For the first time in three years, Iris didn’t dress to blend in with the others around her—she dressed to stand out.

Wearing jeans tight enough to be considered a second skin and a top that just reached her navel, she prayed it would be enough to turn his head because if it didn’t … she wasn’t dressed for a fight.

With a small vial of the special cocktail the Wraiths dabbled in tucked away in her pocket, Iris left her apartment and drove out to Brooklyn, parking a few blocks down from the Hall.

The first time she’d ventured around to this place during the week leading up to today, she wouldn’t have thought anyone would be willing to go out of their way to come here—compared to the vast number of bars in the city—and pay to do it. But after she ventured inside, she’d understood the allure of the place.

The bar top was polished to a shine, though there were enough nicks and grooves in the wood to know that glasses and fists had worn it down. Of the sixteen barstools surrounding the lengthy bar across the east wall, only a few were empty, and even less of the tables out on the floor were open.

And as Iris passed the cash over to the one with a gruff frown and narrowed eyes, only one man commanded her focus from the very second she laid her gaze on him.

The pictures, where he’d been blond with a Viking’s braid at his temple, definitely didn’t do justice to the man she was seeing now.

Not only wasn’t he blond—which now she wasn’t sure what his natural hair color was—but his hair was a deep shade of brown, and cut short along the sides of his head and in the back.

It emphasized the cut of his jaw and the few days’ worth of growth covering it, and it brought out his high cheekbones.

Briefly, she wondered what had inspired the change, though looking at him now, she could see why he used the shortened form of his name.

He looked like sin.

And even as he still had that sort of dead look in his dark eyes, that didn’t take away from his physical appeal. If anything, it only enhanced it.

Which was something she shouldn’t have noticed.

It didn’t matter how attractive he was. She had a job to do.

He sat at a table just off center of the room, his long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at his booted ankles. Conveniently, the only other tables available in the bar all happened to be the ones surrounding him.

But it went beyond those tables.

Even as she had only been in the room for a mere minute, there seemed to be a considerable distance between Synek and everyone else inside. He didn’t speak to anyone, and no one spoke to him. It was as if he sat in a bubble, there but not.

But if any one of them suspected half of what she’d read about him, she understood why.

Prone to violence.

Deadly with his fists and worse with a knife, Synek was not a man anyone wanted to cross.

She’d almost consider it … sad, if he wasn’t who he was.

Finding a seat at the bar, Iris was careful not to stare at him too long, making it a point to look around to make sure he, or anyone else, wasn’t suspicious of her presence.

Many before her had hunted him relentlessly, and she doubted he was sitting where he was without being careful.

Patience was key.

She watched as he tipped the bottle he held to his lips, his throat working as he swallowed down the alcohol without so much as a wince. The look on his face … she knew it well. Whatever he was running from haunted him.

Most nights, she ran from her own nightmares—her father’s pleading eyes as he stood on trial for murder.. Usually, she was able to channel that energy and restlessness until the tension drained away.

But her ghosts weren’t like his, she imagined.

He’d done too many deplorable things. He deserved his demons.

One thing Iris particularly liked about the Hall was the way everyone was making a pointed effort to mind their own business. This place was supposed to be a sanctuary of sorts—a place killers could go without fear of what someone might do once they turned their backs.

Violence of any kind was not permitted on Hall grounds, and if you broke that rule, you had to answer to the owner. And that, they said, was something no one wanted.

Just as she was sure she would have to finesse a meeting with her target, Synek’s attention was drawn to a table a couple down from his own, a man with a grisly face and an eyepatch saying something too low for her to hear, but she got the gist when he gestured from Synek to a dart board across the room.

Seeming to agree with whatever the man asked of him, Synek got to his feet and deftly removed a throwing knife from his pocket as if it was something as mundane as a phone.

Almost to the second that blade was in his hand, the patrons between his table and the dart board quickly scurried out of the way, chairs scraping across the hardwood floors in a bid to get the hell out of his way.

Again, if he were anyone else, she might have found the people’s reaction to him comical, but because she knew him, she merely frowned.

Palming his knife, he twisted it around, the metal glinting between his fingers as he expertly moved it without ever taking his eyes off the target in front of him. She’d known he was good, but it was something else when she got to witness it firsthand.

But even as she seized on the expert way he wielded the knife, she found her opening.

With a flick of his wrist, he sent the blade flying end over end across the room until it embedded itself in the very center of the dart board. Cheering erupted from those who watched—all except the man who’d talked him into doing it in the first place. He looked disappointed as he fished out a few bills from his wallet and slapped them down on the table.

“I prefer small bills, mate,” Synek called out, a grin stretching across one side of his face.

His accent surprised her, not to mention the low, rough quality of his voice.

Was there anything about him that wasn’t attractive?

The Wraiths, at least all those she knew, were American, but it was quite obvious he’d been raised on the other side of the ocean.

Just how had he come to be with the Wraiths if he was British?

A question that would go unanswered.

It was now or never …

Plucking a knife from a passing waitress’s tray, Iris toyed with it a moment before she slid off the barstool. Before she could talk herself out of it, she threw it as hard as she could, watching it fly before satisfaction filled her when it landed within an inch of his.

She hadn’t appreciated those days of playing bar games with her father as much as she should have, but they came in handy, even as the memories filled her with a bittersweet happiness.

As she smiled, leaning against the edge of the bar, Synek turned and sought her out with his eyes, not drifting even an inch once he had her in his sights.

No suspicion clouded his gaze as he stared at her, and as a moment of suspended silence stretched between them, she knew she had far more than his curiosity.

She had his interest.

* * *

Liquor dulled his senses, relaxing his muscles, but not enough that Synek wasn’t aware of his surroundings.

Or so he’d thought.

He hadn’t minded sitting alone at his table, tossing back a bottle of vodka—he was giving himself a day to unwind, after all—but Davie, a British hitter who’d only recently come over to this side of the pond, couldn’t go a minute without making a wager.

He’d gamble on the weather if he could.

There should have been no doubt in the man’s mind that Synek could hit a target with his eyes closed and one arm tied behind his back, but his compulsion had driven him to issue the challenge.

So Synek obliged him.

What he hadn’t expected at the end of it was her.

As he turned to see just who’d managed to sink a knife in less than an inch from his own, he realized he hadn’t been paying attention at all.

Because he hadn’t noticed her.

She stood a few feet away, her back now resting against the bar’s edge, a curious little smile on her face as she looked from the knife she’d thrown to him. One sweep of him from head to toe with her eyes caused her smile to grow by an inch, but a dark edge behind it called to the black heart inside his chest.

Something about her tugged at a memory in the back of his mind, but the more he tried to coax it forward, the further it slipped away.

Without a word, or even any coaxing on her part, he walked toward her.

“Not bad,” he said with a nod of his head back toward the dart board, smoothing a hand over his face as he wondered what he must have looked like to her at that moment.

Eyes bloodshot, no doubt. Scruff on his face. His dark hair messy and in need of a fresh cut. And after three days in Los Angeles reacquainting himself with his favorite trade, he probably looked like shit too.

Whereas, on the other hand, she looked like his walking wet dream.

Black jeans that clung to curvy thighs and hips. Heeled black boots that did amazing things for her legs. And the strappy bands of the top she was wearing were placed strategically to reveal nothing while hinting at everything.

Hair as dark as an oil slick trailed down her back, just brushing the top of her jeans. Despite himself, he was already imagining the feel of those silky strands wrapped around his fist.

Brown eyes were trained on him, assessing—judging from the amused light that entered her eyes as she gestured to the board behind him.

“We’re all good at something, aren’t we?” She wasn’t from Brooklyn, he thought distantly, the barest trace of something unfamiliar tinged her voice.

Enough that he wondered whether he knew her … and from where.

“Knives are what you’re good at?” he asked, drawing closer, throwing caution to the fucking wind. He was curious about her, and he’d be damned if he denied himself.

She shrugged. “Sometimes. There’s something rather poetic about them, no?”

Yes, there was. He knew it all too well.

The deceptive beauty of them, how easily they could be manipulated. They could glint in the early morning sunlight, reflecting rainbows and sparkling light, or they shifted into something dark and beautiful when pressed against a man’s neck.

“You must be new around here,” he said once he stood at her side, enjoying the way she needed to look up at him even with the impressive heels she wore. “I’d remember a throw like that.”

Her smile became a little more pronounced as she gave him her undivided attention. “Something like that.”

Her gaze flickered over his shoulder, a brief smile on her lips at someone behind him before her gaze returned to him. It definitely had to be the fucking liquor that had him annoyed enough that someone else was noticing her too.

Not that he didn’t understand why—she had his attention without even trying.

Lust wasn’t unfamiliar to him, but it had never felt quite like this before.

And from that knowing little smile on her face, she knew exactly what she was doing.

Synek stood there, anticipating the moment when she’d tell him to buy her a drink—to try to play a game with him that she had no possibility of winning—but she surprised him when she turned back to the bar, dismissing him entirely.

Maybe if he hadn’t watched her throw that knife, or remembered that little smile she’d gifted him, he might have been able to leave her be and going back to his solitary existence.

But he wasn’t used to being ignored.

He shouldn’t have cared, not after the past few days he’d had, and with his favorite bottle within walking distance, but he found himself closing the distance between them.

Like an invisible cord dragging him closer.

Her eyes, which seemed lighter in the glow of the televisions mounted above her head, lifted when he got close, as if she’d known without a shadow of a doubt that he’d follow her. A touch of something akin to amusement lit up her face as her gaze finally drifted back to the table where he’d been sitting.

She’d noticed him, it seemed, before he ever noticed her.

“I would ask what you’re drinking, but …” They both knew the answer to that.

And as of right now, he didn’t need a drink. He was good with her. “What are you having, luv?”

“You’re bartending too?” she asked, her voice throaty and captivating.

Something else lingered behind her words—something he might have been able to decipher if he were sober—but for once, his mind was blissfully blank of the shit that plagued it, and for now, that was all that mattered.

“I can be whatever you need me to be.”

She rested an elbow on the bar, her chin in her palm as she regarded him with a lazy smile. “Charming.”

“Only when I’m trying.”

She tucked wisps of that dark, ebony hair behind her ear, eyeing him like he was a puzzle she was trying to figure out and enjoying the challenge. “I’m not sure you’d even be able to make a drink in the state you’re in, even with the whole”—she made a vague gesture behind her toward the board without turning around—“knife thing.”

He shrugged. “I could make that with my eyes closed. I’m not nearly sloshed enough.”

“Then surprise me,” she said.

He didn’t have to be told twice.

Slipping behind the bar, Synek offered Dismas a quick nod of his head, but he only got a frown of confusion in return. The man wouldn’t question what he was doing—or who he was doing it with. He was used to his antics by now.

Instead, he ventured farther down the bar to give him space to do his thing.

But before he ventured far, Dismas turned back to eye the woman sitting at the bar, a peculiar frown tugging at his lips. He didn’t know her, that much was obvious from the expression on his face, but it might have been because he didn’t know her that the look was there.

It was no secret Dismas knew everyone on both sides of the law, so his not knowing her could either be good or really bloody awful.

In his current state, however, Synek didn’t mind the mystery. The damaged, fucked up part of himself he kept on lockdown appreciated the fact she wasn’t treating him like some wild animal she hoped to tame as the other women who frequented the Hall tended to do when he came to town.

For tonight, at least, he wasn’t the walking, talking weapon he was made to be.

Though Synek knew fuck all about mixing drinks—he liked his liquor straight with no chaser—he’d watched Dismas enough times to get a general idea.

First came the vodka—more than a shot’s worth going into the shaker—then came ice before he poured a variety of different fruity juices until he finally grabbed a bottle of rum for good luck to finish it off.

Giving it a good shake, he poured it into a pair of glasses he grabbed from the corner of the bar before setting them down in front of her and feeling like a right fucking idiot as he poured them. “Go on then,” he said with a nod of his head at the glasses. “Have a taste.”

“I didn’t realize you were using Iordanov vodka,” she said with a gesture of her hand to the bottle he’d set back on its shelf behind him.

He glanced back, barely registering that it was one of Dismas’s “Don’t fucking touch!” bottles before offering a shrug of his shoulder. “I can afford it.”

Even if it was over four-thousand dollars a bottle.

It already paid well doing what he did, but what he didn’t hand over to sustain his drinking habit, the rest sat untouched in an account collecting interest. Synek was rich ten times over even if it meant nothing to him.

She was holding both drinks in her hands when he faced her, a smile on her lips before she offered him one. “To our health.”

A part of him had expected her to just let them sit, but smiled all the same as he took the drink she offered and tossed it back. By the time he was setting his glass back down, hers was already resting in front of her, her fingers brushing over her lips to wipe away the moisture.

At that moment, he was in love.

“What brings a girl like you to the Hall?” he asked, figuring it was a safe enough question.

“A girl like me?” she asked, sounding affronted even as she was still smiling.

“No offense intended,” he replied. “Doesn’t seem like your scene is all.”

“It seemed … interesting,” she answered, her gaze dropping for a moment. “Would you believe me if I told you I was looking for you?”

“Not even a little. I’m trouble for a girl like you,” he said with a casual smile, already thinking of a million ways he could and might corrupt her.

“Maybe,” she said, surprising him again, “but there’s nothing wrong with a little trouble. Especially when it looks like you.”

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he didn’t have to look at the screen to know who was calling him.

Winter.

He’d left without a goodbye, but without taking his eyes off the woman in front of him, he reached into his jeans and turned the ringer off.

He’d call her back later.

Synek’s smile grew a touch. “Are you going to tell me your name?”

“There’s no fun in that, is there? Ruins the mystery.”

A better man might have asked if she was sure—if this, if he, was what she truly wanted—but he was a bastard and didn’t want to give her a chance to change her mind.

Instead, he walked around the bar, practically feeling the electric current thrumming between them as he offered her his hand.

She slipped her much smaller palm into his, happily climbing off the barstool and following him through the back of the Hall where he grabbed his money from Davie as he left, then walked through the back door and out into the night air.

The door had barely clicked shut before he was spinning her around to face him, claiming her mouth before she could even draw a breath. This was what he needed—a beautiful distraction. Something to take the edge off what that vodka couldn’t quite manage.

She was frozen in his arms for only a heartbeat before she was responding, rising on the tips of her toes to better allow him access.

He could taste the liquor on his tongue, the sweet bite of cranberry, and a taste that was uniquely her own—he wondered if the rest of her tasted just as good.

Reluctantly, he drew away from her, studying the flush in her cheeks and the slightly uneven breaths she took. “One night,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” she said as she stepped out farther in the alley with him. “I know exactly the kind of man you are.”

Even better.

There would be no need for long explanations in the morning. No expectation of something more than this moment. Right here. Right now.

In the next breath, he tugged her back to him, but this time, he hooked an arm around her waist and lifted her clear off the ground. Already, his cock pressed incessantly against the hard denim of his jeans, practically begging to be set free.

Her legs wrapped around his waist; she clung to him like a lover, her fingers buried in his hair, and for a moment, he felt her give in. Her bones turned to liquid and a sigh left her lips a second before he had his own lips on hers and swallowed the sounds she made.

He walked them forward, pressing her back against the brick wall, forcing her legs even wider to get better between them. Even through the jeans she wore, he could feel the heat of her and knew if he got his hand in her knickers, he would find her soaked.

The anticipation of that very moment thrummed inside him, riding him so hard he was surprised he hadn’t given in to the impulse yet.

“Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” she whispered in his ear suddenly, her words like a dark lullaby.

He was drunk on this—drunk on her—until those words penetrated, only slightly clearing his foggy brain.

“What’d you say?”

She kissed him one last time before pulling away entirely. “You’re never supposed to accept a drink from a stranger, Synek, or have you forgotten your training?”

He shoved away from her even as he brought his hand up to close around her throat, an unconscious reaction he couldn’t stop.

Because of that name.

His name—something she shouldn’t have known.

Most thought his moniker was a clever play on the word, sin, rather than the shortened form of his actual name—Synek.

His mother was rotting in the ground, so there was no possibility she had shared it with another—not that she would have ever acknowledged Synek in any way.

Which could only mean one thing …

The girl must have realized what he was thinking because her smile grew even as his fingers squeezed tighter.

“Did the Wraiths send you?” he asked, needing to know for sure before he snapped her neck.

“The price they offered did,” she strained to say from the pressure he was exerting.

But she wasn’t afraid.

She didn’t fight him or struggle to get free.

She was … waiting.

“They said you were impossible to find—their own white whale.” Her smile grew. “Maybe they weren’t trying hard enough.”

He wanted to strangle the fucking life out of her—he wanted to see her face muddle with red before she passed out from the lack of oxygen—but more than anything, he wanted to see her react.

To see that anger and fury and fear that she might die at his hands for trying to betray him cross her face.

But she wasn’t, and that baffled him most.

Not afraid.

Not angry.

Nothing.

Not with his hand around her throat, and obviously not from what she had been told about him; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been here now.

He’d been a different man with the Wraiths.

Hungrier.

Bloodier.

Nothing they had to say would be good to hear.

Yet she’d tracked him down as if it was all nothing—as if he was no threat at all.

He should have shoved her away, left her in the alley, and taken off—if she were here, the Wraiths weren’t far behind—but he hated that smug grin on her face, as if she had won.

He needed to wipe that look off her fucking face.

“You—”

The words were there, resting on the tip of his tongue, but a wave of vertigo struck him so hard he could barely keep his head up, let alone get his mouth to speak.

You’re never supposed to accept a drink from a stranger, Synek …

He’d heard her words clearly enough, even as his world began tilting and his vision grew blurry at the edges, but they hadn’t fully penetrated until now.

Until he realized she had drugged him.

Even as he loosened his hold involuntarily, stumbling back a step as he tried to right himself, the incessant buzzing in his ears grew louder.

Squeezing his eyes shut and giving his head a sharp shake didn’t help the vortex he was currently sinking into. Nothing did.

“You fucking drugged me?” he asked, dazed. Surprised.

Or at least, that was what he’d tried to say, but the words sounded slurred even to his own ears.

Disbelief warred with the nausea churning inside him.

No one—no one had been able to get this close to him in years. He’d never let his guard down for anyone at any time.

He knew better.

Remember your training …

Synek didn’t make mistakes—not like this. Not when he knew the cost was his life.

Distantly, he heard tires screeching to a halt, doors swinging open, but he refused to look back at who he knew was coming.

His past had finally caught up with him, and no matter how far he had run, no matter how careful he had been, he couldn’t fight fate.

This moment had been inevitable since the night he’d taken that pencil and killed the men he’d once considered brothers. All so he could save the life of a little girl he hadn’t known.

The Wraiths had always promised vengeance, and now they were here to collect.

He should have gone home.

The girl stepped around him, her face starting to blur with the rest of her. Something about her expression made him think she was … remorseful, but he was wrong. If she was with them, then she didn’t regret what she had done at all.

Sleep now, sweet boy, he heard distantly, a hauntingly sick voice from the past that threatened to drag him under. It won’t hurt for long.

The last thing Synek saw before the blackness overtook him was the girl’s back as she walked away.