Betrayal was the only thing he saw before the wall exploded around him, his ears ringing, but Synek reached for Iris and tackled her to the floor, pain lighting up his side as he hit the concrete hard, careful to keep her protected from the debris.

He only allowed himself a moment before he let his training take over.

But as he got to his feet, pulling out his own gun as he did, the only thing Synek saw was the wall of black moving into the room.

The first one through the wreckage wore a tribal mask that covered his entire face, the wood intricately carved with slashes of red across the front. He barely spared the Kingmaker a glance before he was moving to Belladonna, and had he not been looking at them, Synek might have missed their exchange.

The way her mouth set in a mulish line, but she willingly moved to the masked man’s side.

Whoever he was, she knew him, but she hadn’t been expecting him.

And worse, he wasn’t alone.

“Go,” he told Iris. Reaching for her as he spoke, he practically shoved her in the opposite direction as he forced all attention on him and away from her, as well as the Kingmaker. He might have been blown to the other side of the room, but he wasn’t letting it faze him.

He was still staring at the hole in the wall Belladonna and the man who’d come to retrieve her left out of.

“Stay out of the building!” he called after Iris, making sure he got her nod before he had to put her to the back of his mind.

She would be safe, he told himself, as he faced the men moving into the building.

She could handle herself.

But it wasn’t this lot Synek was concerned with. He wanted the one wearing the black half mask.

He took off, using his knowledge of the facility to navigate the hallways, his gaze scanning this way and that. Waiting ... waiting ... there.

But he had been wrong in thinking the Jackal was after the Kingmaker solely. Instead, he was in the main room where Winter would usually be tucked behind the screens, yanking out a thumb drive from a laptop there.

Now, Synek understood why the man was as feared as he was. It wasn’t often he met someone taller than he was, but the Jackal was. Broad all over and an arsenal strapped to him, he looked like the weapon he was meant to be.

But that wasn’t going to stop him from putting a bullet in the man.

“You took someone who I want back,” Synek said as he crossed the floor, letting one of his blades drop into his hands. “You tell me where he is, and I’ll only skin you a little.”

If he didn’t ... well, they both knew how that would end.

The Jackal pocketed the device in his vest, stepping out from behind the desk. He didn’t speak, and if Synek couldn’t see the rise and fall of his chest, he might have wondered if the man even breathed.

He was still.

Calculating.

Waiting.

“Grimm,” Synek said as he entered the room farther. “Tell me where he is.”

The Jackal still didn’t speak, but he did mirror his actions. His eyes stayed on him from the moment Synek had his attention.

Analyzing, Synek thought. The man was analyzing his every move.

Fine.

If he didn’t want to speak, Synek would give him a reason to.

He launched the blade across the room, hiding his surprise well when the Jackal caught it by the blade, the gloves he wore adequate enough protection against the sharpened metal. And as quickly as he caught it, the Jackal was throwing it back at him, and only quick reflexes prevented him from getting stabbed.

The knife might not have bothered him, but it was now as if the man had been given permission to attack. He moved fast, and within seconds, it was obvious the man was expertly trained.

Maybe even a little more so than Synek because before he saw it coming, the Jackal landed one punch to his side, the other to his jaw before Synek landed a kick to the man’s chest that sent him back a few steps.

Another punch like that and Synek was sure the man would break his ribs. Even as it pained him as nothing else had, he shuffled back to his feet, but the Jackal’s attention was no longer on him but on something standing behind him.

“So you’re the one the Den’s been looking for?” came the robotic voice from behind the mask, but the cadence of his speech told Synek it was Fang even before the man stepped around him.

Synek, even as loathed as he was to admit it, was happy to see the other man.

Fang, he realized, was the only one not carrying a gun in his hands. The rest of the Wild Bunch two steps behind him, moved as one, synchronized and precise.

The Jackal, though he had yet to move from where he stood, didn’t offer a response to Fang’s question.

“This won’t end well for you.”

A second passed. Another.

The Jackal made a gesture, just a crook of his finger, that sparked the Wild Bunch into reacting.

They attacked as one, but even as the Wild Bunch was a force to be reckoned with, the Jackal didn’t falter under the onslaught. He met them punch for punch, blocking the majority of the damage they thought to inflict.

He moved with such effortless precision that it almost appeared as if he knew what move they would make before they did it.

Synek reached for his spare gun, and even as dirt and smoke made it hard to see, he still aimed. And he just had the man in his crosshairs until Fang broke pattern, taking a step back when he would have taken a step forward, and with the counterbalance, he landed a punch to the Jackal’s face that knocked off the man’s mask.

Then, as he straightened, his blue eyes glacial, the Wild Bunch froze.

All of them.

There was one particular rule they all followed, those Romanians—one that distinguished them from any other mercenary group that Synek knew of.

They never removed their masks.

And before today, as far as Synek knew, they never even spoke.

Yet the moment the Jackal was unmasked and that suspended moment of shock filtered away, Fang reached up and ripped his off, not even caring as it hit the floor at his feet.

The others followed suit, one after the other, until he was staring at four familiar faces.

The look on Fang’s face made him pause, though, and he questioned what he was seeing.

There was shock in his gaze, utter confusion, and disbelief—it was as if he was seeing a ghost.

“Sebastian?”

As the name registered in his mind, Synek immediately thought of Winter and what little she had told him about the Wild Bunch and where they’d come from.

Of a brother they had lost.

Sebastian ... the orphan who’d died.

But whether the man meant something to them, or nothing at all, he didn’t mean a fucking thing to Synek. He was responsible for the havoc wreaked on his brothers. He had nearly killed the Kingmaker, and if none of those things mattered to Synek, it was that the Jackal was responsible for Grimm being taken prisoner and kept locked away in a cell somewhere that they couldn’t reach.

He would make that fucking Romanian pay for that.

“Eu sunt frate,” It’s me, brother, Fang said, a profound grief in his eyes. “Christophe.”

If the Jackal recognized him, his expression didn’t reflect it, and that was only made clearer a moment later when he asked, “Who the hell is Sebastian?”

Synek had a clear shot.

But whether it was because he shifted his aim or the Jackal noticed him in the background, nearly to the moment he pulled the trigger, the Jackal grabbed the man closest to him—Thanatos, Synek’s mind provided instantly—and used him as a human shield.

“No!”

It took only a split second for Synek to realize what was happening, his aim shifting only the slightest amount, but it was enough to ensure the bullet caught Thanatos in his vest rather than his head.

The exclamation came from Fang or Invictus or both, because just as quickly as Synek lowered his weapon, the Jackal was shoving Thanatos at the spidered window across the room, and with the force of his weight, Thanatos shattered it ... and fell.

Invictus and Tăcut both flew across the room, Invictus grabbing Thanatos’s leg before he could fall three stories to the ground below. He would have gone through the window too had Tăcut not grabbed him, every muscle in his arms straining to hold both their weight.

Fang forgot they were fighting on the same side—that their goal was the same.

When he turned this time, that fury was for Synek alone.

But before he could turn his weapon on him, the room started crumbling around them.

Synek cursed, ducking the debris as he raced as fast as he could back out of the building.

His world had turned to ashes and ruin within minutes.

And as he made it out of the building, he knew everything was forever changed.

* * *

When silence reigned, and the dust cleared, Belladonna was gone—nowhere to be found in the rubble and barren building. She had disappeared once more, as easily as a thief in the night, leaving chaos in her wake.

As the chaos wound down, Synek felt the weight of everything that had happened slowly bearing down on him. He didn’t think about the pain in his chest or his leg as he stumbled through the rubble, trying to remember the way he thought he’d seen Iris go before he had taken off after the Jackal.

The job said he should look for other members of the Den, or more importantly, he should ensure that the Kingmaker hadn’t been harmed, and if he had, to get him medical help as soon as possible.

But there was only one person on his mind as he searched the wreckage.

She was the only one who mattered.

He should have known, even before he came across her kneeling in the middle of the field, where she had gone. He imagined that if their roles were reversed, he would be exactly where she was.

But knowing why she was kneeling there, her gaze never lifting from the body she leaned over, he felt a pang in his chest.

He had failed her.

“Syn!”

Instinct had him turning, finding Winter looking frantic, the relief in her apparent as she hurried toward him. Her shadow wasn’t too far behind, though his mask was gone and abandoned somewhere, lost among the sea of destruction around them.

But even as a part of him was glad she wasn’t hurt, and that the only injury he could see on her was a small cut to her cheek, he was more worried about Iris.

Iris, who still hadn’t spoken.

Explosions had gone off for what felt like ages, followed quickly by the sharp crack of bullets flying. Dozens of people had run screaming, believing their lives were about end because of the kill squad Belladonna had called on, yet now, there was nothing.

Silence.

Nothing good ever followed.

“Ir—”

“I trusted you.”

Three little words shouldn’t have wounded him the way they did. “Iris, I’m—”

“Don’t say you’re sorry.” Her voice caught at the end. Her hands balled into trembling fists on her thighs. “This was what he wanted all along, right? The governor dead.”

Synek wanted to speak again, to explain, but he could see she wasn’t hearing him. She probably didn’t even see him, not with the way she still had yet to look away from the dead man.

But he had to try. “I didn’t know he would kill him. That wasn’t—”

“But you’re the killer,” she said, her gaze finally lifting to his, and at the pain there, he almost wished she hadn’t. “That’s your job, isn’t it? You’re his cleaner. If there’s someone to maim and murder and dispose of inside of a ditch somewhere, he calls on you. Because that’s what matters, isn’t it? It’s about what the Kingmaker wants, and everyone else be fucked.”

There wasn’t anger in her voice when she spoke.

Anger, he might have been able to take. More than anything, he wanted her anger because that he could deal with. That he could fix.

But heartache ... he didn’t know how to fix a broken heart.

It wasn’t just about the ex-governor being dead, and it wasn’t about the vengeance she hadn’t been able to mete out. It was about her father.

The one true innocent in all of this.

The only life who would truly be affected by the governor’s death.

The Kingmaker could still carry on, doing as he always did. Even Belladonna, who had set all this into motion, wasn’t truly affected by all of this. Undoubtedly, she had accounted for this very moment.

But Iris hadn’t.

She had believed from the very beginning when she had absolutely no reason to trust him that he would be able to do what he had promised her. He would be able to get her father out of prison.

Not just breaking him out where he would be forced to live like a fugitive for the rest of his life, but as a free man as he should have always been.

Instead, he was the reason she had failed, and worse, she was right to be upset with him.

He did know the Kingmaker. He knew the man cared about himself more than he cared about anything, and ensuring justice prevailed for a man he didn’t know or could prove to be beneficial to him was not a priority for him.

“I can fix this,” Synek said, though he had no way of knowing just how to go about that. He only knew that no amount of money, or political offices, or affiliation would keep him from doing right by her.

“No,” Iris answered, finally moving to her feet as if she realized that Spader wouldn’t be drawing another breath. “You can’t, but I don’t want you to anyway. You’ve done enough.”

He reached for her without thinking, trying to grab her hand, but she jerked away from him before he could even gain an inch.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wishing he could show her just how much.

“Do you love me, Synek?”

He felt that question like a punch to the chest, but he had never expected to hear her say it like that—with sadness and regret in her voice. This wasn’t the way he was supposed to tell her.

“Of course, I do,” he answered without hesitation. Without thought.

If there was nothing else he was sure of, he was sure at that moment that he loved her more than anything in the world.

“Then don’t follow me,” she replied, finally looking away from him as a tear fell down her cheek. “Let me go.”

She could have asked him for anything at that moment—anything in the world—and he would have set everything on fire in his efforts to get it for her.

Anything but that.

“I can’t.”

Those words didn’t eat at him the way they should have. He had gone years without ever showing weakness. That was the last promise he had made to himself before he ever stepped foot in the Wraith compound.

Don’t ever let anyone see your weakness.

He lived and breathed by those words, but as he stood across from the woman he loved and she asked him to let her go, Synek didn’t give a fuck about weakness.

He just wanted her to stay.

“Don’t ask that of me.”

“Don’t ask me to stay,” she fired back at him, and while he had thought he wanted her anger, this ... this wasn’t what he wanted.

That rage intertwined with her sadness. The way it felt as if it was sinking into his bones and twisting him up inside.

“I don’t want to hate you,” she whispered, unable to meet his gaze, “not when I’ve started to love you. I’m not strong enough wake up next to you knowing that ...”

She couldn’t finish, but he knew what she wasn’t saying.

Iris turned her back to him, and Synek was just a step behind her until he felt Winter’s fingers grip his arm. He was seconds from shaking her off until she spoke.

“Let her go.”

“I can’t. Didn’t you fucking hear that? I won’t.”

If anything, her gaze was sadder than Iris’s had been. “Right now, you have to.”

Synek had a choice.

If he really wanted to get to her, he could. He wouldn’t let anyone stand in his way, but nothing he could say would ease her pain. Nothing would make the Spader’s death easier on her.

But if he wanted her forgiveness ... if he wanted to make this up to her, he had to give her something she wanted in return.

And even as it fucking gutted to let her go, he stood there and bore it with the knowledge that he wouldn’t stop until he had her back.

* * *

White noise.

That was all Synek heard as he rode in the back seat of the truck, his gaze unfocused as his mind turned in and over on itself. He was fine a moment ago, when he’d been standing in the middle of that field watching his one turn and walk away from him. Or at least, he thought he had.

But Synek had always been good at pretending. He hid what hurt him most.

Pain didn’t affect him the way it affected others. He buried it as deep as it could go and refused to even acknowledge it. Sometimes, he didn’t even notice the agony he was in until much later when the adrenaline finally subsided and he was left with nothing but his thoughts.

He should have known that this, this would cut him. He should have known he would feel her absence like a bleeding wound once she was no longer with him.

“Syn ... are you okay?”

The question came from his left, soft and concerned, and Synek didn’t have to look in Winter’s direction to know she was trying to meet his gaze through the rearview mirror from where she sat behind the wheel.

Before they had left, while he stood staring at the spot where Iris had once been, Winter had sent her Romanian off, promising to see him later. It was clear he hadn’t wanted to linger, not with what he had just learned about his presumed dead brother and the absence of the rest of the Wild Bunch, but he had, for Winter.

Because he was loyal to her above all others.

It was what a good man would do.

Synek had hated the very idea of Tăcut for entirely selfish reasons, but the man reminded him on various occasions that his doubts and fears for Winter were unfounded. He was the better choice for her.

Yet Synek had stood there and let the ex-governor die without preventing it from happening. A part of him hadn’t expected the Kingmaker to actually kill him, even as well as he knew the man.

The Kingmaker wasn’t like other killers—he didn’t kill indiscriminately. If the world was his chess board, the Kingmaker made sure that every piece he captured was with purpose. So foolish as it had been, Synek had believed it was merely a ploy to get Belladonna to confess to something when the Kingmaker pulled out a gun Synek hadn’t even known the other man was carrying.

Besides, he didn’t ever have to pull a trigger. Not when he had a team of mercenaries to do it for him.

There had been nothing for the Kingmaker to gain from it, and worse, Synek’s instinct had stopped Iris from being able to put a bullet in the back of his head.

Instinct.

He had been trained to put the Kingmaker’s life above all others. He was paid for the privilege. Synek had chosen that instead of doing better by her.

The safe house came into view, this one far more heavily guarded than where he and Iris were staying. Even the thought had his hand twitching.

He had gone two weeks without smoking a cigarette—hadn’t even felt the impulse—but now, he was reaching up for the spare he always kept behind his ear, except this time there was nothing there.

No little stick of nicotine to blur the edges of his anger.

“We’ll find somebody else,” Winter said as she drove them up the twisting hill, unaware that he was already counting down the seconds until they were at the very top.

And the closer they came, the quieter Synek’s thoughts grew.

Focus. He would need to focus for what he was about to do.

“There’s always somebody else. A witness. The person who actually did the killing. Whoever or whatever, I promise I’ll help in any way I can. Just ... just don’t do something stupid. Don’t do anything rash.”

Once they parked, Synek pulled a pair of cuffs out of his pocket, careful to keep his hands low and out of her sight. As furious as he might have been with bloodlust rushing in his veins, he wouldn’t keep making the same mistake.

He wasn’t going to risk her too.

“If we—”

As she was turning, he grabbed her wrist, fastening a cuff to her wrist and locking the other one around the steering wheel.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Bullets don’t always have names, little miss. I wouldn’t want a stray one to hit you.”

Because even as his thoughts were clear, they wouldn’t stay this way. He wouldn’t always be in complete control of himself. He wouldn’t always see who was waiting at the other end of his gun because if someone stood in his way—and he knew that she would to save him from himself—he couldn’t risk what he might do.

“You’re not ...” She looked from him to where they were and the implications behind it. She hadn’t realized she had driven him to the one place he really didn’t need to be. “You can’t. He’ll have you killed and then what? You think she would want you to die? Synek, you’re not thinking clearly.”

Maybe he wasn’t.

But he was rectifying a mistake, and that was all he cared about.

“I’ll try not to kill your Romanian.” The closest thing to a promise he could manage.

He was halfway out of the truck when she screamed his name, yanking uselessly at the cuff as if that might loosen its hold on her. He shut the door against her cries of protest and the panic in her voice.

“Syn, you didn’t ...”

One of the guards, a man whose name Synek didn’t know and had never bothered to learn, was still talking as he came around the car, his eyes widening when he saw his state. But he didn’t have to know the man’s name to remember him from his time with the Den.

Right now, he was just an obstacle.

“Move,” Synek said before he pulled the gun from the holster at his back, the silencer already firmly attached. “Or be moved.”

“Losing your mind again, Syn?” the man asked with a smirk, making the foolish mistake of turning his nose up.

Synek shrugged. “Probably.”

It took two seconds for the man to realize his mistake—the two seconds in which it took for him to aim at the man’s face and pull the trigger. Winter was screaming, he thought, her voice muffled behind the steel and glass she was stuck behind.

He didn’t look back as he stepped over the man’s body and shoved open the door, startling the man standing on the other side. A heartbeat passed as he looked at Synek in surprise before his gaze dropped to the gun he was holding.

His fight or flight instincts were kicking in, adrenaline pumping through his veins. There was a simple gold band on his finger, one Synek noticed only because he started to reach for his weapon but wisely seemed to think better of this before he quickly shuffled to the side.

The others who guarded these halls and formed a line to the room where the Kingmaker was waiting weren’t so lucky. They all chose to take a stand, and Synek had no problem showing them the error of their ways.

And the more he killed, the more his mind broke apart.

He couldn’t feel anything anymore. He was lost to the carnage.

By the time he got to the last man standing, the same one who’d smiled and laughed as he whispered stories in Iris’s ear about him, Synek dropped his gun and pulled out a knife, letting the blade turn end over end in his hand.

Every emotion flickered across the man’s face. Fear replaced by anger replaced by animosity and finally, for whatever fucking reason, the man looked smug. As if he knew a secret Synek didn’t.

But Synek didn’t care enough to figure out why. Instead, he launched his blade across the floor and watched it sink into the man’s chest. Three long strides and he was across the room, yanking it free before he shoved it into the side of the man’s throat, waiting until his shocked gaze lifted as he fought to breathe before giving it a hard twist.

His heart didn’t speed up.

He wasn’t disgusted at all by what he had done, or even the number of people he’d cut through.

Synek didn’t care about anything anymore.

The Kingmaker was exactly where he expected him to be, seated behind a polished oak desk. Had his collared shirt not been untucked and stained with both dirt and blood, Synek might have wondered if they had both been there when his facility was breached.

Not even three hours ago, the man had looked as if he was on the razor’s edge. Not because of the ex-governor and his taunts, but because of the woman he’d been staring at right before he pulled the trigger. It seemed he was the only one not thinking of the right person.

But before he could focus solely on the Kingmaker, the Wild Bunch were there, two on either side of him, their gazes all a mix of contempt and fury. Synek was getting damn tired of people looking at him as if he was crazy. As if the carnage around him could be lain at anyone else’s feet but the Kingmaker.

“You get one warning,” Synek said, his voice flat, his gaze slicing over to Nix. “Move.”

“I understand that you’re upset,” Nix said, and unlike the others, he didn’t show his emotions. “But let’s not regress to our baser urges.”

Synek wasn’t listening. Instead, his gaze had gone back to the Kingmaker who could very well see the body in the hallway as a pool of blood tracked into the room. He didn’t have to explain why he had done what he’d done, or even why he had a gun pointed at the man’s head.

“This what you wanted, yeah? You wanted me to kill for you, yeah? How d’you like my offering?”

Every person in this room knew what Synek was capable of. They knew, just as well as the man who boldly stared him down, that it would only take a second before the man’s life was ended no matter what they wanted to do.

They all had their talents, the mercenaries of the Den.

Red was the sniper. Celt, a master thief.

And even before she had an assassin guarding her back, Calavera had been a master manipulator.

But Synek ... he wasn’t brought into the Den because they thought to make him a better man. He was brought in because of what he could do with a knife in his hands. There was no conundrum inside him when he needed to kill, or at least, never at the moment.

His guilt and need to drink the memories away came later.

For now, he just wanted blood on his hands.

“Be very sure of what you’re doing right now, Synek, because you won’t enjoy how I respond.”

“I told you I needed him alive,” Synek said, taking a step closer. “I made that really fucking clear, didn’t I? And you have the nerve to stand there looking down at me because you knew, didn’t you? You found an out.”

It was the carelessness on his face that irked him the most. Because he knew that expression, even wore it often, and that was the face of a man who still thought he was in charge of the game.

But he seemed to be the only one who finally understood what was happening as Calavera asked, “What are you talking about?”

“You really think either of them give a fuck about each other?” he asked, gesturing between the Wild Bunch and the Kingmaker. “No, but see, he has something they want, isn’t that right? Since Belladonna is holding their mate, they’ll do whatever he wants so long as that means they get to him first.”

At some point, though Synek didn’t know when, the Kingmaker had come up with a new strategy. He had known the way Synek would respond to the ex-governor’s death—he’d accounted for it. Which only meant that to save his own arse from the threat coming at him, he had to turn to them for help.

None of them, Synek realized, truly mattered to the man in front of him. They were all just pawns used to do his bidding. It suddenly became clear at that moment that in the grand scheme of things, Synek didn’t matter.

Not to the Kingmaker.

Calavera looked as if she wanted to respond, to say something in defense of the man he was currently staring down, but she couldn’t. There were no words, and more, she probably finally saw the same truth he had.

“I can tell you now, mate,” Synek said as he kept his gun pointed at the Kingmaker while staring down an obviously furious Fang. “He won’t. His promises are worth fuck all.”

“And what promise is it that you feel I haven’t fulfilled?” the Kingmaker asked with a tilt of his head. “The promise that I’d give you freedom and an opportunity to get away from those you hated the most? Is that the promise that I didn’t keep because considering you’re standing here threatening me, that only shows you that I have.”

“I needed him alive,” Synek said between gritted teeth, but there was no chance of him calming down. He was too wired. Too angry. He needed to hurt something the way he’d inadvertently hurt Iris.

“Did we strike a bargain, Synek?” the Kingmaker asked, his tone dripping with condescension. “Did I agree to let him live to aid in whatever doesn’t concern me? I think not. You signed a contract—my fucking contract—and if that means you serve my interests above your own, then so fucking be it. Understand me, I don’t owe you, or her,” he said with a gesture to Calavera, “or him” —this to Skorpion—“or any of the fucking lot of you a goddamn thing.”

The Kingmaker came from around the desk, holding his head high with all the arrogance of a king. “So tell me, Synek, what use do I have for you now?”

He had broken his contract. Not that Synek gave a fuck about that. Pulling a gun on the man was practically seen as an act of war.

But he didn’t care.

He didn’t give a single fuck.

He shook his head. “None,” he answered honestly. “But you better be ready to fucking die if you think you’re going to pull a weapon on me, that I promise you.”

“I—”

“Won’t touch him,” Winter said, her eyes wide and panicked, her chest rising and falling with the rapid breaths she was taking. “I won’t let you.”

The Kingmaker looked at her. “And how would you think to stop me?”

“Bangkok, Beijing, Berlin, Barbados, Bosnia, and those are just the B’s. Anything happens to him and I’ll take it all,” Winter said with all the ferocity of a mercenary. “You will be the Kingmaker with no money, I can promise you that.”

Tensions were high in the room, only made worse when Winter moved to Synek’s side, causing the Wild Bunch to lower their weapons. But as they did, she put a hand over his gun—the same hand that still had a handcuff around her wrist—and forced him to lower his as well.

The Kingmaker seemed to be studying Winter, as if gauging the truth behind her remark, but since she was his hacker, he knew she could get to him if she wanted.

“Fulfill your contract,” he said to Synek, his gaze promising retribution. “And then run far from me because there might be a time when the little hacker won’t be able to save your life.”

He turned then, as much of a dismissal as any, but Synek didn’t give him another thought.

Instead, he headed for the door and out of it, stepping over the bodies he’d left behind.

The only thing on his mind now was Iris.