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Eli —
The man who’d threatened my family, who’d put us through hell at a time when our focus should have been on our own, was somewhere in this fucking building. We’d gone through two teams of six soldiers to get to the stairwell, jogged down two flights, and probably faced another maze of hallways before we reached the man we needed to kill.
I stopped at the stairwell exit door and turned back, assessing our team. Mikaela’s men were in top shape, not even breathing hard. Though Mikaela brought up the rear, watching our backs—and the couple of darts I’d heard from her vicinity as we descended to stairs said she was watching well—I didn’t even wonder if she was out of breath. The woman could run circles around me, I had no doubt. Still, I swept her with my gaze, unsurprised to find her ready and waiting to move forward.
That same sweep moved past her to the stairs, steel-gray against the stark white walls. And yet the stairs weren’t pristine—wet red drops glistened against the steel, caught by the blinding fluorescent lights mounted at each floor.
“Who’s bleeding?” I barked. It had to be one of us; we were the only ones here. I glanced down at my feet.
Clear.
“Who—”
“I got it,” Mikaela muttered, bending over.
My throat tightened, threatening my breath as I shoved through the team. “What happened?”
She was tying a bandanna around her left thigh. A small puddle of blood had dripped from her boot and collected on the step. “Just a little nick, no worries. Fucker didn’t like getting his ass kicked by a woman half his size.” She tilted her head back as she jerked the knot tight. “Bigger isn’t always better.”
“She would know—we always save the big ones for her,” Titus joked.
I took my cue from him; I had to because, yeah, my first instinct was to totally lose my shit. Only the fact that no one else seemed concerned help me to keep it together. “But sometimes bigger is definitely better.”
She winked my way, and I noted that her eyes were clear. “Sometimes.”
“How deep?” I asked roughly.
Mikaela straightened. “Not even a hitch in my step. We ready?”
I admit, I hesitated. I mean, the woman I cared about was bleeding with every step. But this was an op, and Mikaela was a soldier. “All right, let’s go.” I moved back to the door, the team ready behind me. “Monty?”
He glanced at the screen of the FLIR, squinted. “Looks like they’re in a line along both sides of the hall, same amount as before.”
Six more. I nodded an acknowledgment of the intel and clicked on my computer’s screen. The red light on the box to one side turned green.
I opened the door.
Rhys went through first. We entered one by one, and I flanked Mikaela as she passed into...not a hallway like we’d expected. Instead it was one enormous room filled with tiers of desks, glassed-in offices, conference areas, and a large, clear area near the front where Levi stood with Sullivan and a tall black man I immediately identified as X.
While I was taking in the room, Mikaela’s team was taking out the guards converging around us. I headed straight down the center aisle, darting the two guards who stepped into my path before a one-two punch shut off their lights. Neither man pulled their weapons—not that I cared. The bastards could be Mother fucking Theresa for all I cared; I turned back, hit them each with a second dart, just for the hell of it.
“I told you we wouldn’t play nice,” Levi said, watching my approach. I raised a brow at him. We had played nice; no one was dead. Yet.
“Yes, I see that,” X murmured. He, too, was watching, his dark eyes intent behind Clark Kent glasses, but not only on me—he was watching the team perform. Assessing. Weighing every action, no worry or concern on his face. The lack sent rage through my entire body, and I dropped my dart gun on the last step, raising my GLOCK on the return.
“Eli, no!” Levi stepped toward me, and only his body blocking my aim stilled my finger on the trigger.
“The bastard needs to die,” I growled. For what he put us through, what he put Mikaela and her team through. Hell, just on fucking principle, he needed to die.
“You don’t want to do that,” X said, voice a cultured slide that put my back up.
“Why fucking not?”
Those words weren’t mine; they were Mikaela’s. She moved up beside me, and I fought the need to angle in front of her, keep her covered.
“Because,” X said, “if you kill me, you’ll never find out why you’re here.”
“That is why we’re here, asshole,” Rhys growled, approaching from the left. On the right, Monty and Titus appeared. Each man had a gun up, and a closer look showed they had all switched to lethal weapons, not dart guns.
“I told you,” Sullivan said from where he stood with his back against the front wall, head just beneath the massive screens displaying every kind of data I could think of. “There had to be a reason for him to have you target me.” He gave X a nasty glare. “I’m not going to forget those doctored images. That was Robbie, wasn’t it? Looked like his handiwork.”
X slid the geeky glasses down his nose and stared blandly back at his agent, puppet, whatever Sullivan was. The man grumbled but subsided.
That’s when the tingle down my back warned me that this man was definitely not the benign bureaucrat he was attempting to portray.
I looked to Levi, noted how he hadn’t given the guards around us a single glance as we swarmed in. No, his intense gray stare was all for X. He’d figured out the same thing I had: the only person in this room that mattered was right in front of us. The question was, what the hell did the guy want?
“What is going on, Levi?” I asked softly.
My brother shrugged. “We were waiting for you all to arrive before whatever great unveiling dickhead here has planned.” He held his hands out to his sides. “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here. Shall we get the fuck on with it?”
X didn’t smile, didn’t look pissed. That was what unnerved me about the guy. No reaction. No emotion. Nothing. It made me want to punch him just to see what would happen, but if life with Levi had taught me anything, it was that the quieter a man was, the more you had to worry about.
Walking slowly in our direction, X eyed both of us, moved to Mikaela beside me. I felt her tension, knew she was preparing for whatever the fucker had planned. But he simply walked between us without a pause. Each of us turned to watch X move up the aisle to the next tier, where he pivoted to look down on us. A king surveying his subjects.
My hand tightened instinctively on my gun, and I knew he saw it. I felt the imminent danger in the air, not just from me but from every other member of our team.
And then he spoke.
“As you might have surmised, you, Levi Agozi, and you, Mikaela Nixon, were chosen, along with your teams, to participate in an...audition...if you will. A test. And though I did not anticipate the two teams finding each other and working together, perhaps I should have.” X linked his hands behind his back. “Both smart. Both capable of feats that put you among the most elite fighters the world has to offer. I know; I’ve investigated them all.”
“Why?” Mikaela asked.
“Why? For one reason only—to use you.”
Mikaela’s laugh echoed Levi’s. I kept my narrowed eyes on X.
“If you think we’d work for you, ever,” Levi said, “through coercion or through choice, you are fucking delusional. The only thing keeping you breathing right now is the knowledge that one of us can blow your brains out at any time—and will before we walk out that door.”
“And that is why you were chosen.” X took off his glasses, polished them on his shirt, then settled them in his breast pocket. “I do want you to work for me. Preferably through choice, but...” He shrugged. “Resorting to blackmail, threats... Unpleasant but certainly doable. You’ve witnessed that. I had to see how you each performed under pressure. Which paths you would take, which choices you would make, even when pushed to the very brink.” His knowing gaze rested on Levi, and I wondered if he’d known, walking into the mansion, about Abby. About what had been happening to our family. And then he’d stepped in and taken the last shred of safety away from us, from Levi.
I cursed under my breath. “You really did want Sullivan dead, didn’t you? Even we barely managed to hold Levi back from killing him.”
X tipped his head a fraction of an inch. “Did you? Or did a principle that he has held his entire life do it for you?” He narrowed his eyes on Levi. “Your first kill was a man who raped a neighborhood girl. A man police refused to arrest because of his social and economic status. You brought a family justice when the law refused. The man you were then, that man, has not changed. Sullivan was in no danger.”
Something inside me stilled. It shouldn’t surprise me that X had dug up that information given all he seemed to know. What surprised me was, he was wrong. Levi’s first kill had been much earlier; I knew because Remi had been there, had told me, though Levi had never spoken a word about it.
“You have far more faith in me than I do,” Levi stated baldly, not bothering to correct X’s mistake.
X nodded. “Perhaps. But I think not.”
“What is that you want us to do?” Mikaela asked. The million-dollar question. Didn’t we all want to know?
X studied her for a moment. “To do what you do best. I run teams that some would call black ops.” He waved a hand. “I say black ops are a dime a dozen. My teams are...blacker than black ops. No records. No oversight. No support. You receive an assignment, and then you are on your own. The targets are the worst of the worst in our world, not merely drug dealers or child molesters, but heads of international trafficking rings. The politicians that aid drug lords. The drug lords themselves. Thieves who outwit every agent or soldier we send after them to steal secrets that could kill millions.”
“And what makes your teams different than those agents and soldiers?” Mikaela asked.
Finally, for the very first time, the slightest hint of a smile tilted X’s lips. “They are the elite even among elites. You are the elite among elites. And I want you working for me.”
Levi stepped forward. “No.”
“Are you certain, Mr. Agozi? This is a chance to take your vigilante justice—and make no mistake, killing the guilty without benefit of a trial is just that—to the next level. To make the world a better place for your family. Your nieces and nephews. Your...children.”
Levi flinched but didn’t back down. “I already do that. I decide who I take out. I decide who is innocent and who is not. You think I’d trust you to make those decisions? The man who threatened my family?”
“Threats are nothing.” The words were emotionless, like X’s eyes. “You’ll be called on to make decisions without guidance, to be responsible for each action, each thought. To bring justice. And yes, I will rely on you for that final judgment. The only way to be certain you were the right choice—and make no mistake, you are the right choice—was to push you to the absolute brink.” His eyes flicked to Mikaela. “And you passed, all of you, with flying colors. One team, one decision.”
He clasped his hand in front of him this time, the gold Rolex on his wrist gleaming in the artificial light.. “That is my proposal. That is your choice. And you must make it now.”
“And if we don’t?” Mikaela asked, voice low and mean.
“Then you’ll see, Ms. Nixon”—X grinned, a flash of shark’s teeth that chilled my gut—“I always keep my promises.”