Nix. (Den of Mercenaries Book 3)(29)

“They look like very fancy sticks.”

His smile was rueful. “They’re called escrima sticks.”

Plucking one from her hands, he did a rather cool maneuver where he moved the wood between his fingers, letting it spin around his hand before he caught it again.

“Useful if you know what you’re doing with them.”

“Will I learn how to use these?” she asked.

“If that’s what you want.”

Smiling at him, she was lost in his gray eyes a moment before she blinked and came back to herself. “Were you looking for me?”

“I was. There’s someone you need to meet.”

Frowning, she asked, “Who?”

“Your future handler.”

She didn’t think anything had ever sounded more ominous.

“And who’s that … exactly?”

“His name is Zachariah, most in the Den call him Z.”

“What does being a handler entail?”

“In most cases, he oversees training at the compound, and assigns jobs to the those that accept the contract. And he’s usually the one to find the mercenaries that are brought into the Den.” He glanced down at her with a curious look. “You were a special case.”

As Kit swept through the doors of his office, Luna at his heels, she came face to face with Z.

A trainer of mercenaries …

Luna was expecting a big guy, one that looked like he had been in the American Marines for thirty years with the haircut to prove it, but what she found was a rather average-sized man with a stern expression and hair as white as snow, though he couldn’t have been no older than his late forties.

He studied her in that way Kit always did, but his felt more assessing, and whatever he saw in her, she thought he found it lacking.

“Zachariah, meet Luna—I’m sure Uilleam has told you all about her.”

She glanced at Kit, wondering just how much Uilleam had said, but the man’s expression didn’t change. Whether he was impressed or not, he didn’t let it reflect on his face.

“You’re what all the fuss is about?” he asked, though there was nothing mean behind his words. “Let’s hope you amount to something.”

Luna’s mouth gaped slightly, too surprised to say anything before he was looking back to Kit.



Sometimes it amazed him that of all the men in the Runehart lineage, Kit seemed to be the only one capable of manners.

Usually it was Uilleam he needed to keep in line, but his uncle seemed to be in a right state, and seemed ready to take it out on Luna.

For the second time in as many weeks, Kit was forcing a smile as he looked to the girl that continued to baffle him. “Luna, if you would excuse us a moment.”

A curious look crossed her face before she was leaving the room. He was supposed to be introducing her after all, and only offering her name wasn’t much of anything.

“Uilleam finds humor in being rude,” Kit said, still looking toward the door Luna had left out of. “I didn’t know you were the same.”

“When I’m made to take a flight on forty-eight hours notice to meet a trainee that’s technically not a trainee, I’m rude.” Zachariah leveled a look on him that demanded answers. “I thought you decided against delving into your brother’s affairs?”

He had.

And it had been a decision he hadn’t made lightly.

Uilleam hadn’t always been the Kingmaker, the criminal mastermind behind some of the greatest scandals in the world. Once, he had been just a boy searching for love from a tyrant that was incapable of feeling such things. It took years of nurturing the darker urges inside of him that Uilleam had finally changed to the point that he was no longer the innocent child he had once been.

Most days, Kit wasn’t sure what he was.

But it hadn’t mattered, because Kit loved him dearly, and despite not agreeing with nearly every decision Uilleam made, he often found himself cleaning up his messes when the time called for it.

Watch after your brother, their mother had always instructed him with narrowed eyes, as though she thought he was too daft to understand what she was saying. But if there was nothing else he shared with the woman that gave birth to him, he shared her love for his younger brother.

For a while, Kit had blindly allowed his brother to do as he pleased, not caring as long as it didn’t affect his work back when he was with the Lotus Society.

But after one particular incident that left twelve people dead and buried in unmarked graves, Kit had finally decided that enough was enough and it was time for him to walk away. And to ensure he could do this with as little fallout as possible, he burned the only connection that connected their two businesses—literally.

It had also grown rather tiresome having the legion of enemies Uilleam possessed constantly trying to see not only the man dead, but anyone that did business with him.

Which usually included Kit.

“It’s complicated,” Kit finally answered as he blew out a breath.

And it was, because like so many times in the past, when Uilleam came to him for a favor, he had a hard time saying no.

Now weeks later, he was partly glad he had agreed to Uilleam’s request.

Luna was, in her own way, fascinating to him.

“Is it?” Zachariah asked rubbing his bushy mustache. “Would that complication have anything to do with that girl that left out of here?”