Nix. (Den of Mercenaries Book 3)(32)

It hadn’t been that long since she was locked in the Kendall Estate, forced to do another’s bidding—weeks, in fact. Both he and Lawrence had loved using that title with her.

Whore.

As though that was all she was, and all she would ever be.

The word kept echoing over and over in her head, freezing her in place until she felt a hand slip beneath the fall of her hair, cupping her nape. She shouldn’t have known Kit’s touch, not this soon, but as quickly as she jumped in surprise at the sudden feel on his hand on her, she was settling again.

“Look at me,” he said next to her ear, not releasing his hold even as she slowly turned, aware that Benjamin was still spitting insults.

Gray eyes that seemed more blue in the dim lighting were trained on her, forcing her to focus on only him as he uttered one word.

“Breathe,” he said, as though it were that simple—as though his fingers weren’t curled around her throat.

As though because he commanded it, she was supposed to do it.

That notion baffled her, but Luna did draw in a deep breath, doing as he’d asked—the blood rushing in her ears finally receding.

“What do you want, Luna?”

She shook her head hard. “I don’t—”

“I don’t know isn’t good enough for me. I won’t assume what you’re thinking—I don’t want to. Now, tell me what you want.”

“He doesn’t deserve to die quickly,” she said, only loud enough for Kit to hear. “He should have to suffer the way I suffered.”

Kit’s eyes darted over her face a moment before he looked over his shoulder and barked an order that sent the Wild Bunch into movement. They slipped past them, grabbing hold of Benjamin and dragged him across the floor to a steel table bolted to the floor.

Forcing him down onto it, they restrained his wrists, then his ankles, and another one over his neck. Then, they took knives and cut the man’s clothes away until he was completely naked.

All the while, he hurled insults.

After he was strapped in place, the Wild Bunch exited the dungeon, leaving the three of them alone.

Once they were alone, Kit looked back at her. “There’s a balance—give and take, if you will—in this world of ours. When something is taken from you, it’s only right that you receive something in return.”

“An eye for an eye,” she said, earning a small smile in return.

“I can’t give you what he took, but I can give you something else. I can give you his life.”

When he dropped his hand, she almost felt cold without him.

Stepping away from her, he plucked a stool from a nearby corner, setting it a few feet from the table and gave it a pat.

Luna walked over and sank onto it.

“Have you ever heard of lingchi?” he asked as he pulled a blade from a rack of them, spinning the blade round in his hands. “It translates to ‘death by a thousand cuts.’ He’ll suffer for the next seven hours,” Kit said, turning his gaze down onto his captive, trailing the tip of his knife across the man’s shoulder. “If that appeases you?”

Her idea of suffering had been merely to shoot him somewhere other than his head so he could bleed out. Kit’s method of suffering …

“That’s … yes.”

“Right then. Don’t worry,” Kit said, this time to Benjamin who had grown deathly silent as he stared up at Kit in horror. “I’ll start with your penis and work my way out.”

The first cut drew a sharp cry from Arnold’s mouth, the second one just as loud. Luna didn’t think she had ever heard screams quite like those—gut-wrenching sounds that made her stomach feel like it was dropping.

But she never moved, nor did she look away as Kit applied each cut with expert precision. He was a killer, she reminded herself, a master at his trade, and she was seeing the full extent of that.

She didn’t know how much time passed as she sat there watching him work before she noticed a peculiar thing about him.

He wasn’t sweating.

His hands weren’t shaking.

Nor were his pupils blown out the way Lawrence’s had whenever he did violence.

Kit seemed entirely unaffected.

Even as the blood began dripping from the table onto the floor, nearly covering his arms up to his elbows, he didn’t seem bothered at all.

Luna should have been horrified at the violence before her, but as she watched Kit work, she might have fallen a little in love.





Chapter Nine





Movies, Luna realized, only ever showed bits and pieces, fragments of what it really meant to learn a trade.

And she was learning this the hard way.

Once Benjamin had finally stopped breathing, Luna’s training had officially begun.

With none other than Kit.

It almost felt as though she had been hung in suspense until he could be the one that was actually training her, and once it was time to start, she knew almost immediately that it wouldn’t be anything like what she had done with the Wild Bunch.

Originally, she had thought she would spend a few days on different tasks—a week for guns, two for knives, and more for everything else that she would possibly have to learn, but those days quickly added up to weeks, and weeks turned into months.

She wasn’t just learning how to shoot a gun, he’d explained during one of the many nights she spent in his weapons room.