Kenz

Sometimes my brain stopped working—it took one look at the situation I found myself in and just fucked right off. It had happened when I’d found out about the murder of my mother and sister, again when my father had tried to kill me and it happened again now, as I faced a man I’d trusted, one I’d relied on, only to realize that he’d been behind everything I’d suffered recently.

“So we officially meet,” Grisham said, taking his phone from his ear, a soft smile on his face as though he didn’t truly mind being exposed. “I didn’t expect you to be the one to figure it out.”

“How could you?” I whispered, trembles running through my body, fear swamping me as I tried to connect the man who had helped me so often with the monster I’d heard about, the nightmare from my dreams.

He tilted his head, making no attempt to rise or do anything but stare back at me. “I’ve already told you—you just didn’t read between the lines. I saw your work at the entrance exhibit, and I knew, right away, that you were the one for me.”

I took two steps closer and slammed my palm on the top of his desk. “You didn’t even know me! If you actually gave a damn, why didn’t you do something normal like ask me out? What sort of psychotic idiot has their soulmate abducted and sold at an auction?”

His chuckle came out soft and unconcerned. It forced me to look into his eyes, the ones I thought I’d known, and recognize an overwhelming emptiness in them. They seemed to lack a part, as though a vital piece of him had gone missing at some point.

Or maybe he’d never had that piece at all.

“I tried to get closer, but you never allowed anyone near. You had a wall up no matter what I did, kept me at a distance that I couldn’t cross. We are soulmates, Kenz, and if you only give yourself the time and space to recognize it, you’ll see it, too.”

A click behind me made me freeze. The safety of a gun flipping off was a sound no person ever really forgot.

Grisham—Lorien?—peered over my shoulder but no change to his expression suggested he worried at all.

“It was you all along?” Hayden asked, rage in his voice that terrified me as much as the man before me.

“You were so close,” Lorien said with a laugh, “but you never saw it. You never managed to put the pieces together to find me. Sometimes, I wondered if you and the others’ incompetence was a sign that you didn’t really want to find me. The four of you should have managed it, yet in five years, you’ve never gotten close enough for it to matter.”

“Who cares?” Hayden fully entered the office, then shut the door without ever removing his gaze from Grisham. “A bullet between your eyes doesn’t require much time, after all.”

Grisham shrugged and sat back in his chair. “You won’t shoot me.”

“Do you really think that? After what you’ve done? After I’ve chased you this long?”

“You’re smarter than that. If you couldn’t find solid proof about me, do you think the police will? Or do you think that if you kill me here, in my office, in a place where others will come quickly at the noise, you’ll be held responsible as a murderer?”

“So? I’m ready to throw my life away,” Hayden assured him, no hesitation in his voice.

It brought back the same crushing pain from last night, the realization that the men I loved didn’t value or even want their lives.

“But are you ready to throw hers away?” Grisham gestured toward me.

He sure knows where to aim that threat.

Hayden hesitated, his lips pressing together, but he didn’t lower his gun.

Grisham’s smile spread wider. “Kenz has enjoyed a quiet life this last year because her existence isn’t widely known. If anything happens to me, her identity will get out. I have ensured that every person who might wish to make use of her will know everything about her. Her ability to live as she wishes will disappear if that happens, assuming she survives it.”

Hayden lifted his lip, a look of pure disgust on his face. “And you claim you love her, that you’re soulmates, but you would do that to her?”

“I’m a practical man. We’re soulmates, and that means if I go, her time should come soon after. Besides, if something happens to me, do you think my mother would sit back quietly? She may be a meek woman, but mothers are notoriously vicious. If I’m harmed, she will set her sights not only on Kenz herself but on those Kenz cares about as well. I know you don’t value your own life, but you are far too easy to predict, and you’ll value the life of others.”

My stomach rolled as I thought about Nem in danger because of me. Not just her—she was tough, as were the Quad—but others. What about Sasha? What about those who worked for my sister? I’d lived in this world long enough to know exactly how much death came from a real war, when there were no innocents—just the victors and the dead.

Hayden still didn’t lower his gun, but the look in his gaze said he’d taken the threat seriously. “So what now?”

“Now we appear to be at an impasse, don’t we? We both have something to hold over the head of the other. It seems we are at a standoff at the moment.” Grisham moved his gaze from Hayden to me, and I had to fight the desire to take a step away from the intensity of it. “I am not backing down. I will have Kenz.”

“I’m not something to own,” I whispered.

Grisham gave me an indulgent smile. “Everyone is something to own. Even me. And don’t mistake me, you will have me as well. If I wanted a slave, I could have that. Instead, I’ve given you time to get to know me, to realize we’re meant to be. My patience has limits, however. I suggest you do not push me to that point.” His threat sent a shiver through me.

“This isn’t over,” Hayden said.

“Of course it isn’t. However, I will admit, this is the most fun I’ve had in a while. Jobs are too easy anymore, no challenge, no real risk, nothing to make them interesting. At least this has become interesting. So go on, and think carefully, Kenz. The longer you draw this out, the riskier it gets. I don’t care who dies, who suffers as we drag this you, but I have a feeling you do.”

I swallowed hard, my throat tight and dry. So many faces flashed through my mind, all the people who might pay the price for this, not the least of which were the men I loved.

Was I really worth risking so many people?

* * * *

Char

I rubbed my eyes, exhausted after all the hours I’d spent on the phone and staring at the bright screen of my laptop.

I was used to research—it was a necessary evil in my line of work—but I wasn’t sure it had ever mattered quite this much, that I’d ever done it with so much focus.

A water landed in my lap, and I groaned when it smacked me in the groin. A glance up showed Vance without an ounce of regret.

Instead of snapping at him—he’d only enjoy annoying me, after all—I gave him my best fake smile. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.” He twisted the lid off his own and tipped it back, gulping it down.

Despite the sun having set a little while before, the heat hadn’t let up. Sweat had soaked into the back of my shirt, and when I moved my hair from my face, I found droplets on my forehead. The cold water was a welcome treat, though I could have done without the crotch-shot.

“Anything new?” Vance asked.

“Just a lot of bad,” I admitted. “Even if there was a doubt before, there isn’t now. Grisham is Lorien.”

“How did he land a job at a college? That’s a hard background to fake.”

“Looks like his mother and father made sure he was never connected to them by anything official. So, officially, from birth, he’s been Grisham. He went to college under that name, got his degree in Fine Arts and the History of Art. If you follow his official name, he’s lived a perfectly normal life.”

“Why would they do that?”

“It’s not that uncommon, especially for second kids. It lets them hide an heir,” I explained. “If no one knows who he is, no one can target him.”

“But with his brother and father gone, he’s set to take over, so why keep hiding him?”

“I get the feeling he likes it, that he wants his other life more than he wants to lead. In fact, I think the only reason he’s taken an interest in his family business at all is so they don’t stop him. I doubt he wants to run it.”

Someone sat beside me, and I fought the urge to jump.

Damn Tor, the sneaky bastard. I wondered at times if he just enjoyed freaking people out by sneaking up on them. It was like a reminder that if he wanted to slit my throat, he could.

He set a hand behind him and leaned back, his gaze going up to the dark sky. After hearing his voice the other day, it still echoed in my head. It was quiet, but it was there.

Given I lived my life by talking, by twisting facts and people into useful forms, by twisting myself into whatever I had to be, his silence always unnerved me a bit. Yet, there was something oddly comforting in that quiet, as though I didn’t have to be on during that time.

“Water?” Hayden huffed softly as he shut the slider behind him. “I figured tonight would be a night for alcohol.” Even as he made the joke, however, he held water as well.

I suspected none of us wanted to let our guard down, not tonight, not now that we realized just how close the danger to Kenz really stood.

Instead of Lorien being some faceless voice over a phone, a name without form, we’d discovered he was closer than we’d ever thought. The idea that Kenz had met with him right under our noses, that we’d never even thought to suspect him, ate at me.

I was supposed to read people well, to know when they lied, and yet I hadn’t even considered he could be the one we searched for.

“How’s Kenz?” Vance asked Hayden.

Hayden pulled a chair over from the seating area and sat in it. “She’s okay. She showered, barely ate, but she’s sleeping now. Hopefully a full eight hours will help her feel more ready to deal with this tomorrow.”

“What’s there to deal with?” I muttered. At their looks, I let out a rough breath. “He’s got us, doesn’t he? He knows that we can’t move against him, not as long as he threatens Kenz. We’re stuck.”

“He can’t move, either,” Hayden pointed out. “Now that we know who he really is, he can’t attack her directly or we tear apart his life.”

My phone buzzed, and just like Hayden and Vance, I pulled it out to peer at the screen. Even if we don’t have proof to turn him over to the authorities, we know plenty of enemies of his who would love to get his real name.

“That doesn’t help,” I snapped. “It means we’re both stuck right here, at a place we can’t stay. Kenz is still in the middle, and no one can move, can do anything. We can’t get our revenge, he can’t get Kenz, so what? We just stay like this until we die?” I carded my fingers through my hair, pushing it out of my face so roughly that I accidentally yanked at least a strand or two.

I made my life by reading others, by tricking them, by creating plans that got me what I wanted, but I couldn’t figure out a plan right now.

I couldn’t see a way forward, a path to what we wanted most. Each time I went down another rabbit hole, each time I explored some new method, it led to the same.

Kenz paying the price for our revenge.

I rubbed my palm over my face as I let out a humorless laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Hayden asked.

“I was thinking about that first night Kenz got here. Remember how scared she was? I took one look at her and was ready to do whatever it took to get what we wanted. The idea of using her didn’t bother me at all, and if she got hurt because of it?” I shrugged. “Funny how that changed, how now the idea of her left holding the bag just isn’t acceptable.”

“I know what you mean,” Vance said. “I’ve spent five years wanting nothing more than revenge. I wanted to make Lorien pay for what he’d done, and each time I saw my mangled hand, it only made me more desperate for that. Now?” He shook his head. “I go days without thinking much about it. Even when I look at that hand, I don’t feel the same hatred I did before. Hell, sometimes I wonder if I couldn’t just walk away from it all, if I couldn’t move on.”

I nearly scoffed and said there was no way that was possible.

However, I couldn’t quite get that out.

I used to see my wife’s smiling face in my dreams. I used to dream of her almost every night, waking up panting, having to remind myself she was gone. The anger and sorrow that would overcome me at times like those had only been soothed by my thoughts of revenge.

However, those dreams had slowly been replaced by something else, something calmer. I’d started to dream about Kenz, to see her sweet face, to hear her laugh in my mind, to think of her. Worse, a part of me even had fantasized about a future, about what could occur in the future with her.

It wasn’t that I’d forgotten my wife so much as Kenz had built a foundation beneath me, had allowed me to stand instead of drown, and I wasn’t sure what that meant.

“It doesn’t matter if we’d be willing to give up our revenge,” Hayden pointed out, his voice soft. “Lorien wants her, and he’s willing to get her killed if he can’t have her. Even if we were willing to walk away from this all, we can’t. We started on this path and the only way Kenz can be safe anymore will be to deal with Lorien and the threat he poses.”

Nice idea, but we still don’t know how to do that, Tor wrote.

“I have an idea,” Vance said.

I lifted an eyebrow in his direction. Of all the people who might have an idea on what to do, I sure would have placed Vance last. He was smart, of course, and his network of information was impressive. His connections due to his art and family meant if we needed to know someone, if we needed to get close to someone, he could manage it. Still, he’d never been the type to plot much, especially when it came to situations like this. “Oh yeah?” I asked, not expecting much.

He snorted softly, the sound implying he could guess my line of thought. “Yeah. Why does Lorien’s threat matter?”

“Because of Kenz,” I said.

Vance shook his head. “No. I mean why specifically does it matter if he threatens Kenz?”

Because he can carry it out, Tor wrote.

“That’s right. See, Lorien has the backing to do what he says. Grisham doesn’t have much power, but Lorien does, and he has that because of his family. He’s dangerous as an individual, sure, but he’s only dangerous the way a man is. It’s his family that gives him the power to threaten Kenz, though. His leverage is there because of his mother, because she’ll follow through on his wishes if something happens to him.”

It hit me then, and I cursed at myself for not having thought about that before. Worse, the fact that Vance had beat me to such an obvious solution bothered me. “The way to deal with an enemy is to cut off their resources.”

Vance nodded. “That’s right. If we can strain that relationship, if we can sow doubt between them, it lessens his ability to carry out his threat.”

“She’s his mother,” Hayden said. “Mothers don’t just abandon their kids, no matter how terrible those kids are.”

“Are you sure about that?” Vance asked. “Because as someone who constantly gets threatened to be disowned, I can assure you that parents aren’t quite as perfect as we like to pretend. Besides, we don’t need her to throw him to the wolves, exactly, just to withdraw her support of him. Without her backing, his threats mean nothing. He’s made his life on his own, worked on his own, only using her connections, so without her, he’s got no one to help him carry out his plan. If we want to take him out and not risk Kenz, we’ve got to split him from his mother.”

I thought about it, trying to come up with a reason why it wouldn’t work, but I couldn’t come up with anything. It wasn’t that it would be easy, of course, but it was something.

It was a hell of a lot more than we’d had before, at least.

I glanced up at the house, toward Kenz’s dark window. She’d been the key to finding him, to get this far, but at the same time, she was the thing standing in the way of ending it quickly.

And for the first time, I wished we could all just walk away, could forget this all, but a tightness in my chest assured me it wasn’t possible.

Maybe this was all my punishment for wanting things I didn’t deserve. I might not get what I wanted, but I’d do whatever it took to make sure Kenz could have what she wanted.

She deserved at least that much.