Chapter 47
Viper
Summer rain pools on the uneven sidewalk outside the diner. Gasoline, oil, and the random candy wrapper swirl in a shimmering rainbow of city pollution, distorting my reflection. The heat is oppressive today, made worse by the afternoon thunderstorm that moved through on my drive here.
I fucking hate Florida.
The bell rattles and loud laughter spills out from the restaurant as two women step out onto the busy street. I grab the door, holding it open for them, letting them pass before going inside, doing my best to ignore their eyes.
I hate being ogled more than I hate this state.
But we’re here on a mission to end Rune, so we tolerate the crowds, the heat, the insufferable, vacuous city so we can monitor him. Figure out a way to get to him.
The AC blasts across my face as I enter, one of those curtain fans that block the heat and humidity from entering each time the door is opened. Doesn’t help. It’s nearly as hot and loud in here as it is outside.
I adjust my baseball cap and scan the long metal diner counter lined with stools and patrons, looking for his familiar face. We’ve only met up a few times over the years, always on the outskirts of town, and today is no exception. It doesn’t mean I like it, but I needed to talk to him.
Clyde has answers, and I need answers.
“Sit anywhere,” a southern female voice calls out from behind the counter. “Be with you in a second.”
Clyde chose this place because of how popular it is.
Seems to go against us trying to be discrete, but now I see why.
No one is paying attention. No one would recognize him, much less note two men having lunch in a busy diner twenty miles away from where we live.
Everyone has their face in a plate or in their phones, barely paying attention to anything around them as I slip into a booth toward the back of the diner and wait.
The bell rings just as I pick up the menu and Clyde walks in. He’s changed out of his suit, and wears a baseball hat and a tropical print shirt so vibrant against his dark skin it’s practically glowing. As he approaches, I can’t help but smile.
“You look like a fucking tourist,” I tell him as he slides into the booth across from me. “Where are your sunhat and aviators?”
His dry expression makes my grin widen. In the two years we’ve been here, I’ve grown used to him.
It doesn’t help the memories of that day in those dark woods.
The anger. The absolute rage that I feel toward him that he still works for the man who killed my brother, but it’s eased some knowing he’s at least trying to stop Rune.
Some. Not enough most days.
“Why do you want me here, V?” he asks, picking up the menu and tapping it on the edge of the tabletop.
“V?” I ask, shifting as the waitress approaches.
“What will you two be having?” she asks, one hand on her hip, the other flattened to her cleavage. It’s a nice cleavage. Almost as nice as the pretty Vixen I’ve been watching for two years.
Watching. More like obsessing.
“Strawberry milkshake, the cheeseburger, and fries,” Clyde says. He points to me. “And he’s paying.”
She quirks a brow and then looks at me. “Same,” I tell her and wait until she leaves before saying, “Tell me about my mother.”
Clyde’s usual stoic demeanor slips. He settles back in his seat, eyes locked on mine. “Interesting that you think I know who your mother is.”
I lean sideways and pull the printed page from the back pocket of my jeans. When I unfold it, and spread it out, Clyde’s gaze drops to it and his jaw grinds.
“It’s amazing what a reverse image search can find on the internet.” I tap the page I printed this morning. “You’re much younger here.”
He nods but remains silent.
“What does Rune’s right-hand man have to do with a ballet school in the middle of Russia?” I ask.
Clyde slides the page toward him and stares down at the image of my mother that was printed in a Moscow newspaper several years before I was born.
It’s taken me years of digging, but I finally found evidence that my mother wasn’t just a ballerina.
She had trained and worked at the other school.
The one we whispered about as boys. The same school rumored to train soldiers just like us. All women. All just as deadly.
“Do you remember her name?” I ask, shifting to lean forward in my seat. “I can remember her face. The way she smelled like summer. But I can’t for the life of me remember her name.”
Clyde keeps his eyes on the paper, staring at the image of the two of them center stage, my mother in a silk leotard and slippers, a younger Clyde at her side.
“Catriona,” he says. “She was one of the best.”
I glance around, then lower my voice. “Like us? But daughters?”
His subtle nod confirms it. “Contracted out in pairs or solo. Very skilled. Very fatal.”
“Who ran it?” I ask. “Father?”
Another subtle nod, then, “It shut down when Fallon and Rune cut ties. After Maxim…” he doesn’t finish.
“What does Maxy have to do with the ballerinas?” I ask. I lean back as the waitress approaches and sets down our plates. She tosses straws in front of us, tells us to enjoy, then moves on. Clyde pops a fry into his mouth.
“Maxy dropped us off that day,” I say, looking around. “He sent the three of us out into the wilderness.”
Clyde eyes me, eating another fry.
“I never understood why.”
“Does it matter?”
I huff. “Yes.”
Clyde leans back, looking around the diner. “Maxim betrayed Fallon. He sided with Rune. He was furious after—” His head dips to his plate, then he meets my eyes. “Maxim helped train them.”
“The girls?” I don’t know why I’m whispering. The gravity of everything, maybe. I take a sip of the milkshake and lean back, staring blankly down at my fries.
“The school was hard for the girls. Lonely. Hard on their bodies, their minds,” he says.
“When your mother got sick, she begged to go home to Scotland. Finally, at the end, he allowed it. We didn’t know for a long time that she had passed.
The second he discovered you’d been placed at Saint Theresa’s, he went to get you. ”
My stomach dips, thinking of the day he arrived.
“Did he take me because I was hers?” I ask, the information swirling in my head.
He dips his chin slightly, snatching up the ketchup bottle and squeezing some onto his plate. It squirts wetly and splatters on the table. Clyde drags his napkin over the red dots slowly, like he’s thinking. Or maybe remembering my mother.
“Did you know who I was that day?” I ask, and when he meets my eyes, I know it’s true. “When you saw me in that clearing?”
I wonder if that’s why he let me go. Maybe not the entire reason, but partly. What we saw was so heinous, I think he knew if Rune captured me in those dark woods outside his lodge, what he did to her, to that man tied to the tree, would happen to me.
“You look just like her,” Clyde says. “She was one of our best. Smart. Fast. Mean.”
“She said I looked like my father,” I say, watching for his reaction. When I see the subtle shake of his head, it’s confirmed. “You know who he was?”
“A soldier,” Clyde says, and looks out the diner window. Outside, people move along oblivious to the fact that chaos rains down on me. Life just continues to go by like I’m not in this small diner, having my world turned upside down. “He was like you, trained at the school.”
My chest heaves, air leaving my lungs. “How long has Fallon run the school?”
“The smaller group—the one before you and your brothers—was his first set of soldiers at the new school. He transferred them from one to the other.” Clyde fingers the corner of the napkin on the table, seeing things I can only imagine.
“Before that, when your mother and father were there, we kept them all housed together. Became an issue after a while.” He gestures to me. “Hence, how you came to be.”
“They fell in love?” I ask. “My parents? While in that school?”
“If that’s what you want to call it.” Clyde crosses his arms, looking down at the picture. “Fallon was furious she got knocked up, but your mother was good. Too good to remove, so we kept her.”
“And my father?” I ask, “She told me he died.”
“On a mission before you were born,” Clyde confirms. “Nothing tragic or noble. Just a stray bullet and that was it.”
“What was his name?” I ask.
Clyde smiles. “She named you after him.”
My chest squeezes.
“Bryce?” I whisper. It’s been years since I spoke the name out loud. Fallon refused to call me by my name. Refused to acknowledge I had one other than the name I earned at the school that awful day in a moldy bathroom.
“Wait,” I say, realizing he has said we. We kept them all housed together. I lean forward, gripping the tabletop. “You said ‘we.’”
Clyde looks up, meeting my eyes. “Before I joined Rune in the States. I was the one who trained the girls to kill.”