Nix. (Den of Mercenaries Book 3)(76)

Paying the driver, he made sure to reiterate that he would need to remain there, and should he, there would be more money waiting for him on Kit’s return. The driver, not much older than nineteen, if he had to guess, quickly shook his head.

As Kit ventured inside the building, he took in the peeling walls, the lone television in one corner of the room, three men of varying sizes seated around it as they watched a football match. With beers in hand, they barely spared him a glance before they were engulfed in the game once more. On the other side of the narrow room was an ancient looking computer that looked like it hadn’t run properly in several years.

The screen was dimly lit, as though the lightbulb inside it was slowly dying, but it was on, and that had been enough for Semyon to find this place for him.

A place that Luna didn’t know he had bothered to search for.

Already, so early in their marriage, he was keeping secrets, but he didn’t want to offer her false hope. Already, he could tell that the stories of her life back home were no longer the reality for her family.

He wasn’t seeing the house with the pool, or the dog with the snow-white fur that had done more for her than her family had when she was taken.

From what he could tell, he found nothing of her family except for the man he had come to see—a man that wasn’t sitting around watching the telly.

Venturing up the stairs, Kit removed his sunglasses, hooking them through his shirt as he stopped at the top, surveying the rooms that were left open for scrutiny.

But it was the pregnant woman, partially naked, sitting in front of a fan that had to only be blowing slightly cooler air considering the temperature that Kit directed his attention.

Tendrils of hair clung to her damp forehead as she turned her head in his direction, blurry eyes trying to fix on him.

“Juan Santiago,” Kit said as he drew closer, waiting until he was sure he had her attention. “Where is he?”

Barely raising her arm, she pointed down the hall toward a room whose door was slightly cracked. He thanked her before starting off, drawing in a breath as he laid his hand flat against the wood and pushed.

Luna’s father was meant to be a tall man—as tall as Kit, she had once said—with a head full of thick, dark hair, and an even thicker mustache. He’d had an obsession with old wrangler jeans, she had told him with a laugh, the older the better because that meant he was breaking them in properly.

He also had laugh lines around dark eyes that she had inherited from him.

She had built the man up so much that Kit had felt a surge of apprehension at the thought of meeting the man. He was her father, after all, and Kit had always been raised under the ideal that a man was meant to ask a woman’s father for his permission to marry his daughter.

Of course, that was before Kit had stopped asking for permission when it came to certain things, he couldn’t shake his teachings completely.

But what he found in that room …

He didn’t think he had ever seen the physical representation of ’wasting away’ but that was the first thing that came to mind as he got a look at the man seated in a chair by the window.

A cigarette was pinched between two fingers, smoke billowing out the window as he dragged in a deep, noisy lungful before dispelling the harshly scented smoke into the air. The room reeked of it, as though he spent his days sitting in that very spot, chain smoking until there was nothing left.

There wasn’t much else in the room besides that chair he seemed glued to. A mattress on cinderblocks on one side, a pair of suitcase tucked neatly away, and a small radio that was currently blaring a commercial about buying cars.

Juan’s gaze drifted to him, as patient and uncaring as the flame eating away at the cigarette he smoked. First, there was indifference, then recognition. “You look like him—what was his name? The Kingmaker, sí?”

“And you look like her,” he returned, inviting himself into the room. “Tell me, how do you know of the Kingmaker?”

Juan chucked, a harsh, pained sort of sound that told Kit he didn’t find what he was about to say funny at all. “The one that offers false dreams,” he said with a shake of his head. “El Diablo would be better suited for a man like him.”

The Devil.

Uilleam had been called worse—Kit had called him worse.

“And what did he offer you?” Kit asked.

“It wasn’t what he offered me,” the man said flicking ash out the window, “but what he offered mi mujer—my wife.”

Kit didn’t want to know.

He was a man of logic and facts, but for once, he didn’t want to know the truth—he didn’t want to hear words that would ultimately make his temper flare.

He knew that whatever the man said next, in Kit’s eyes, he wouldn’t view him as Luna’s father.

“Go on.”



“I want to be rid of this place,” Carmen said all those years ago, frowning as she often did when she launched into her theatrics, a glass of wine clutched in one manicured hand. “You’re a man, you should want more for your wife and daughters.”

It didn’t matter that Juan worked back-breaking hours, that he spent more time at work than he did at home, his salary was not enough for her.

Nothing was good enough for Carmen Santiago.

It was his fault—he knew the kind of woman he was pursuing that night at the bar—but he hadn’t cared then, and he didn’t care now. He would do whatever it took to make her happy, to prove that he was worthy of her.