If the past twenty-four hours had taught Iris anything, it was that the man currently moving around downstairs was unpredictable.

For years, she’d learned about her targets, making her own assumptions about them, but even after it was all said and done, she still knew very little about Synek.

Damaged was the first word that came to mind.

He could be calm, though a bit odd at times, at one moment, and then in the next, he could lash out and spew threats like they were enemies. Underneath all the bluster, it was clear there was more to Synek than what was seen on the surface.

When he spoke of his torture, he didn’t get a glazed look in his eyes. He seemed more annoyed by the Wraiths than anything else—which only made her think this hadn’t been the first time.

It couldn’t have been by the Wraiths. Considering he was trying to take down the entire organization for what Rosalie had done to him, she doubted if they had done it before, he would have given them a second chance.

So was it the Kingmaker or someone else who’d hurt him …

Iris might have wondered the answer to that question, but she also knew the likelihood of Synek actually giving one. Unlikely.

The night before, she hadn’t been able to sleep despite that being her plan before he’d broken into her apartment and they’d ended up here. Instead, she’d stayed up most of the night to erase her presence from the web and back up her data on an off-site server with six layers of encryption.

Once that was finished, she canceled several subscriptions linking her, albeit through a false identity, to her old apartment that she was pretty sure should be crawling with police by now.

But after searching the internet for any reports or coverage of the three dead bodies he’d left in her apartment, there was nothing.

Not a tweet.

Not an article.

Nothing.

She didn’t believe for a second that wasn’t done by design. She wasn’t sure how he had managed to pull it off—or if the Wraiths had been the ones to cover it up—but she was grateful all the same. The last thing she needed was anyone stumbling across any evidence she might have left behind that tied back to Spader.

As she ventured downstairs after a quick shower and change of clothes, Iris found him in the kitchen, standing in front of the stove as he tapped his fingers against the marble counter, waiting for his water to boil.

At another place and in another time, she might have been amused at him waiting so he could make a cup of tea—the coffee maker in the corner remaining untouched—but she didn’t get the chance to feel anything but shock as she stared at the state of his back.

Iris was no stranger to scars—she had a few of her own—but they were all accidental. With the exception of the one on her side from a job gone wrong.

Synek, on the other hand, was a mess of scars. From the tops of his shoulders and down the muscled expanse of his back. Some disappeared around his waist, others down into the waistband of his jeans.

And those were just the fresh ones. The ones that crisscrossed beneath them had been there longer. Years, if she had to guess. He couldn’t be much older than her twenty-eight, which only meant some of these could have very well happened when he was just a teenager.

Or younger.

She tried to imagine the person he’d been to the one he was now.

Had this been why he’d joined the Wraiths in the first place? To learn how to defend himself against whoever had done this to him.

Even as Rosalie proclaimed to love him as much as she did, how could she sanction adding these injuries on top of others that were just like them? They’d been close, intimate even, if she had to guess, so she had to know what happened to him.

Lost in her thoughts, Iris hadn’t realized Synek had turned to gaze at her, his face an empty mask. He watched her, practically reading her thoughts as he shook his head. “I don’t want your pity.”

“You don’t have it,” she said in return, the tension in him easing. “The people who did that to you … did you hurt them back?”

He shrugged. As if to say of course.

“Good.”

Another ghost of a smile, but this one lingered a while longer.

“Is there food?”

“Should be getting here any minute now,” he said, turning back to the kettle as steam wafted from the nozzle.

Nearly the second the words were out of his mouth, the doorbell rang, a soft pleasant ringing that drew her gaze back to the door. Synek moved away from the stove, setting his kettle on a nearby cooling mat before going to answer the door.

As he passed, she noticed his chest didn’t have nearly as many injuries as his back, though he did have a scattering of tattoos across his chest. Including a skull in the very center, pierced through the top and bottom by a dagger, black and gray roses alongside it.

Trying to avoid staring like an idiot, she turned back to the island, set out her laptop and thumb drive, knowing that despite how nice her surroundings were, it wouldn’t stay that way if she didn’t give him what he needed.

Once he was back, Synek dropped the bag beside her arm, going around to fetch plates and silverware. She made herself useful by taking out the three containers and inhaling the scent of sausage and eggs. As she opened them all, she found he’d gotten enough food to feed a small army.

“This is too much.”

He plucked a strip of bacon from the spread. “I didn’t buy it, so …”

“Let me guess. There are people for that too.”

“Something like that. I’m not really what the boss considers a ‘people’ person, so he tries to prevent any unnecessary problems when he can.”

“You don’t say,” she responded dryly, thinking of the sheer amount of violence he’d committed just since she’d known him.

He dropped into a chair across from her. “I’m surrounded by idiots, what can I say?”

Iris smirked. “Says the hired gun.”

“Didn’t you try to seduce the hired gun? I think that says more about you than me, doesn’t it, dove?”

“Attempt isn’t the word I’d use.” Considering where they were and how they’d gotten here, she would consider her efforts successful—but she wouldn’t tell him that.

“Fair enough.”

As she pushed eggs around her plate, Iris looked from the table to him. “Where do you want to start?”

“Who sent you after me?”

“Rosalie,” she said, surprised he didn’t already know this. She’d thought it would be obvious. “She was willing to pay a lot for me to do it, which I didn’t understand at first, but now I get it.”

They’d thought as soon as he was within their grasp, that would be it. No one had accounted on him escaping.

“Not Johnny?”

Her brow furrowed as she considered his question. “I’ve been with the Wraiths for a few years, and I’ve only ever seen him twice.”

Dark hair fell over his eyes before he shoved it back. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“What doesn’t?”

“If anyone would make the call, it would be him. Not Rosalie. That’s not how the organization runs.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“You must think Johnny is still in charge.”

He leveled a glare at her. “He’s not?”

“Not since he ended up in the wheelchair. That was before my time, so I’ve only ever heard rumors about it. As far as I know, that was when he handed the reins over to Rosalie.”

She could practically see the gears turning his head, but whatever he was thinking, he didn’t share it with her. “Go on.”

“You pretty much know the rest. My job was to bring you in, then I’d be done.”

“With it or the Wraiths entirely?”

Holding her fork suspended in the air, she met his gaze, trying to decide whether his question was worth answering. The last thing she needed was him knowing too much about her, but this, she felt, wasn’t too much of a secret. “The Wraiths. I wanted out.”

“Why?”

Because she’d been tired of that life.

She’d hated who she had become.

In the beginning, she had been so angry—with her circumstances, with her father’s imprisonment, with the sheer bad luck that seemed to plague her family—and the Wraiths had provided an outlet for that.

She could channel that hurt and anger and fury into something else, and in a way—at least, that was what she’d told herself for years—she had been carrying on her father’s work.

Bounty hunting. Righting wrongs.

But once she had come down from the high of it and looked around, she saw that it wasn’t at all what she thought it would be.

It was worse.

“I stopped believing in it.”

He was studying her in a way that made her feel he was seeing her inner thoughts and knew what she wasn’t saying. She felt the almost ridiculous urge to hide.

“But you accepted one last job?”

“I wouldn’t have,” she answered after a moment, “but not because I didn’t think you didn’t deserve what they planned to do to you. You were the boogeyman of the Wraiths, and the things they said you did … your torture paled compared to that.”

“And what is it that you think I’ve done?”

“Killed people.”

“You haven’t?”

He asked the question like what he did was an everyday occurrence. “No.”

“Afraid to get your hands dirty?” he asked, his brow arched in challenge.

“I do what I have to only when I have to, not because I enjoy it.”

Synek scoffed. “And you think I do?”

“There isn’t a thought about it. You get off on inflicting pain.”

There was no hesitation when he killed, and when he’d had the other man on the ground, he had actually smiled while taunting him. Those weren’t the actions of a man forced to kill or be killed.

He was just the predator.

“Amazing.”

Iris set her fork down, having lost her appetite. “Go on. I know you will anyway.”

“Curious how you’ve formed all these opinions about me, yeah? But you know fuck all about who I am or even who I was.”

“You kill people for money.”

“So do you.”

“I don’t—”

“What’d you think happened to all those men you lured back to the Wraiths? Thought they came around for a friendly little chat, did you?”

“Are we done?” At this point, the only thing she wanted to do was walk away so she didn’t have to see his face or hear what he had to say anymore.

“You would think you’d be more grateful for me saving your life last night.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t grateful.”

Though she hadn’t ever mentioned that little fact out loud. He hadn’t been wrong when he’d taunted her with what Oscar would have done—she’d heard the rumors. It was just another reason she had wanted to get out.

She could only pretend for so long that the horrors inflicted by the Wraiths weren’t actually happening.

“Ah, now you’re starting to see reason.”

“But I also don’t think people should hurt innocent people. Can you say that, Syn? Can you say that every person who you were sent after was guilty?”

“We’re all guilty of something. Dig deep enough and you’ll find whatever you need to condemn someone. That isn’t the point.”

“Then what is your point?”

“Don’t be a hypocrite.”

God, she was tired of him and his judgment. “Fuck you.”

She tried to stand, but he caught her wrist, effectively preventing her from moving away. His grip wasn’t tight, and if she wanted, she could have wrenched free and moved away, but she held her ground.

“You see, the only difference between you and me, Iris, is I know the monster I am. Doesn’t look like you can say the same.”

She wished she could tune him out, but those words echoed in her ears.

* * *

Iris wasn’t a delicate little flower as her name might suggest.

She had thorns sharp enough to prick, and for reasons Synek wouldn’t delve into, he liked the sting.

He could blame it on the fact that she had outsmarted him once before, but it wasn’t that. He was interested in her. In what made her turn to the Wraiths at all. Why she was so guarded.

What could be so important that she not only needed information on Michael Spader, but she was willing to do anything to get it.

It was a conundrum that puzzled him.

“What exactly are you hoping to accomplish in that little outfit, luv?” he asked once he caught sight of her coming down the stairs in a dress that screamed sexy more than it did lethal efficiency. “Though, I guess if you were to flash your knickers, that’d distract them a bit.”

“Are all men as simple as you?” she asked. Had it not been for that coy little smile on her face, he might have taken offense.

Synek was reclining in his chair, his boots already on and laced. Even his knives laid in perfect alignment on the table in front of him. He would need them for where they were going.

But he wasn’t thinking about the knives when she walked toward him, and to his surprise, she wrapped her fingers around the hem of the dress and lifted.

His gaze immediately dropped, taking in her golden legs, then the shadowed apex of her thighs, but with the way she was standing, the dress covered a part of her he was now dying to see.

“Look a little closer,” she said, and even if the words weren’t sexual, he took them that way.

Hell, at that moment, he might have walked into hell if it meant she showed him more of what she was hiding beneath that dress.

He lifted his hand, dragging it up her thigh until his fingers nearly brushed hers. He thought he felt her tremble.

“You could’ve said you wanted my hand between your legs,” he said, glancing up at her face, even as he felt what she’d wanted him to know was there.

He’d only had to brush his fingers over the elastic cinched around her thigh to know she was armed with knives, and he also knew it would be a hell of a lot easier for her to get to them now than if she was in a pair of jeans.

“If I wanted your hand on me anywhere, I’d tell you. Since I haven’t, that means I don’t.”

He smiled, even as he kept his hand exactly where it was, softly rubbing the pad of his thumb across the creamy expanse of her thigh. “Say that again, and this time, say it like you actually mean it.”

A fine tremor ran through her. She might have been quick to deny him, but her body didn’t. It made him wonder how much of that night had been real and how much was an act.

“If you’re done copping a feel,” she said, brushing his hand away, “shouldn’t we be going?”

This would be better than he hoped.

* * *

Synek didn’t make friends easily, and those he did were willing to put up with things most would have long walked away from.

Some said he was unstable—he just liked to think his frayed bits were a little hard to get used to.

If there was anyone in the Wraiths he would have considered himself remotely close to, it was Bear.

That didn’t mean things hadn’t changed over the years since he’d been gone—he knew far too well how time could change people.

During the drive, Iris had spent most of her time ignoring him, opening a new phone and powering it on. Switching phones was a trick he’d picked up after he joined the Den, but with the Wraiths, he hadn’t bothered with it at all. It hadn’t been something they’d asked of him.

Yet she did so with ease.

She wasn’t formally trained, that much he could tell, but she knew enough to make him wonder about her.

“Who taught you to wield a knife?” he asked, remembering the blade that had sunk in mere centimeters from his own.

“Does it matter?”

“Humor me.”

She chewed on her lip, hesitating long enough that he thought she wouldn’t answer, but she surprised him when she said, “My father. I was his only child, so I was kind of the son he never had. He thought it was important for me to learn how to take care of myself instead of relying on someone else.”

Smart man. “He also the one to teach you to shoot a gun?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to him?”

“What?”

She turned to face him for the first time since they got in the car. And just beneath that affronted expression, there was unease.

“You said thought … past tense.”

“Tell me about Winter,” she said, completely ignoring his question.

“What about her?” he asked, wishing he hadn’t sounded so guarded when he asked.

“Why did Rosalie turn herself into her?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Mmm. You were with her, weren’t you?”

“We fucked.”

“Whatever you want to call it. You two had a thing. I’m assuming Winter is your thing now?”

She was watching him, unblinking as she waited for any slip in his composure. Despite himself, he tensed at the mention of Winter. “Drop it.”

“Uncomfortable?” she asked. “Don’t like answering questions that aren’t any of my business?”

Synek didn’t bother answering that question, knowing that anything he thought to say would only lead to more questions that he didn’t want to answer. Later … Later, he would get more information out of her, and if not, he could always turn to Winter for everything else.

For now, he let it go.

Unlike the rest of the Wraiths who stuck close to the compound, Bear had an apartment nearly an hour away. He’d mentioned it on occasion, though he’d never offered up an address, but Synek had a hacker in his pocket.

Despite his willingness to follow orders and act the good soldier, Bear kept his private life private and didn’t share it with anyone. If the Wraiths wondered where he went on his weekends, he also had another place in Brooklyn he kept just in case.

Outside Bear’s apartment building, Synek drew up his mask, covering the lower half of his face. Not because he would need it, but because there were at least two cameras on this block, and he’d much rather not get his entire face caught on film before Winter had a chance to delete it.

Iris was close on his heels, and for whatever reason, he didn’t mind having someone he hadn’t trained with standing at his back. The mercenaries of the Den knew all too well that it was never a good idea to walk behind him until after he’d gotten used to their presence.

Yet she did so without thought, even knowing the pain he could inflict and had already caused her.

As they reached the front door, Synek stopped just short, scanning the top until he found what he was looking for. Carefully, he reached up and yanked the camera free, effectively killing the feed. If Bear was home and not otherwise occupied, it was only a matter of time before he noticed the footage was gone.

Which gave them less than three minutes to get upstairs and into the apartment.

He took the stairs two at a time, coming to a stop in front of the door at the end of the hall. He pulled his kit from the inside pocket of his jacket and quickly picked the lock, mentally nodding at beating his old record before he slipped inside and left the door cracked for Iris.

The lights were off in the living room, though pale moonlight bled in through the slats in the blinds. It was quiet, almost too quiet, as he made his way deeper into the apartment, careful with each step he took.

It wasn’t until he’d nearly reached the back hallway that he understood what had Bear slipping.

He only had to peek in through the cracked door of the bedroom and see a girl flat on her back, her legs over Bear’s shoulders to get the gist, but more surprising was the girl whose thighs he was buried between.

Synek hadn’t seen her in years.

“Can’t say I didn’t see this coming,” Synek said as he kicked the door open farther, moving fast enough that Bear hardly got a chance to react before he had his gun pressed to the back of the man’s head. “Wren, be a dear, yeah, and let him up for a bit. He and I need to have a chat.”

Years with the Wraiths had made him used to that blushing shade of red she turned when she was embarrassed. Combine that with the inevitable flash of her naked lower half as she scrambled away to fix her skirt, and he was amazed she didn’t combust.

“What the fuck, Syn?”

“I should be the one asking the questions here, shouldn’t I? I came in, and you didn’t say, ‘’ello, Syn,’ or anything. You’re just neck deep in pussy. No offense there, luv. I always did like you.”

Wren was older, less coltish, and more shapely. Bear … well, he’d always been a big bastard, but his hair was shorter, less rakish, and more tidy. He looked less of the grunt he’d been back in those days.

Wren was still quiet as a mouse despite Synek’s remark, but it was enough to get Bear into a right state as he twisted and got to his feet, uncaring of the gun now pointed at his face.

“I don’t give a shit how crazy you are. Say some shit like that about her again and I’ll break your fucking jaw.”

Synek was too amused to heed the warning he heard in the other man’s voice. “Huh. Never thought I’d see the day. Thought you didn’t give a shit about anyone.”

“If I didn’t, your ass wouldn’t be standing here, would you? Don’t forget I knew all about who you were working for and where you were doing it at. Now, what do you want besides a death wish? You think they’re not looking for you now.” His gaze darted past him at the sound of the floor creaking, his lips turning down as he spotted who stood behind him. “Jesus, you’re with her? What the fuck are you, some sort of masochist?”

“Don’t worry about her. I’m your problem now.”

“Yeah? What the hell do you want?”

“I need what you have on the Wraiths. She can give me some, but she’s not in the inner circle. She doesn’t know everything.”

“And what do you plan on doing with that exactly? See how many you can take out before they put you in a body bag?” Bear sounded disbelieving even as he shook his head. “There’s no way you go up against them and see the other side of it. Rosalie would never let you. Your best bet is to get the hell out of town while you still can. Take her with you ’cause they want her head.”

“The time for running is over.”

He’d given them seven years too many already.

Synek wasn’t leaving again until this was over.

They wanted a war.

They had one now.