Karina?”

Her smile grew. “Did you mourn?”

“It’s only proper to mourn the dead.”

“I’m not asking about the dead, Uilleam. I’m asking if you mourned me.”

Her smile made a muscle in his jaw jump, but he disguised the reaction by reaching for the glass she’d poured, even if he had no intention of drinking it.

Karina had always had a lovely smile—disarming and slightly tilting higher on one side than the other. It was her smile that had enthralled him.

“It’s like admitting to a weakness, is it not?” she asked when he didn’t answer. “But if you’re worried I intend to use what you say against you, I’m not. I’m genuinely curious.”

“Yes,” he said, the answer practically ripped from his throat. “I did mourn you.”

“For how long?”

“What does it matter?”

“Because that’s how I know you’ll lose, my love. For every year you’ve mourned me, my hatred of you grew. I prepared for this moment—the day we would inevitably come face to face again and I could tell you that I’m going to take everything you hold dear.”

She looked so reserved, so in control, and for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t.

He ground his teeth, reeling back his temper. “I’m not afraid of you, Karina, if that’s been your goal all this time. Stronger men have tried to destroy me, yet here I sit.”

“Yet, your hand is trembling,” she pointed out with a nod of her head. “I’m under your skin and that makes me a lot closer to you than they could ever manage. So tell me, darling, do you want to play a game?”

This again … “What do you want, Karina? What could you possibly hope to gain by attempting to take me on? You know this can only end one way.”

Her smile faded. There, then gone seconds later as her own mask fell into place. Hers wasn’t made up of indifference, however. Now, he was seeing a hint of the woman known as Belladonna staring back at him.

“I want many things. I want to watch your world implode. I want to see the expression on your beautiful face when I snatch that cold, dead thing out of your chest just to see if you’ll bleed or not. And when there’s nothing left of you, then, and only then will I decide when to kill you or not.”

Men twice her size had never threatened him—they hardly breathed wrong in his direction—yet she did so with ease and a certain conviction that might have made him afraid if he were a lesser man.

“Let’s not make empty threats, poppet. You won’t like how I respond.”

Not even Kit, who vexed him more than anyone in the world could, got under his skin the way she did. Already, his temper was spiking and he could hear the blood rushing in his ears.

“Empty? You underestimate me, Uilleam. I suspect you always have. Don’t forget, I know your secrets.”

“Pillow talk won’t aid you. So unless you’re here to put a bullet in my head, then what is your purpose? Perhaps in your absence, you’ve forgotten who I am.”

“Of course, I haven’t. You’re the Kingmaker—the man with the team of mercenaries ready and willing to do his bidding at a moment’s notice. The ones you call on to ensure your seat on that throne you covet so much. But, would they be so loyal if they knew the truth about you?”

He set his glass down, his hands flattening on the table as he leaned toward her. “I don’t—”

“I imagine they don’t know just how much you’ve manipulated their lives to get them here, do they? That it was all because of you that Niklaus Volkov was taken so you could extract a favor from his father. Or that you gave Kyrnon Murphy’s address to his enemy so that the woman he fancied would be taken and you could extend his contract by offering your aid. Do any of them know your particular aid comes with strings?”

For a moment, his lungs forgot how to work.

It wasn’t possible.

It wasn’t fucking possible that she knew this much.

“Luna already knows what you’ve done, but she took the brunt of her anger out on Kit, didn’t she? But could you trust that she’ll do as she’s told if you sent her after me? Or would a piece of you wonder if she’ll give me a warning that you’re coming?”

Whatever she saw in his expression made her laugh. Fucking laugh as if his surprise was comical.

As if she hadn’t voiced his thoughts and doubts aloud.

“You pride yourself on predicting the moves of others. You wouldn’t be the infamous Kingmaker without that kind of foresight, but I don’t need to know what others might do, my love. I only need to predict what you’ll do. And two years warming your bed gave me everything I needed to learn just how to read you.”

In that moment, he could have burned the entire fucking city down without blinking an eye with the rage coursing through him.

In that moment, he could have wrapped his fingers around her pretty little neck and squeezed the life out of her.

But before the rage could consume him, he shoved it back down into the pit of his stomach where it belonged.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t lose his cool.

She knew him, or at least thought she did. He’d given her everything during a time when he’d needed her most. That was then. Now, he would show her the other side of him he never had.

He was the fucking Kingmaker and he would give her that lesson.

“Is that what you did then?” he asked, nearly smiling at the flicker of emotion in her eyes. “You whored yourself to me so you could, what? Kill me? Ruin me? I would see you dead long before I ever let that happen.”

He didn’t give her a chance to speak again before he was shoving the table aside, not giving a second thought to the crystal glasses shattering as they hit the floor, or the momentary surprise in her eyes as he ripped her from that chair and pinned her to the wall.

He curled his fingers around the underside of her jaw, forcing her to look at him. She didn’t resist him and she wasn’t afraid, but that was nothing new. She’d never been afraid of him, even when she had reason.

Karina might have appeared calm and in control, but her body didn’t lie. He could feel her heartbeat drumming beneath his fingertips, and if the way her eyes dilated as she stared up at him, lips parted, was any indication—she wasn’t as entirely unaffected by him as she pretended to be.

“Understand me, poppet. I might have loved you in a way I’ve never loved anyone, but don’t ever think I would let love ruin me.”

Nothing he’d said in their short period of time together had inspired a reaction in her. Her amusement had only grown until he’d grown frustrated enough to snap.

Not now.

Not when he’d mentioned his love for her.

“Don’t delude yourself, Uilleam. The only thing you’ve ever loved was your stupid bloody title.”

He blinked, resisting the urge to brush the pad of his thumb over her pouty bottom lip. “Then you’re doing this because I didn’t love you enough?”

She shook her head. “Clueless as always. Only your arrogance would make you believe I’m doing this for you.”

“Then why?” he finally snapped, wanting an answer—needing an answer.

But she wouldn’t, he knew before she opened her mouth. It wasn’t time yet. “We both know you’re not going to kill me, Uilleam, so you might as well let me go. Once you do, the game can start.”

“You don’t want to play my games. They won’t end well … for you.” He released his hold on her, taking a step back. “Run, poppet. As far as you can, because if I get my hands on you again, I’m not letting you go.”

Even now, he was tempted to haul her back to him, to keep her within his sights in case he lost her again.

Her gaze lifted to his, lingered long enough that he wondered what she was thinking.

“I’ll be seeing you soon, Uilleam.”As quickly as she’d walked back into his life, she was gone again.

Karina Ashworth would be the death of him.

* * *

Twenty-year aged whiskey was the only therapy Uilleam needed. Far better than the psychiatrist that billed him an obscene amount of money for an hour to listen to him rant.

Especially when he had no intention of taking the woman’s advice.

Not even a full day had passed since his moment with Karina and already he was close to a mental break. He’d already burned useless mementos just to see something blacken and turn to ash, but he was still dangerously close to doing something far more drastic to purge the confusing emotions swimming inside him.

He held the tumbler of whiskey in one hand, letting it lull him in a sense of false calm as he contemplated everything he needed to accomplish before he could allow himself to entertain Karina’s threats.

He needed to focus on anything but her.

Anything but the way she’d stared him down as if they were strangers.

Not strangers … there was too much animosity intermixed for her not to care anything about him.

“This looks rather depressing.”

Uilleam didn’t bother looking up as his brother entered the room. He closed his eyes, willing his presence to be a figment of his drunken imagination, but when he opened them and glanced over his shoulder to find Kit still there, he knew he wasn’t that lucky.

“Remind me to fire my security. They’re useless.” If they couldn’t keep his brother from breaking in, what the hell would they do against anyone else. “In the meantime, run along. I’m not in the mood for you tonight, dear brother.”

In typical Kit fashion, he overstayed his welcome. “She hasn’t aged a day, has she?”

Of course that would be the thing he wanted to discuss. “I’ve never been fond of being spied on.”

“You gave up your right to privacy when you sat in my restaurant. You might have ended your lunch with Karina, but we both know it wasn’t because of her you were there in the first place.”

Again, he didn’t respond.

There was no point in lying, especially when Kit would know the truth.

It had been business that brought him to the restaurant in the first place, though he’d forgotten all about his observance of the prospective governor once Karina had interrupted him.

“If you hadn’t seen the body in person,” Kit went on, “I’d have thought you’d hallucinated her death.”

Yesterday had made him feel the same way.

He’d known many a man who faked their deaths—had even helped a number of them do it himself—but he hadn’t seen any work as good as what he’d seen that day.

“Perhaps there was a twin she never mentioned?” Uilleam mused, tossing back the last of his drink as he contemplated how she could have pulled it off. “That would fool anyone.”

Even him.

The body hadn’t just been a corpse one could pick out of a morgue and call it a day, it had felt like her. He’d even had the body x-rayed, remembering a story she’d told him of breaking her arm, finding the broken bone depicted on the scan.

How the hell could she have faked that?

“Or perhaps you can admit, if only to me, that she’d bested you.”

He scoffed. “She won a battle, but battles are not wars. Don’t treat them as such.”

“One day, you’re going to have to face that the Karina you knew might not be the same one that’s come back. Bloody hell, she’s not even a journalist.”

Uilleam might not have responded aloud, but he did consider his brother’s words.

Especially because he was right.

He hadn’t considered the notion before, in part because he’d never wanted to consider someone—especially someone who he’d allowed to get so close to him—had fooled him.

But the evidence was hard to ignore now.

Even if she hadn’t been a journalist, the background check he’d had on her should have revealed something. Since it hadn’t, she had to have had help—a benefactor of some sort. The real culprit behind the plots against him.

He just needed to find that person.

He was one step closer with the accountant’s aid, and if Karina was coming out of hiding to face him, he was getting closer. It was only a matter of time.

Kit’s gaze shifted to where the other armchair once sat, though it was long gone now. The last thing he’d wanted was for his brother to think he was invited to linger during these little chats.

Yet, there he stood and would continue to stand until he was finished.

“Is the difference really important now?” Uilleam finally asked. “Whoever the hell she is, she’ll be dealt with.”

And he would make her pay, even if it hurt to do so.

Canting his head to the side, Kit stared at him, assessing in a way only assassins could manage. “What’s your plan?”

“First, I need to get rid of the security she keeps with her. If you’ll recall, he nearly killed me.”

The only person who’d ever gotten close to succeeding.

It didn’t matter if Karina hadn’t known Elias would use the Jackal without her consent—and the question of how they could possibly come to work together was a question for another day—he couldn’t trust that if her back was against the wall, she wouldn’t use him again.

“How could I forget?” Kit asked dryly.

No, he wouldn’t, would he?

He’d been forced to make a deal with Elias in exchange for Uilleam’s life, and not only that, he’d nearly lost his wife in the process.

He wanted the Jackal nearly as badly as Uilleam did.

“If I want to get to her, I’ll have to go through him.” And once he was out of the picture, there would be no one left standing in his way.

“How do you propose we do that, exactly? I’ve searched for him for years, and the only time he’s seen is when Belladonna makes her presence known. If we can’t find her, we won’t find him.”

“But I know someone who can, potentially.”

“Do tell.”

Uilleam tapped his fingers against the side of the glass in his hand. “I had a mercenary once, Grimm, we called him—he was the only one to ever go up against the Jackal and live.”

Outside of Uilleam, that was. But the attack on him had never meant to end with his death. It had been just a warning.

“American, wasn’t he?”

“Z had given him an assignment, but it wasn’t one he’d offered to share with me.”

As much as he’d loved and respected him uncle, Uilleam had also been annoyed by his lack of communication and transparency when it came to the Den. It didn’t happen often, but more often than he liked, Z had elected to do what he wanted with informing anyone of his decisions.

Once, it had been a point of contrition between them, but after the man died, there was no point in hanging onto that anger. He could only work to find out what the man had been hiding.

“From what I’ve gathered, he’s being held at a black site somewhere in Eastern Europe—Romania, I believe—but this is all unconfirmed. Winter is working on it, but considering where the search is, I was hoping your Wildlings will help.”

“They do have names, you know.”

“I have more than a dozen mercenaries on my payroll, I have enough trouble keeping up with them.”

“I’ll speak with them, but if your mercenary is being held at a black site, how exactly do you plan to get him out of there without causing backlash?

“That’s a problem for another day. For now, I need to focus on actually finding it.”

Which was proving far more difficult than he’d anticipated. Besides, Nix wasn’t wrong.

Most government agencies frowned on someone, ‘extracting,’ a prisoner they never admitted existed anyway, but there were still rules, and none of the agencies on his payroll had ever confirmed they were holding Grimm.

Which made him wonder if it was a government black site at all. But if it wasn’t, how was the governor connected?

“I’m assuming you have a way of finding this out?”

“I do,” Uilleam said with his first genuine smile of the night.

He might have been dormant for six months, paralyzed with the new reality that Karina had returned to him, but there was only so long he would stay down.

“Care to share?”

“The accountant was meant to be a distraction,” Uilleam said glancing back at his brother. “It worked for a while, but most of the information she had on Karina was useless, but she knew far more about others she’d worked with.”

Until she’d given him information on a man he hadn’t anticipated.

“Michael Spader,” Uilleam went on.

“Running for reelection, isn’t he? How is he important?”

“Someone knows where the black site is, and if I’m correct, the governor’s servers will have that information.”

Kit didn’t look surprised at what he was implying. He was probably used to Uilleam’s way of getting information by now. “I’ve always hated politics.”

Uilleam hated politics too, but the game wasn’t over.

There were still more moves on the board.