Never in his life had he wanted to punch something more than he wanted to punch Syn in his fucking mouth.

Worse, it had little to do with the fact he’d shot him twice and nearly had a blade plunged into his neck—rather he was brimming with fucking anger because at this very moment Winter—his fucking Winter—was out there with him, and there wasn’t shit he could do about it.

He’d never been jealous of anyone or anything in his life, but right then? He wanted to tear the man’s head off just because of the way he looked at Winter.

How was he supposed to sit here and not fucking react?

“I thought my relationship with Nix was rocky before—this tops that,” Calavera said tiredly as she came up behind him. “I would say it’s good to see you, but you don’t look like you’re too happy to see me.”

Truthfully, he didn’t want to see anyone other than the girl who was chasing down another man.

A drink. He needed a fucking drink.

“She does love you, Răz. We both know that.”

—I don’t want to talk about it.—

Calavera, who’d never been good at listening, forged on. “But she loves Syn too.”

He turned to stare down at her. —You fucking think?—

Even a blind man could tell the way the two of them felt about each other. He’d known just from the way she spoke about him, but the two of them when they were together? That was something else—something that made his gut twist.

“There’s history there, Răz. A lot of it.”

—I know he saved her life. She told me.— But now he knew she hadn’t told him everything.

She definitely had never mentioned being in London with him a mere week before she was walking into the fucking Hall and flirting with him.

“It goes beyond that,” Calavera said softly. “You probably know about the training we have to do before we can sign a contract with The Kingmaker, no?”

—And?—

“And you know the kind of effect it can have on a person. You’ve met Red and Celt—they can be a bit jaded, but they endured the training and came out fine on the other side of it. Syn … Syn didn’t respond well to his.”

There was no such thing as strapping a gun to your back and calling yourself a mercenary—at least when you were one of The Kingmaker’s mercenaries.

He only wanted the best—those he knew could endure the life.

First, he broke the body, then he broke the mind, and whatever was left, he molded and shaped until he had the perfect soldier.

“Believe it or not,” she went on, “he’s pretty sane on a regular day, but when it comes to Winter, he can forget himself.”

—Is this talk supposed to make me feel better? Because you’re shit at it.—

“Don’t let Syn run you off before she’s had a chance to explain it all. Believe me— some explanations are worth hearing.”

—Didn’t you leave Nix?—

He wasn’t trying to be an asshole when he asked the question, but he knew how it sounded, and he didn’t attempt to explain what he meant by it.

He wanted her answer.

“My dear husband was working for my mother, and in case you forgot, she was the one who offered to have The Kingmaker kill me so she could attain power. I don’t think our situations are exactly the same.” Calavera had a way of cutting you down without ever raising her voice. “All I’m saying is don’t give up on each other just yet. Syn will come around.”

Răzvan shook his head. I wouldn’t.—

A sigh had left her lips before she touched his arm. “Let’s deal with the threat at hand first, and then we’ll figure everything else out.”

Răzvan had a feeling the former would be the easiest of the two.

* * *

London was no longer something she could ignore or push to the back of her thoughts because she wasn’t ready to deal with it.

It was because of London that she found herself caught up in a shitstorm of her own making.

It was time to face that truth.

* * *

It only took stepping out of Heathrow Airport to remind her how much she missed coming to London, even as the sky promised nothing but rain.

Thick, gray clouds littered the sky, obscuring the bright blue beneath, but she didn’t feel gloom at the sight of it.

These skies felt too much like home.

Plus, excitement was humming inside her and bad weather or not, nothing would ruin this day for her.

Especially after the week she had.

Winter had grown used to the jobs being easy and had never considered the price many had to pay in this life. She could still feel the weight of California on her shoulders, though it was over.

No, she couldn’t think about that right now.

London was her chance to unwind.

It would be fun.

No murder.

No Kingmaker.

Fun with the one person she always had the most fun with.

And with what she had planned, tonight would change everything.

She slipped into the back seat of a black cab, rattling off the address as she glanced down at her phone to check the time.

She’d only just turned it back on after the hours’ long flight, and all the messages she’d missed came rolling in.

Most of them she skipped over with little interest, but there was one from Răzvan that made her pause.

It felt wrong to ignore him.

Sure, they had only been talking everyday for months, and it wouldn’t be completely unreasonable to respond later once she got settled.

But a part of her felt weird texting him while she was here in London.

Not because of Syn, she told herself.

Definitely not because she had anything to hide.

But all the same, she put her phone on mute and clicked out of the message before tucking the device away, looking out the windows as the city shifted to centuries old buildings and cobblestone streets.

There was so much character to London, but it was nothing compared to the East End.

It was beautiful with a colorful history.

Like the man who called it home.

Before long, she arrived in front of an old pub, a place that had been on this very corner longer than she’d been alive.

“Help with your bag, missus?” the cabbie asked in a gruff tone, already sliding out of the front seat and coming around to open the door for her.

She might have landed in London more than an hour ago, but it was only now starting to feel real.

Not just because of who she was about to see, but why.

Syn wasn’t a big fan of surprises, but had she told him she was coming—or even hinted as to the real reason behind her spontaneous visit—he would have talked her out of it.

Demanded she stay where she was.

It was now or never.

The pub smelled of Guinness, fish and chips, and other aromas that shouldn’t mix but still smelled like comfort.

Old man Jenkins stood behind the bar, a man as ancient as time itself, but he could still serve a drink like no one’s business.

He gave her a toothy grin as she approached. “How’s me favorite girl?”

“Exhausted, but glad to be back.” No matter how often she came here, it wasn’t often enough. “You know how that goes. Do you know where he is? I was sure he’d be in here.”

His name was practically inscribed on one of the tattered barstools.

“Went round to the garage, I reckon. Should still be there.”

She might have kept the smile on her face, but inside she was worried.

Syn went to that garage for only one reason, and by the time he walked out of it once he finished, the result was never pretty.

“I’ll just go find him.”

Before he could think to protest—he knew Syn didn’t like her coming to the garage while he was there—she slipped back out of the bar and headed down the street.

It wasn’t a long walk, ten minutes at most, but once she arrived, her palms were damp as she spotted the light spilling out of the overhead window.

Syn was definitely in there.

She headed inside then down a hidden stairway that led to a private room that most people didn’t know about.

She wasn’t even supposed to know about it.

An electric saw sounded before she even hit the doorway, the sound making her stomach turn over. There was no guarantee what she would find on the other side of the door, and if she were smarter, she would have stayed where she stood instead of continuing forward.

But she couldn’t stop herself.

Now or never.

Pushing the door open, the whir of the saw grew louder until it was all she could hear, but it was definitely not all she could see once she was standing inside the room, her booted feet squeaking on the plastic tarp.

Syn hit the power switch as he caught sight of her, turning the saw off. It took every bit of effort continue to look at him rather than what on the table in front of him.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said darkly, snapping off his gloves as he came around the table, briefly blocking the view of the table and the body he was turning into pieces.

With the fluorescent light shining, she could make out that the body, or what was left of it, had once belonged to a man.

And if her eyes weren’t failing her, there was a severed leg just hanging out on the floor in a pool of its own blood.

Sick.

She was going to be sick.

“It’s been months, Syn,” she said, tearing her eyes away from the body part to look back at him.

She knew all about the mercenaries’ specialties.

One was a sniper.

Another a thief.

A third, a master at manipulating situations.

Syn, on the other hand, his specialty lay elsewhere.

He was The Kingmaker’s cleaner.

When she had first learned what he did, she hadn’t understood what he meant—she didn’t get it at all, not until she saw up close and personal just what his job was for the Den.

“Has it then?” he asked then noted her discomfort being in this room. “Come on, little miss.”

The air didn’t smell as coppery once they were out of the confines of that room.

She could almost pretend as if everything was right and normal.

He tucked a cigarette between his lips. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“Because you would have told me not to.”

He glanced back at the building they were leaving. “For fucking good reason, yeah?”

“You know, you could just say, I’m happy to see you, Winter. Is that a new dress, Winter? Yes, thank you for noticing.”

He smiled brightly as he always did when she made a horrible impression of his accent.

“I’m always happy to see you, luv. You know that. But it doesn’t explain what you’re doing here now.”

She was here for the future.

For their future.

“A drink,” she said instead, leading him back to the pub. “I came to buy you a drink.”

“All right you, it’s time to get you home,” she muttered as she pulled Syn’s arm around her shoulders, supporting some of his weight as he came off the stool.

He was far steadier on his feet than he should have been considering the number of drinks he’d downed, but all the same, she helped him along.

“Oh where’s the fun in that, luv,” he whispered in her ear. “We were just getting to the good bits.”

If by ‘good bits,’ he meant drinking enough to take down an elephant, he wasn’t wrong.

There were some jobs that affected him harder than others. She wasn’t sure who was on the table back in his chop shop, but whoever it was had had some effect on him if he was drinking this much.

It could work in her favor, though, because this was her chance to show him that she could help fight his demons. That she could get his mind out of the dark places he went when he let himself feel too much.

Tonight was the night she would confess everything—all the feelings she’d been holding in and failing to hide, though he had seemed to never to catch on.

But Syn didn’t often see what was right in front of him, considering how often he was lost in his own head.

Sometimes, he still treated her like a kid, someone for him to protect and watch over, which was nice in and of itself, but not when she needed him to see her as his equal.

Tonight, she wouldn’t give him a choice.

She was eighteen now, fully legal—if that was his hang-up—and she fully intended to show him exactly what he was missing.

That was why she was in a dress about a size too small and heels she could hardly walk in, but soon, this would all be worth it.

By the time they reached his apartment, Winter was more than ready to kick the stupid heels off and forego the entire plan—at least until she got the door open and them inside.

Syn didn’t waste time in dragging off his shirt and tossing it aside before running his hands through his short hair.

She watched him walk, captivated by the way his muscles flexed—he was a hundred and eighty pounds of bad decisions and aggression.

Sometimes, even she didn’t know whether it was smarter to be afraid of him or lust after him.

Stepping out of her heels made it easier for her to cross the room. Her dress rode up with each step she took, but she didn’t attempt to fix it, not when he was finally looking at her.

His brow furrowed as he regarded her. “When you’d put that on?”

Her smile faltered, but she forced it back into place. “Do you like it?”

Already anticipating his denial, she tried not to get her hopes up until she felt his hand span her waist, turning her boldly before she was facing him again, a bit breathless and eager.

This was it.

This was their moment.

“It’s nice,” he whispered, almost as if the words were forced out of him. “A bit short though, innit?”

“Not at all.”

His hands came up to cup her face.

“Why are you really here?”

Now or never.

“I came for you.”

He studied her face a moment, longer than he would have had he not been drinking, but when his brain caught up with him, he shook his head, his hands tightening on her. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

That might have been true, but she didn’t care.

She kissed him anyway, and after only a brief hesitation, he kissed her back.

* * *

How easy things had seemed at that moment.

She had been so sure that moment would be the start of their relationship.

How wrong she was.

That night had changed everything, just not in the way she expected.

If she hadn’t gone to London, she wouldn’t have wanted to come to New York to get out of her head.

And if she hadn’t come to New York, she wouldn’t have crossed paths with Răzvan again.

Things happened for a reason, even if she wasn’t quite sure how it would all work out.

The first time Syn was ever truly angry with her, she’d felt it down to her bones—she felt the fear so many others did before he hurt them.

Logically, she knew he would never hurt her, no matter how far over the edge he went, but he made a scary fucking sight when he was pissed.

Now, she would have much rather been dealing with an angry Syn than the one she had now.

Tonight, there was no yelling then mutterings for hours until he finally calmed down.

He was quiet.

She couldn’t quite name the emotion Syn was feeling—she only knew that she didn’t like it, and worse, Răzvan was angry with her and that only made her feel guiltier.

She’d been keeping him a secret when he hadn’t deserved that, and because she’d wanted to find Syn to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

He didn’t understand that Syn could be a danger to himself, that she knew the kind of bad habits he got into when he was in a dark place—especially not when it was because of her.

“Syn,” she called, slowly walking up behind him.

He didn’t seem to hear her, spinning his knife around in his hand as he stared out at nothing. The room was empty save for a metal table and two chairs, but on his way in, he’d turned on every possible light the room had to offer.

No shadows.

Gingerly, she touched the wrist of the hand he was spinning the knife in, stilling his motions. Beneath the ink were scars—scars she knew were from a fire his mother had started when she tried to kill him the first time.

Syn’s life made hers look like a fairy tale. She knew better than anyone the pain and tragedy he’d suffered as a boy and then again when he’d had to face age-old fears once he went through the training.

No one knew—and she would never tell anyone so long as she lived—why he hadn’t taken well to the training the way so many others had.

That wasn’t her secret to tell.

“You love him?” Syn asked once she was within view and he could turn those dark eyes up to her, his gaze unblinking.

“I do.”

“You’ll leave,” he said with a shake of his head.

Even as dangerous as he seemed, beneath the surface, he was vulnerable. “I’d never leave you, Syn. I’m not leaving you.”

But he wouldn’t understand what she was saying, not tonight. Not when it was all too fresh in his head, and he was lost in the midst of them.

“I don’t know if I know how to share. Never been good at that.”

“Me loving Răz doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

“But you’ll still walk away, no?”

She couldn’t respond, not when she didn’t know what to say.

“Why didn’t you tell me about him?”

“Because of this,” she said gesturing around them. “Because you overreact.”

“Fuck your Romanian for a moment, yeah? How about you tell me what the fuck you’ve gotten yourself involved in.”

“Will you come back in?” This wasn’t a story she wanted to tell twice—it wasn’t even a story she wanted to tell once.

“One rule, Winter. I gave you one little rule, and you didn’t even give me that.”

And she was paying the price for it.

* * *

It took very little to convince Syn to come back into the room, but once Răzvan and the others joined them, the tension was so thick in the room that Winter felt like she was suffocating.

There was a clear divide—The Wild Bunch on one side of the room, Syn on the other, with her and Calavera somewhere in the middle.

And she hated every second of it.

She hadn’t been under any delusion that Răzvan and Syn would get along the first time they met—she knew them too well to ever think that—but this was worse.

Worse because this went well beyond fighting. They could very well kill each other.

And worse because she didn’t want to have to choose.

“So,” Calavera started, pushing her long hair back over her shoulder. “Who the hell is James Greystone, and what does he want with you?”

Winter glanced over at Răzvan. “It’s a bit of a long—”

“We have time.”

Sighing, she explained everything—from the moment she’d come to New York and went to Piston’s event where the game was announced to recruiting Răzvan to help her, and ultimately, getting the files they needed.

“We were supposed to be done after that,” she went on. “We had the money, and no one else was the wiser, but my friend—”

“That fucking idiot,” Fang mumbled.

“—decided it would be a good idea to blackmail one of the men in the file. He’d brought the idea to me, but I shut it down and erased every trace of the file he had on his computer, but he must have made another copy.”

She should have double-checked.

She knew better than anyone how Ollie had a tendency to not back down when he was determined to do something, but she’d foolishly thought he would listen to her.

“So what’s he want, this Greystone?” Syn asked.

“Besides the file Ollie has? He wants information that only I can get him, and if I don’t get it for him, he’ll kill my friend.”

“Explain.”

They all looked at her, waiting for an answer, but this was not one she wanted to give. Not just because she feared Syn’s reaction to it, but because no one was supposed to know about the system she’d created for The Kingmaker.

He’d forbidden it.

But she didn’t have a choice, and her friend’s life was hanging in the balance.

“I’m not officially a part of the Den,” she hedged, looking from Răzvan to Syn, seeing the way both of their expressions darkened. “But I, occasionally, do work for The Kingmaker.”

Calavera sighed. “And by occasionally, you mean …”

“Anything digital, I take care of.”

“For fuck’s sake!” Syn looked like he was ready to send his fist through the wall. “What’ve I said?”

“You act like I have a choice,” Winter snapped back, losing her patience. “Name someone besides his brother who’s actually said no to him. I’ll wait.” When Syn ground his teeth but refused to answer, she trudged on. “When he asked me to do it, why wouldn’t I agree? It was easy.”

“We’ll deal with him later,” Calavera spoke up.

“Why don’t we just kill him?” Thanatos asked. “A little murder never hurt anyone.”

Syn blew out a breath. “Because he has her friend. If you kill him before you have the girl, she dies. Are all of you always this thick?”

Something whistled through the air, a blur before embedding in the wall next to Syn’s head. She spun around to see, her eyes widening at the shaking handle of the knife.

Without taking his eyes off them, Syn reached up and touched two fingers to his ear, red staining them once he drew them back.

Thanatos was grinning like an idiot, but Winter knew he hadn’t been the one to throw it.

It was a clear message—Syn wasn’t the only one talented with knives.

“As entertaining as another fight might be,” Calavera spoke up, “we have bigger problems to deal with. I’m assuming there’s a deadline?”

“Two days from now.”

“Then we have a day to find where your friend is being kept. If we can’t, we go to plan b.”

“B? What’s plan b?”

“We give him the information he wants, get your friend back, then let the boys have their fun. Where’s Ollie? We’re going to need whatever information he has.”

“If he’s smart,” Winter said, “he’ll be long gone.”

“He’s in the trunk,” Invictus said, speaking up for the first time.

“The trunk?” she asked in confusion.

By trunk, he literally meant trunk since that was where Invictus was holding him once he led the way outside to where they’d parked.

She knew, from seeing the garage at the loft, that they had a number of cars at their disposal, but she was so used to seeing them on their bikes that she hadn’t expected to find Ollie tied up and gagged in the trunk of Invictus’ car, his eyes wide and watery as he begged for his life.

She should have felt bad for him, considering the fear in his gaze whenever he looked at Răzvan, but she was too annoyed by him to feel anything other than that.

This was his fault.

None of this would have ever happened if he hadn’t done exactly what she told him not to do.

“The files you have on Greystone or anyone else for that matter, I need them. Your sister’s life depends on them.”

“I-I didn’t think this would happen!” he stuttered out once his gag was ripped free.

“It doesn’t matter what you thought,” Winter said with a shake of her head. “It only matters that we fix it before something happens to Tessa.”

His regret and apologies wouldn’t help them now.

Turning her back on him, she started back inside. “I have work to do. Tell Syn where you stashed the file.”

“Wait, no! Don’t leave me with him!”

She didn’t care about his pleas for once.

Not if she wanted to make sure everyone made it out of this unharmed.

Well … everyone except him.