Celt. (Den of Mercenaries #2)(69)

She smiled almost sadly. “I couldn’t sleep. It’s just … I’ve never …”

Amber had never been in a situation like this, Kyrnon knew she wanted to say. Despite her friendship with the Volkov family, the business dealings had never touched her, and she had never been a part of that life.

But through no fault of her own, she was thrust into it.

“I won’t let anything happen to you, you know that.” And that was a fact.

“But what if something happens to you?” she asked, that fear leaking through in her voice. “It’s my fault they …”

“Nonsense,” he cut her off before she could finish. “Had I not been assigned to take it back, they would not have come for you.”

Because they would have had the original … or at the very least, he should have taken both.

But, like he’d already said, he hadn’t thought Gabriel Monte was dumb enough to sell the forgery in the first place.

“But …”

“What’d I say to you earlier, hmm?”

She looked like she wanted to argue further, but at the look he shot her, her smile turned a little more genuine. “That you would take care of it.”

“I’m a man of my word. Now, come on.” He didn’t give her a chance to say anything before he was pulling her to her feet, lifting her up in his arms. “Time for bed.”

Amber laughed, clinging to him. “But I’m not tired.”

“Then let’s take care of that.”



* * *



As he carried her back downstairs, he didn’t stop in his bedroom like Amber had been expecting. Instead, they went into the kitchen, her confusion mounting as he opened the door to his pantry and set her on her feet.

She didn’t get a chance to ask what he was doing before he was showing her.

Shifting a few boxes around, he revealed a keypad, one that was almost identical to the one that opened the garage downstairs. Except, if it were possible, this one was a little more high tech than the other one.

First, he entered a code, a series of ten digits, then he pressed his thumb against the sensor, and finally, as a bright, red light danced for a moment, he had his eye scanned.

What.

The.

Fuck.

But she couldn’t marvel at this for too long before a hidden door was sliding open and he was guiding her inside. As they entered what she could now see was another elevator, she shook her head as she looked at him.

“Mercenary, my ass. You’re a spy.”

He laughed, a rich sound that made her smile. He explained, “Spies have a government to answer to, I don’t.”

“So how do you know what your job is, or your mission rather?”

Amber didn’t think he was going to answer, she could see the hesitation in his eyes as he rubbed at his beard, but ultimately he did.

“I work for an organization—we call it the Den. Most that do what I do are freelance, but those that work for the Den have a handler.”

“Does Niklaus work for the Den too?”

Kyrnon nodded. “We were recruited, trained, and sent out to do whatever was asked of us.”

That sounded rather … ominous.

“How long have you been doing this?”

“More than a decade.”

“More than?” But as she counted back the years in her head, trying to put the complicated pieces of his past together from what he had already told her, she realize something. “This was how you got out of that place, isn’t it? You became a mercenary.”

He nodded again, pressing a hand to the small of her back to guide her out of the elevator as the doors opened. “Z found me after the last round in my fight. Offered me freedom and revenge in exchange for a contract. I couldn’t say no to that.”

Knowing what she did about how he had suffered, Amber knew she would have made the same decision if she had been in his shoes.

As she readied to tell him just that, she finally took in the room they were standing in and promptly forgot all about what they were talking about. “You live above an armory?”

Now in this, Kyrnon looked more proud than she had ever seen him. “I call it the War Room.”

No kidding.

There were racks set up along the walls, every type of gun one could possibly get their hands on lining the rows, and it didn’t just stop at handguns and assault rifles, but there were grenades, a rocket launcher, and a rather extensive collection of knives.

“This is … wow.”

There were no words to adequately describe just how awesome and terrifying it was to see that many weapons.

And that only made up one wall.

On the opposite side, there were shelves built into the wall, each holding bundles of money in at least four different currencies. From the sheer amount there, there had be at least a few million.

“Cash is harder to keep track of,” Kyrnon explained though she had yet to ask.

Her eyes were still skirting over it all until she reached the end where she couldn’t help but laugh a little, earning a frown from him. “You have gold.”

He was still confused. “Aye, I do.”

When he still didn’t catch on to why she was amused, she asked, “Do you have a little pot around here too?”

Kyrnon’s head canted to the side in confusion as his lips formed the words, but then his eyes widened as he laughed. “Funny.”