Nix. (Den of Mercenaries Book 3) (12 page)

“Thank you,” Luna said, meaning it.

Aidra stood. “Don’t thank me just yet. Kit won’t go easy on you because you’re afraid. Trust me, I know.”

Luna figured it was safe to assume that Aidra had studied under Kit once.

Aidra didn’t stay much longer, drifting back out of the room and leaving Luna to her thoughts—which ultimately turned to Kit.

Or Nix, since it felt like he had been a different person down in that gym.

For a long while she sat there, thinking of the past, of the girl that had always wanted to fight back against her captors though she knew her efforts would be futile.

Before that place, she had never been in a fight, and that coupled with her lacking strength, there was no way she could have gone up against Lawrence and won.

Kit was giving her a chance to change that.

She wouldn’t fuck that up.

Taking a breath, Luna exited the room once more, following the same route they had taken earlier to get back to the gym. Before she got close, she heard someone’s fists hitting hard against the heavy sand bag.

She hesitated in the doorway, watching Kit as he sent his fists flying into the bag. There was power behind his hits, so much that she wondered how he was able to look so unassuming in a suit.

Kit looked distinguished when he was fully dressed—nothing like any killer she had ever seen.

But he was.

“Come to try again?” he asked, looking back at her, his hands going out to steady the swinging bag.

She toed her shoes off before stepping back on the mat.

A curious expression crossed his face as he watched her draw near. Maybe, in the short time she had been gone, he had thought she wasn’t capable—that she was quitting well before she started.

Was he already regretting his choice?

“Don’t go easy on me,” she said once she was in front of him, then held her hands out for him to tape.

She was ready to fight.

“
I
f I recall
, you were the one telling the Kingmaker
not
to start a war with Lawrence Kendall. I’m eager to know when you changed your mind since you decided to execute his closest associates.”

There were days when Kit questioned whether it was he working for her as opposed to the other way around considering the way she lectured him.

Aidra, in most instances, was like his own personal checks and balances—though he usually didn’t need one.

Whereas his brother was known for reckless decisions, Kit was always careful about the moves he made, ensuring that before he ever raised a hand, everything was in place and there would be no potential blowback.

With Lawrence’s associates, as Aidra had put it, he hadn’t considered the ramification of his actions, merely sent Fang and his crew to round the men up and bring them back to the château.

If he were to be honest, he had known for some time now that he was going to find the men that had raped Luna of her innocence—it felt right.

Though she wasn’t supposed to matter—she was merely there as a favor to a brother who often exasperated him—talking to her had caused a familiar itch to settle beneath the surface of his skin.

When she spoke of them, everything about her changed. He didn’t think she was aware of it, else she would have masked it, but as soon as she was made to mention them, her gaze would sink to the floor, her hands twisting in her lap.

Luna tried to hide it, but they still had a hold over her, though Kit didn’t doubt why. They were still out there, free to come after her again if they so chose.

Kit didn’t begin to think he could heal whatever memories she had of the place, but he thought he could offer a helping hand in leading her toward recovery.

“Lawrence wouldn’t have gone to my brother if he wanted a war,” Kit said as he dragged on a shirt. “He would have killed Emmett himself and shown everyone what he was capable of—instead, he contracted it out and made it look like it was one of his girls that had done it.”

Cheap, but effective.

“Besides,” Kit went on, “he’ll go to my brother again once he realizes his associates are missing.”

One by one he had had the men picked off and brought here, leaving only just enough evidence to show that the men hadn’t just disappeared, but they had disappeared violently.

“And if he does go to your brother?” Aidra asked, trailing after him as he started out of his room and downstairs.

“As you’re aware, my brother likes his games. Undoubtedly, Luna’s first assignment will involve Lawrence.”

And following his timeline, by the time he was finished training her, she would be more than ready.

Aidra was silent a moment. “That still doesn’t explain why you went through the trouble of bringing them here. They weren’t a part of
her
training, or you would have had her do it. This was … personal.”

Kit barely spared her a glance though he could feel her gaze boring into the back of his head. “You’re reading too much into this.”

“How long have we known each other now, Nix?” she asked, grabbing his arm to stop him from continuing on. “The most invested I’ve ever seen you in someone’s training was Tăcut, and that was only because he’d been empty in the beginning.”

Back when he was an integral part of the Lotus Society, Kit had overseen a number of subjects for training, making sure their skills were up to par before they ever left the ‘school.’ For those that failed—and there had been many—some were allowed a second round to try and prove themselves, the others were taken out.

Each member of the Wild Bunch had their own faults, and Kit couldn’t recall a single
easy
training session with any of them, but Tăcut had been different. From the very moment he was brought in, he had been difficult.

Not in the sense that he lashed out at anyone that came near him, but rather he had remained huddled in a darkened corner, refusing to do anything but stare at nothing.

Ever so often, however, he could be seen over video feed rubbing the brand that was burned into the flesh of his arm.

Only one word: tăcut.

Romanian for
silent
—the name had stuck because there was nothing else to call him.

It wasn’t until much later that Kit even realized his vocal cords had been removed, leaving him without a voice.

Even if he
had
wanted to speak, he couldn’t.

Two more months of searching had provided him with an answer to the man responsible.

As he had for Luna, Kit delivered the man to Tăcut, but with him, he had allowed him the privilege of killing his tormentor himself.

No, with Luna,
he
had wanted to do it for her.

Avenge her.

“It was incentive,” Kit said to Aidra, though he knew that was a lie. “And besides, I wanted to see how she would fare in the face of carnage.”

And face it, she had.

A part of him had worried what her reaction would be. There were times she reminded him of a broken little thing that was afraid of her own shadow, others she had a backbone of steel.

She had shown him that Uilleam was right in giving her the opportunity at something more. Not only had she watched him work, but she hadn't looked away either—not once during the thousand cuts that he delivered to Benjamin's body.

“Did she pass your test?”

“We’re training today, aren’t we?” he asked in lieu of an answer. “Not to mention, I don’t remember me asking this line of questioning when you invited Fang into your bed.”

They had tried to hide the affair since it started nearly a year ago, back when he first started bringing the Wild Bunch around more often.

As long as their work wasn’t affected and he didn’t have to suffer through tedious fights between them, he didn’t care what they chose to do with their time.

“And is that what this is?” Aidra asked, surprise lighting up her eyes. “You’re interested in the girl?”

“That’s not what I said.”

They were nearly to the stairway leading into the lower level of the house when Luna came around the corner, her gaze behind her so she didn’t notice them straight away, giving Kit a chance to study her.

It was amazing the difference time could make for one’s health. Already, she had gained weight, though she was still a touch too thin, and the sallow pallor to her skin was nearly gone.

She almost looked like an entirely different person.

Kit couldn't for the life of him remember a time when he had noticed women's athletic wear—he hadn't cared for it one way or the other—but his gaze was drawn to the way the skin-tight pants hugged her legs and the barest hint of the strap of her bra peeked out beneath the shirt she wore.

“Right,” Aidra said in Welsh, the barest trace of a smile on her lips as she spun on her heel. “You
definitely
didn’t say that.”

“This is your doing,” he said right back, though he never took his eyes off of Luna who was now looking at him with interest—probably wondering what they were saying.

“Don’t blame me when the mind and apparently, the body, are weak.”

She disappeared before he could respond, Luna looking after her as she folded her arms across her chest, self-conscious. Kit knew it was rude to keep her in the dark, especially since their conversation was essentially about her, but he thought it best to keep it to himself.

“Are you ready?” he asked her, taking her down the stairs, around the pool and across the way from the room they had been in the night before.

This one, too, had a heavy metal door, the inside padded to keep the sound from echoing. There was a table that spanned the width of the room, and on the other end were five paper targets hanging against the wall.

On the table spread out before them was a dismantled handgun, along with an M16 on the other side.

“I was going to ask what the first lesson of the day would be,” Luna murmured as her gaze darted around the table.

“Practice, remember,” he said, “you’re still learning how they work. Sit”

At the table, her eyes roamed over all the parts waiting, almost eagerly, for what came next.

First, he showed her the recoil spring and its guide, then where it was placed on the barrel, and where the slide was positioned on that. Once those pieces were together, he attached it to the bottom half of the gun with a firm click and inserted the magazine.

Once he had it together, he dismantled it once more, thoroughly explaining each step before he placed the last piece on the table.

“Your turn,” he said with a gesture of his hand down at the table.

Stumbling through her first attempt, there were very few errors, and by the time she was on her fifth, she had it assembled with very little help from him.

She showed progress yet. “Very good.”

“What’s next?”

Kit slipped a blindfold from his pocket, holding it up for her to see. “Put this on and repeat what you just did.”

He expected apprehension, but instead he got determination as she held her hand out for the cloth.

There was promise for her yet.

* * *

F
ang was
, by far, the easiest to like, not that he really seemed to give people much of a choice. He had a rather sunny, albeit morbid, disposition that took a bit of getting used to, but Luna liked him all the same.

Thanatos and Invictus were both friendly—in their own way. The two were often together, and seemed the closest of the four, but Luna hadn’t understood why until she spent an afternoon with the two of them. They were ying and yang,

Tăcut on the other hand … he only seemed to be tolerating her existence.

At first, Luna had thought that it was because of their lack of communication. She knew he could understand her just fine, but because he couldn’t speak, she could only go off of his body language, which might have been easier had he not always had his arms folded across his chest and a permanent scowl on his face.

It had only been made worse when she had stumbled into the lot of them one evening and found that Tăcut knew sign language. The other three understood what he was saying well enough—Thanatos even laughing at something that he gestured.

It wasn’t until then that Luna thought maybe he wasn’t interested in talking to her at all.

She wondered if she had done something to inadvertently offend him, but after drawing a blank—there were very few interactions between them to even review—she just chalked it up to him just not being interested in her.

Now, she made it a point to give him his space.

It was also for that reason that Luna had disappeared down into the training room, giving the Wild Bunch their freedom upstairs.

Despite her progress with Kit, she still wasn’t satisfied with where she was. Breaking out of his hold had become easier, though she had yet to be able to do it on the first try. Assembling and shooting a gun was by far the one thing she had almost mastered.

But knives?

She sucked.

Kit made it look so easy when he had his blades by the handles, showing her how best to hold it before he launched it across the room, embedding the metal in its target.

Whenever she did it, either she would hit the target with the handle and her weapon clattered to the ground.—and if she
was
able to hit her target, the blade only stuck for a second before it too was hitting the floor.

But practice made perfect, so here she was.

Dragging the case from its resting place against the wall, she lifted it onto the table, flipped the locks and pulled it open, revealing the gleaming set of throwing knives inside.

Picking up the first, she eyed her target, counting each ring as she centered her thoughts. She could do this.

After watching Kit do it more than a hundred times, she was sure she could manage at least
one
.

On her next inhalation, she turned the blade round in her hands. As she exhaled, she cast her arm forward, sending the knife flying end over end. She was almost sure she would make it … until the handle slammed into the target and the knife dropped like dead weight.

Luna was about to pick up another when a notepad slammed down onto the table beside her, the hand it had been thrown out of scarred and tan, belonging to the last person she was expecting to see.

Tăcut.

She was sure he didn’t mean to look as annoyed as he did, at least that was what she hoped.

Unlike the other three members of the Wild Bunch, Tăcut’s head was shaved close to the scalp which only seemed to emphasize the cut of his jaw and cheekbones.

And since his expression always remained somewhere between annoyed and disinterested, it only served to make him look more fearsome.

With a sharpie, he scrawled one word on the paper before pointing from it to her.

“Wrong,” Luna said aloud. “Are you saying I’m doing it
wrong
? This is the way Ki—Nix showed me.”

He shrugged, as if to say
still wrong
.

Before she could question him, he plucked one of he knives free, and faster than she could keep up with, he launched it across the room. But his didn’t fly end over end, rather straight like an arrow until he hit his mark.