If this was the last time, she wanted to make it count.

For once, it was her taking his face in her hands, going up on the tips of her toes to reach his lips. She wanted to remember the shape of his lips, the taste of his skin. The way it never took any effort at all to love kissing him.

But when she finally pulled away, albeit reluctantly, he still held her.

He stroked his thumb over her jaw. “Don’t ask me to let you go.”

Iris couldn’t even as she knew she should. She couldn’t ask him to do it any more than she would be able to do it for him. Instead, she said, “Wait for me to come back.”

It was a big ask—a gamble if nothing more.

In the end, she didn’t know how this night and morning would go. She had no guarantee that what she anticipated would be what would ultimately unfold.

It all came down to one of her father’s lessons that she had no choice but to hope for.

The good guys would win, and the bad guys would lose, but what lingered in the middle ... that was what she worried about the most.

Synek kissed her again, one last brutal press of his lips before he released her. She could see the way his hands tightened and released. He was physically restraining himself from keeping hold of her.

That made it all the harder for her to walk away and leave the room.

And she knew when she returned, he would be gone again.

Almost over, she reminded herself for the hundredth time. It was almost over.

Iris walked away from the building with her heart in her throat, hoping she was making the right decision. Foolishly, she had let hope infect her, flickering through her entire being to the point that she knew, she knew, if anything went wrong, she wouldn’t recover from it.

She knew that if Synek got his hands on her again, he wasn’t going to let her go, and worse, there would be someone gunning for her, and that someone was unlike the Wraiths. He wouldn’t just stop at a little torture. He wouldn’t just forgive and forget.

No, there was no time for second-guessing.

She had chosen her path, and now she just needed to stick to it.

Iris hadn’t been walking for more than a few minutes before twin headlights lit up the night around her, momentarily blinding until she lifted her hand to shield the light.

All she saw was white before she knew who it was.

“Protecting your investment?” Iris asked dryly, folding her hands across her chest as she approached Belladonna and the Bentley she was sitting in.

Driving, actually.

Iris had only ever seen her being driven, making her wonder where the man in the black hat was.

“I have no worries about whether you’ll go through with it, Iris.”

“Then why are you here?”

Her smile was complacent. “My reasons are my own. Get in.”

Not really seeing what choice she had—even though no one was there to force her—Iris stepped off the curb and opened the passenger door, pausing to glance up at Synek’s building. She wondered if he was looking at her now—whether he could see her slipping into the car that smelled faintly of spring flowers.

She considered riding in silence and letting the minutes tick by until she was back at her hotel, but just as it did whenever she was in the woman’s presence, her curiosity took over. “Canina didn’t seem surprised when Syn and I paid her a visit.”

“I imagine she wouldn’t, considering she worked for me.”

“So it wasn’t his wife who leaked the affair to the news. That was you?” Iris asked.

“More of a mutual effort and decision, I would say.”

Of course. Of course, the wife was in on it.

She thought about the interviews Mrs. Spader had done since the news broke. How, though her tears had been all too real, something had been rather empty about the way she spoke. At first, Iris had believed it was because the woman was going through a lot.

Now, she knew better.

“You must have been truly desperate to get revenge against the Kingmaker to do all this,” Iris commented, turning farther in the seat to better see her. “Why do you hate him so much?”

Belladonna laughed, but the sound was hollow. “I quite imagine this would all be a lot easier if I did hate him.”

“If you don’t, then …”

But before she could finish, she had a sudden thought.

Belladonna didn’t have to hate the Kingmaker to ruin him. She was, in many ways, not the one to do it.

Sure, she pulled the strings and dangled the bait, but in the end, she hadn’t done anything at all.

It would be Iris. The other mercenaries.

They were the ones who harbored resentment toward the man, and Iris couldn’t help but wonder if that too was by design?

“Why?” Iris asked, unable to manage anything more.

But as soon as the question was out of her mouth, they pulled in front of her hotel. She expected Belladonna to send her on her way, but instead, she sat for a long time staring out the window.

“I believed once that love conquered all. He made me believe that. So much so that I gave up everything that was me for him. I didn’t care about any of that anyway. Not the family business, not my name, none of it. I love ... loved him,” she hastily corrected, a quiver in her voice. “Uilleam … he forgot, I think, that power is finite. That it is something gained and lost, but love … love is more than that. Once upon a time, he taught me what love was, how beautiful it could be. And after I found out I was …” She cut herself off there, her breath catching.

Iris blinked, looking at her, and found tears in the woman’s eyes.

Genuine sorrow that couldn’t be faked.

“Uilleam forgot what love was in his quest to be who he is now. I only tend to remind him because I want him to feel what I felt all these years ago.” Belladonna blew out a breath, seeming to rein in her emotions. “But that’s ancient history. Let’s focus on tomorrow. I’ll be sending a man to retrieve you at the designated time. Be ready.”

The conversation was over.

Iris nodded before opening the door and stepping out. “One last question.”

“Yes?” Belladonna called, looking in her direction.

“Will it hurt?”

Another small smile. “I have it on very good authority that Siris is an excellent shot, but it won’t hurt for long.”

Iris nodded once and stepped away to close the door.

There was no turning back now.

There was just the end.

* * *

Snow might have fallen in thick flakes, but nothing could make this day seem any colder than where he sat now.

Synek sat in silence, staring down at his hands. No matter how he tried to calm himself, how he needed to trust what little Iris had told him before she disappeared again, this time, he hadn’t been able to find her as easily. As far as Winter could find, Iris might as well have dropped off the face of the earth.

Today wasn’t like others inside the four walls of the Den safe house. They weren’t smiling and laughing—joking about what was to come.

There was a clear divide in the room—the side where Synek and the other mercenaries were sitting, silent, all lost in their own thoughts. Then there was the Wild Bunch across the room, arms folded across their chests.

They spoke in hushed tones, never loud enough for anyone to hear other than the lot of them, not that Synek gave a shit.

He was waiting.

But for what, he didn’t know. It wasn’t as if Iris had given him anything to go on last night, only assurances and promises that this divide between them would be over within twenty-four hours.

By his calculation, he only had another twenty minutes, but each second was ticking by with excruciating slowness, and he could feel his nerves worsening as time went on.

Tensions were already thick in the air, and it was a miracle Red hadn’t exploded yet, considering the way his leg had been bouncing up and down since the moment they were on Den property.

 “Good of you to join us,” the Kingmaker called as he entered the room, his gaze going from Red to Celt, before lingering on the latter. “Both of you.”

It would be hard to miss the bruises on the man’s face that were still in various stages of healing.

“It’s the job,” Red said, his voice flat.

 Synek didn’t say anything at all as he glanced at his watch again, then the window, and finally the television playing in the background. A news report that he didn’t care very much to see.

“We’re here to address the Belladonna problem.”

“About that,” Synek said, leaning forward. “Sounds more like a you problem, doesn’t it? The way I see it, she only wants you, yeah?”

“I’ll elect to ignore that.”

Celt mumbled something under his breath, but Synek was unable to hear him.

But as quickly as he wasn’t interested in what the news was reporting, he suddenly was as he saw an all-too-familiar brownstone in the background, then a small crowd of reporters. Except it was the people in the background he cared about.

People who shouldn’t have been there.

Silence fell over the room as each of them turned to face the television together, all eyes glued to the woman standing in the center of the frame, her black pantsuit both stylish and appropriate, considering the woman was in mourning.

Dorothy Spader might have played the grieving wife well, but Synek saw beneath the glamour of it all. He saw what she was trying to do.

The role she was about to step into.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she said calmly, but only just so, her voice wavering slightly at the end as if this was hard for her.

And she did her very best to look the part, to look as if what she was doing pained her, but Synek saw the brief flash in her eyes, the pleasure of it—the way she couldn’t quite keep her expression straight.

“For twenty years, I believed my husband was a good man. That he loved this country as much as he loved me, but I have realized over the last couple of weeks that my husband was not the man I thought he was.” Dorothy drew in a rattling breath before continuing. “My husband was involved in various illegal activities, and I have turned all evidence of this over to the local police as of this morning. And with me, I have a witness to my husband’s crimes.”

Questions were shouted, hungry reporters trying to get her to tell them more, but Dorothy turned, gesturing for the woman standing to the right of her to step forward.

 Iris.

Her face scrubbed clean of makeup, she was wearing a dress that made her look years younger. She looked like a victim.

She wasn’t tucked away in the background, just out of range of the camera. She was there, in the very center. It wasn’t about the widow standing next to her, or the other woman whose face was only shown in profile though the white dress she wore made it abundantly clear who she was.

Watching her, he saw it unfold in his mind’s eye. Everything that led up to this moment—how it was and how they all were connected. He didn’t know the why, though he suspected there were only two people in the entire world who knew the reason behind all that had transpired.

But whatever the Kingmaker’s reason for the Den’s beginning, Belladonna was the reason for its end.

Iris cleared her throat, the microphone still in front of her face, but instead of continuing, her gaze lifted to the cameras, or beyond them, Synek wasn’t sure. There was something in her expression that he didn’t like.

As if she was resigned to what was happening around her.

But as curious as Synek found her expression, he wasn’t the only one.

The Kingmaker was standing now, his narrowed gaze on the television, disbelief warring with outrage.

“For eight years, this young woman and her family has suffered!” Dorothy said passionately, and if Synek had been anyone else, he would have eaten it right up.

He might have believed that she didn’t know a thing about what her husband was doing—that she wasn’t in league with the woman in white behind her.

“But not just because of my husband,” she went on, suddenly holding up a thumb drive.

A drive that Synek distinctly remembered the Jackal having taken from the war room.

He dropped his feet to the floor.

He knew then what they were about to do. He knew.

“My husband’s partner is a man whose name he wouldn’t ever share with me. A man who I’m sure is responsible for his death! A man they call the Kingmaker. And should anything happen to me, then know that it is he—”

A sharp crack sounded before screams started and the camera shook.

But not before Synek saw Iris lurch, a pained expression on her beautiful face before she flew backward. That was all he could see.

All he could feel as the distant memory of a bullet lodging into his chest flared inside him. He understood now, what she had been hinting at before—the promise she had made.

But he also saw what others might not have.

The way she had tensed. Where her gaze had gone.

As if she had been expecting the bullet.

The news cut out, a new camera panning toward one of the frazzled looking anchors. It was no longer about the explosive confession tape, or even the governor’s suspected widow.

It was about a man known only as the Kingmaker.

The man in question threw the remote he held against the screen so hard that it cracked, leaving a black spot spidering along the image, but it didn’t matter. One could still hear.

And the only thing that seemed to play on repeat over and over again was his name.

 It was Red who broke the silence. “How long had you been following me once I arrived in New York?”

The Kingmaker didn’t freeze, nor did he even bother to look guilty. He merely turned in Red’s direction and stared, as if he knew this moment would come. As if he knew exactly what the man was asking. “I wasn’t,” he said, shocking the shit out of Synek. “I came upon you by chance.”

“How the fuck—”

“But once I found you,” the Kingmaker continued, and it was then that Synek saw the man wasn’t calm at all. He was pissed. “It took no time at all in finding out who you were. Then it was only a matter of formulating a plan.”

“You’re a sick motherfucker, you get that?” Red asked, the chair he’d been sitting in clattering to the floor as he lurched to his feet.

“Have you forgotten so quickly how many lives you’ve ruined? How many brothers, sons, wives, and girlfriends have you taken from someone? I despise hypocrisy.”

“Yet you’re expecting loyalty when you don’t even know the meaning of the word,” Celt added, his expression fierce. “You had him tortured. I was fucking beaten within an inch of my life every night. What’s your excuse for that?”

“I wanted soldiers,” the Kingmaker said simply. As if that answer meant anything at all now.

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t end you right now,” Red said, but he didn’t whip out his gun before the Kingmaker could react.

He did it slowly. Deliberately. Making it clear that he wasn’t afraid of him or the Wild Bunch.

And to Synek’s surprise, the four Romanians didn’t move.

Winter’s doing, he imagined.

The Kingmaker, however, didn’t falter or lose his confidence. “Good help is so very hard to find.”

“Your brother isn’t here to save you this time,” Synek said, retrieving his own weapon, staring down the length of his gun until he reached the man’s face and the impassive expression there.

“You’ve clearly underestimated who I am if you thought for a second that I needed Nix here to deal with the lot of you.”

“From where I’m standing, it looks the other way around, mate.”

There was no scenario in which the Kingmaker would leave this room alive. Not after what he had done—not after the truth of what he had done to get them into this room had come out. Even if Synek lowered his weapon and walked away, Red wouldn’t let him leave.

And the only reason he hadn’t pulled the trigger yet was because Fang had his gun pointed at the man’s head, and neither Fang, nor any of his brothers, would miss at point blank range.

“Is that so?” the Kingmaker asked with an arch of his brow, a smile forming. “Tell me ... who do you think polices you?”

The attention was on them now, and even though he had a gun pointed at him, the Kingmaker eased to his feet. Synek considered it a moment before he holstered his weapon.

It wasn’t as if the Kingmaker carried his own weapon on him. He could tell from the lines in the man’s suit. Besides, if there was a need, he was more than capable of snapping the man’s neck.

“Every person in the world has a price they’re willing to pay to get the thing they want most. Have you so quickly forgotten that this, in and of itself, is what I excel at? Your personal relationships notwithstanding, I didn’t need friends. I didn’t pay a king’s fortune for men to have thoughts and feelings. I only needed your skills and nothing more, so I owe you nothing.”

“Not according to the contract,” Winter said, her voice soft, and unlike everyone else in the room, hers held a tremor. She was nervous. “Z stipulated that should you ever warrant exposure that puts the Den in jeopardy, the mercenaries are free to sever their ties with you.”

That was the thing about mercenaries.

They were mistrusting by nature.

Which was why they more often than not worked alone. It gave them a chance to get the hell out of dodge if anything went wrong.

It was something Synek hadn’t thought about in years since he’d signed the thing. Or maybe, he never had.

Not once had he ever thought the Kingmaker would get exposed, that his name would be out on public news rather than whispered about in secret.

“There’s nothing saving you now,” Synek said, wrapping his finger around the trigger.

The change that came over him was gradual. He hadn’t been fazed by the gun in his face, or even that the infamous name attributed to him was out there now and known to the world.

That, in a matter of minutes, Belladonna had managed to make the man whose privacy he revered above all else the number one talked about thing in the country.

He was exposed.

To everyone.

“Winter,” the Kingmaker said, and if his expression changed for anyone, it changed for her. He looked betrayed. “Finish telling him about the clause, if you would.”

Synek tensed as he turned to look at her. She was half-hidden behind Tăcut, his body a shield for hers, and even as she tried to move around him, he stopped her with a look, but she appeared grateful all the same that everyone had stopped before she spoke.

“Even if the contract is broken,” she said, her voice soft and unbearably sad, “no harm can come to the Kingmaker by anyone under his command. Should it, he’s installed a contingency plan.”

It was Red who scoffed, Fang forgotten for the time being. “You could send an army, but that still won’t save you from taking a bullet to the head.”

“And what of the life of your wife and children, Niklaus Volkov?” the Kingmaker asked, looking in his direction. “Would you provide them a life without a father simply because you didn’t know how to walk away? Without a mother? I’m sorry, did you think it would end with you?” he asked with a shake of his head when Red shifted on his feet. “Let’s not pretend you don’t know what I’m capable of.”

Very carefully, he undid the buttons of his shirt, revealing a scar on his chest. “After the first attempt on my life, I had a pacemaker installed, and should it, for any reason, report that my heartbeat has stopped by any hand that is not my fucking own, two-point-seven million dollars will be transferred from my account into a man’s trust whose name you do not know and whose identity you will never be able to find. If a single one of you raises a hand against me, you all die. And your wives. And your children. And whoever the fuck else I believe you’re close to.”

His gaze turned to Synek, narrowed dangerously. “There is a reason they call me the Kingmaker, so make no mistake, the only person you need fear is me.”

“Right.”

Synek didn’t put his gun away because he needed to, or even because he doubted, though he didn’t, the truth of the man’s words. He put it away because it didn’t matter.

Not anymore.

Not when his name was out in the world and questions would be asked.

The contract was void by his own doing.

Celt was the first one to speak. “Better watch yourself out there, Uilleam. The snakes are very well hidden.”

The game … the Den … it was over.

This time, when Synek turned for the door, it was for the very last time.