Uilleam may have been a bit drunk, but he wasn’t sure he was hearing correctly. “Is that what your grievance was? How on earth could you make it through counseling—your methods of communication are severely lacking.”
Now, there was a crack in the ever present mask Kit wore. “Let’s not act like you don’t make a living disrupting people’s lives.”
“But only on my terms. Luna would have found out the truth about her family in time—I had already accounted for that—but your actions caused things to go beyond my control.”
“There would be no reason for me to tell her considering I was trying to cover it up.”
Rubbing his brow, Uilleam squeezed his eyes shut. “What are you getting at?”
“If you didn’t tell her, as I’d originally believed, and I didn’t either—who told her?”
Uilleam’s hand froze.
Not because of what he was hearing, but the implications behind it.
Kit was right to ask the question.
Already, there had been very few that knew about his intentions for Luna, and those that had been left had been systematically picked off by Kit to bury the truth.
Who was left?
“I have a question for you,” Kit said before Uilleam’s mind could run rampant with ideas.
“Then ask,” Uilleam responded impatiently.
“Who told you that Karina was dead?”
Just hearing her name was like a fresh wound in his already blackened heart, but his mind also seized on it because as he’d contemplated an answer for the question he’d been asking himself, it snapped into place.
Karina had known.
She was one of few he confided in.
But that had been years ago.
Back when he had felt loved for the first time in his life …
Back when it had been because of her that Uilleam had even thought of double-crossing Carmen in the first place …
“No.” Uilleam didn’t feel drunk anymore, his mind was the sharpest it had ever been. “There was a body.”
His brother was thinking word may have gotten to him, but it wasn’t that simple. When he had learned of Karina’s tragic death, he was disbelieving.
He had refused to even admit it to himself before a body was found.
It had been her body that sent him careening down the abyss.
“A journalist, wasn’t she?” Kit kept on. “You once told me of the investigation that had spurned your interest in her. Death by the poison, belladonna, wasn’t it?”
Uilleam was on edge, though even as his brother spoke, he still refused to see what was directly in front of him.
“Luna told me she’d taken a job around the time you were shot, says the client’s name was Belladonna. She was too furious with me to question it at the time, but she didn’t understand the significance. I took it upon myself to spend the last three nights looking into the mysterious woman, and yet I’ve found nothing—she doesn’t exist. So tell me, brother, how can someone that doesn’t exist manage to fool you enough to accept a contract?”
Absently, Uilleam murmured, “I wasn’t behind the contracts at that time—Zachariah was.”
He had been too busy readying to send Luna to California and get the ball rolling. And even after the shooting, he had been more concerned with trying to find the Jackal than the inner workings of the Den.
“But it doesn’t matter,” Uilleam said, “I saw the body.”
Kit looked amused. “Then you’re not the only one playing a game, brother.”
No, it seemed he wasn’t.
Coming Soon …
January 2017
About the Author
London Miller is the author of the Volkov Bratva series, as well as Red., the first book in the Den of Mercenaries series. After graduating college, she turned pen to paper, creating riveting fictional worlds where the bad guys are sometimes the good guys.
Currently residing in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and two puppies, she spends her nights drinking far too much mountain dew while writing.