He was obviously still suffering the effects of his torture, or maybe he’d become weak in the past three weeks because for whatever reason, Synek had sought her out and spilled his fucking guts like a wanker.

He tried not to think about it—or her—too much as he sat on the rooftop opposite the Wraiths’ new compound, a pair of binoculars in his hand as he watched the movement inside from his vantage point. As with all the marks he was tasked with hunting, they were oblivious to his presence.

“Should I even ask what we’re doing up here?” said a voice from behind him, tinged with curiosity and annoyance.

But that was the usual state of the man walking toward him, his dark hair just dusting his shoulders as he carried a rifle bag across his back.

Of all the mercenaries in the Den, Synek had always been able to relate to Red. Perpetually angry with a massive chip on his shoulder and prone to violence when the mood struck him, they were practically cut from the same cloth.

But Red had settled down over the past couple of years—met a girl, had a set of twins, and was now taking on less work with the Den.

Though Winter had wanted him to call the Russian from the very beginning, Synek had already decided against it, figuring the man had better shit to do, but last night in the midst of his drunken confessions, he’d thought it better to call in the favor.

Plus, he needed to clear his damn head.

“You’re the best sniper I know,” Synek answered, dropping the binoculars as he turned.

Red had been in Los Angeles briefly more than a month ago, but their paths hadn’t crossed in years—ever since a raid they’d conducted in Albania. Since then, he looked healthier and happier, even with his surly tone. And when he dropped the bag he carried, his shirt gaped a bit at the collar, revealing the dark ink of the stars tattooed beneath his collarbone.

Russian Bratva royalty.

“I am,” he answered, no shame at his arrogance. It was just a fact. “But who has you so pissed off it warranted my presence?”

Synek had gone years without revealing who he had been before he stepped foot into the Den. No one asked questions—that was just the way it was—and he could have gone years more without ever mentioning the Wraiths to any of them.

But it was time to make peace with his past, and if he was going to take down an entire organization in a matter of days, he couldn’t do it on his own.

“You’ve ever heard of the Wraiths?”

Red frowned as he crouched, unzipping the bag and carefully removing each piece of his rifle before assembling it. “Was originally some sort of motorcycle club, wasn’t it? Till they branched out and into other shit.”

“Something like that.”

Synek only knew bits about the origins of the Wraiths—he’d come in long after the Harleys had turned to decorations and the organization had turned down a different path of organized crime.

Red seemed to study him now—from the rings on his fingers to the scuffed boots on his feet. “That explains a lot.”

“Not the point.”

“Fair enough.” He had never been one to pry. “Who’s the mark?”

“You won’t miss him. He’ll be the first through the door. Ugly mug, shaved head. Tattoo of a bird across his throat.”

“How much time do we have?”

“However much you need. They won’t be coming out until I’m ready for them.”

In the wee hours of the morning, after he’d left the safe house, he’d sorted through the list Bear had sent him and at the very top was this address. Of all the properties listed, he was most familiar with this one—and the men who ran it.

He’d thought, of all the places in the Wraiths’ possession, this one would be the last place they’d continue to return to, considering this was where he did most of his business back in those days.

But it didn’t matter one way or the other. By the time he finished here, there’d be nothing left to return to.

“What is it with you Brits and bombs?” Red asked as he laid flat on the rooftop, positioning his rifle with ease. “You have an entire holiday celebrating the man who tried to blow up Parliament, no?”

“You’re Russian,” Synek replied. “You’ve no room to talk.”

Red paused, considering that. “Fair enough. I’m not shooting to maim, right? You want them dead?”

More than anything else in the world. “Headshots if you can. I’m poetic that way.”

“If I can,” Red mumbled, as if the mere question was ludicrous. “On your mark.”

Pulling the remote detonator from his pocket, Synek thumbed the control switch, feeling a sense of euphoria for what was about to occur. This wasn’t the first time he’d ever pressed the button, but it was the first time that one of his devices wasn’t used to kill outright.

No, today, he wanted to see them die up close.

With a press of his thumb, the windows blew out of the building, sending shards of glass spraying out, smoke billowing, and sounding a piercing alarm. In seconds, the doors flung open and members of the Wraiths poured out two at a time. And right at the front of the line was exactly who Synek had expected.

He’d always cared more about saving his own arse than anyone else.

He barely made it a foot before Red was pulling the trigger, the bullet flying at impossible speeds. He was dead before he ever hit the ground.

Guns were drawn, panic spreading as they tried to locate where the shot had come from. “Blue shirt.”

Tony Recanta had been one of the few who’d gladly walked in that room with a smile on his face before he’d used every tool in his limited arsenal to inflict as much pain as he possibly could.

Synek might not have held it against him—orders were orders, after all—but there was once a time when Tony had made a stupid mistake.

A mistake that warranted a beating the likes of which he’d barely been able to walk away from. Synek had a choice to participate or suffer the consequences if he stood down. He’d chosen the latter, not wanting to be one of the nearly ten men beating the shit out of someone who couldn’t fight back.

Tony was offered a similar choice weeks ago, but he’d relished in his opportunity.

Bad fucking move.

Red shifted imperceptibly before Tony, too, was flat on the ground, unseeing eyes wide in death.

“Black hat. Scarred face. Red hair.”

Just like that, the Wraiths lost four of their highest-ranking members, and Synek hadn’t even broken a sweat. The others would live for the time being—someone needed to get the message back to Rosalie, and it wouldn’t take her long to put together who had done it.

His message was clear.

He was coming for them and would drop as many bodies as he needed to see her fall.

* * *

Iris was just sheathing a blade in her boot when the front door opened and closed, Synek walking in with a man she didn’t recognize. He looked oddly familiar, as if she’d seen his face in a newspaper or something, but for the life of her, she’d couldn’t place him.

He looked as surprised to see her as she was to see him from the way he looked her over with a brow raised before turning his gaze back to Synek. “This is new.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Synek asked, completely ignoring his friend as he focused solely on her.

“I’m sorry. I don’t recall giving you the impression that I’m a damsel in need of saving who you can tuck away when you feel like it.”

He blinked in surprise, even as his friend tried to hide a quick smile. “Are you taking the fucking piss?”

“Last I checked, you said they were coming for me. If they sent Oscar, they’ll send others. If you’re going to go out doing whatever mercenaries do, I’d rather be there than here by myself.”

“Oh, now you want my protection?” He stepped closer until he was only a hair’s breadth away.

That was the thing about Synek.

He was easy, mellow even, but not always. He could get intense, like now.

Iris stood firm, even as she had to tilt her head back to meet his dark gaze. “I’m merely taking you up on the offer you forced on me.”

“You don’t trust that I’m handling this?”

Six and a half feet of pissed-off man loomed over her. “No offense, but would you trust your life in my hands, Syn?”

“Oh, piss off,” he said, not unkindly. “That isn’t the same thing.”

“No? Go on then, give me one of your special knives you love so much and wherever Rosalie’s hiding and let me take care of it.” She held her hand out, wiggling her fingers for emphasis. “I can handle myself.”

His glare morphed into a look of censure. “Is this some sort of feminist bit? ’Cause hand to God, I know plenty of women in the trade and never doubt them for a second.”

For a moment, she actually wondered if he heard the things that actually came out of his mouth, or if he just went with the first thing that popped into his head. “Bottom line, if we’re going to be a team, let’s act like it.”

He was so close she could almost see the steady pulse at his throat. “I don’t need the distraction.”

“I wouldn’t be a distraction.”

“You’re distracting me now.”

Iris blinked, realizing he meant every word of that. “That sounds like a compliment.”

“Is that what you took out of that?” he asked dryly, the question making her smile.

“Am I wrong?”

A muscle worked in his jaw and his eyes narrowed, but he didn’t utter a word. His silence made her smile.

“You’ve got a mean bark, Syn,” she said tapping his chest, “and an even meaner bite, but I’m not afraid of you.”

“Yeah,” Synek’s friend said from across the room, casually stretching out on the couch. “She’ll do.”

* * *

Iris would be the fucking death of him.

He’d shared too much the night before, let his defenses crumble until he’d been comfortable enough to share, but even now, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to someone.

Told someone about his life and the choices he’d made.

Since leaving the Wraiths, he’d lived in a fog—an endless bubble of alcohol that left him numb. He lived day to day, week to week, existing and nothing more.

Synek had spent a matter of days with her, most of them violent, yet she was the only person he’d ever had the urge to talk to.

That wouldn’t do. He needed to get her out of his head.

“Iris, this is Red.” The Russian gave a salute from the sofa, still looking far too amused. “Red, meet my complication.”

“And I thought we were becoming friends,” she called over her shoulder as she turned and moved toward the living room where Red was.

“She set me up to be tortured by the men you got to meet this morning.”

Red’s left brow hit his hairline.

“I also saved his life by shooting my old boss in the shoulder. Not to mention I did it at the expense of my own life, considering he threatened me with bodily harm.”

Cheeky bugger. “If you’re done?”

She shrugged as she sat, propping her legs up on the side, drawing his gaze down to the tights she was wearing. The crisscrossing bands across the front offered tantalizing peeks at her tan skin.

Knowing what she had done should have been enough to dampen whatever lust he’d felt during that first night together, but while he might have wanted to forget what happened in the alley, the rest of him didn’t.

“These are the next targets,” Synek said as he grabbed the remote from the table and turned on the projector, the bare wall across from them now illuminated with two rows of photographs featuring eight men. “She’s last,” he said of the woman whose picture sat above all of them.

Red nodded, scanning each face. “Why does that one look so familiar?” he asked, gesturing to the man in the second picture on the first row.

Ricky Carter.

He’d been one of six Johnny used to send off on jobs before Synek had come along and taken his spot. Ricky was proficient at what they did for a living, but he’d been on another level.

They hadn’t taken well to Synek replacing him, though there was little he could have done about it. Regardless, once he’d left, Ricky had returned to his former role with eagerness.

But the thing about second string, they were never as good as the hitter in the number one spot, and over the years, he’d gotten sloppy.

“You remember that job about two years ago when we’d needed to infiltrate the Stargate hotel in Indianapolis?” Synek asked, waiting for the flicker of remembrance to light his eyes before continuing. “He was responsible for that.”

“Are you the reason the Kingmaker told us to stand down from that one?”

He nodded.

His work with the Wraiths had been a heavily guarded secret that he would have killed to protect—not because he was ashamed of who he’d been or what he was, but because he didn’t need the reminder.

When he had first walked into the Den, he hadn’t made the best first impression—especially after being locked in a tiny four-by-six room in pitch blackness that had made his skin feel like it was crawling for weeks.

Worse, they’d left him there for days.

By the time he was let out again, Synek’s only thought had been that of murdering whoever stood on the other side of the door. The last thing he’d wanted after he’d come down was to be further affiliated with being the savage he could be at times.

“Any other surprises you want to lay on me?”

“For now? No.”

“Then who the hell is she?” Red asked in Swedish, speaking his mother tongue.

Not many knew that little bit of information about him since he never gave his full name, and he’d adopted the accent of his mother without meaning to, but Red had been around during those early days with the Den, and he’d heard him mumbling to himself a time or two.

Iris’s narrow eyed gaze shifted back and forth between the two of them, correctly assuming they were talking about her.

Truthfully, he didn’t know how to describe who she was to him. She wasn’t a friend nor an enemy, nor a one-night stand or lover. She was something he couldn’t quite put a name to.

“It’s rude to talk in another language in front of someone,” Iris said to him, as if he’d been the one to start this conversation.

“I’ll explain later,” he told Red in the same language, never taking his eyes off her, smiling wider when her gaze darkened further.

“Was it her apartment you sent me to the other night?”

“It was,” he answered. “You kept the stuff for me?”

She’d been right when she told him they’d needed to leave before the police arrived, but what he hadn’t said was that he’d already taken care of it. Once he’d entered her old apartment building, not only had he brought in a device that temporarily disabled cell phone networks—preventing anyone from calling out—but he’d called on Red to clear the place out.

Surprisingly, the Russian had agreed with little prompting, though he had required a hefty fee.

“Back at my place.”

Synek nodded. He’d sort through it before he gave it back to her. She was cagey and held her secrets with an iron grip. He was slowly coaxing the truth out of her, and he’d learned far more than he anticipated, but he doubted she would ever tell him everything there was to know about her, and he was too impatient to wait.

And he knew, if he pressed her on it, she would ask the very question he’d been asking himself.

Why do you care?

“I’ll tell you who she is as soon as I figure that out myself.”

Iris sighed. “My disdain for you is actually growing. I didn’t think that was possible.”

“I won’t be able to use you for Ricky,” Synek finally said in English, lessening Iris’s ire slightly. “He’s currently holed away in the Roosevelt Hotel behind bulletproof glass. I’ll have to get to him the old-fashioned way.”

“Up close and personal?” Red asked.

“It’s the best strategy, but I’ll need a few favors from the Irishman.”

Red whistled. “Celt’s on vacation. He’s threatened murder if his phone rings.”

“That’s why you’re calling. He’ll be less mental if it’s you.”

“Great,” Iris said, brushing her hair over her shoulders. “There’s more of you.”

“He’d be expecting you, though, yes? Considering the four we took care of earlier.”

He would, which meant he needed to approach this differently.

“If it’s a matter of getting to him, I could take care of that.”

Synek’s gaze jerked in her direction, willing a modicum of patience to settle over him. He didn’t know why the thought bothered him, but it did all the same. “I’ve got this, dove.”

“If bulletproof glass is preventing you or him,” she said with a nod of her head in Red’s direction, “to get to Ricky, then obviously that means you have to confront him in person. We all know he’ll run as soon as he sees you. And if he’s half as paranoid about you, I suspect he wouldn’t let Red here get within ten feet of him. So let me. Men very rarely suspect women.”

He knew that to be true all too well. “He might recognize you,” Synek answered.

“I’ve never met him, and as you said, they’re probably looking for you more than they’re looking for me at this point.”

That was … true, even if he didn’t want it to be.

It had to be done.