Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
Luca
“I’ve got another job for you.” Victor Crow’s voice cut through the silence sharp as a dagger. His hazel eyes stared across the desk at the three of us as if waiting for some kind of protest that never came.
“Details?” Ronan asked, his voice feigning calm and disinterest. Emotions were a weapon in the Crows and Victor wasn’t afraid to use it. We learned early on to give him nothing but indifference, instead.
Victor’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t say anything as he slid a paper across the desk.
Ronan looked down at it before glancing back up at his father.
“One target?” Ronan questioned, unable to hide his surprise this time. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been assigned a single target mark.”
He had other groups to handle things like that. Far less experienced ones.
Which only meant this had to be a high-profile mark.
“You’ve been given your orders. Now get out of my office. I have a meeting to attend.”
With a wave of his hand, we were officially dismissed.
Ronan turned and walked out, not sparing us a glance. We quickly fell in line behind him.
We didn’t stop until we were back in the parlor in Ronan’s wing of the estate. The only ones who dared enter were the three of us and the staff he allowed.
He poured a soda for Nikolai. I’d known the man for eight years now, and he had yet to touch a single drop of alcohol. Generally, people didn’t turn down Victor’s offer of a drink, but even Victor respected his sobriety.
That meeting, when we first brought Nikolai in, was almost catastrophic. Victor was not pleased at being undermined. It might’ve been the first time Ronan stuck to his guns about something, and Victor seemed to respect that to some degree. That was likely our only saving grace.
That and Nikolai is a weapon in his own right.
Ronan had to have a backbone to survive in this world. The Crows were cutthroat, and yes, there was some loyalty to be found, but overall you didn’t disagree with Victor Crow.
Ronan slid my drink across the bartop and I took it, taking a long sip of the bourbon, letting the warmth slide down my throat, warming me from the inside out.
After I set it down, I finally broke the tense silence. “So, who’s the target? I’m assuming this isn’t a simple job.”
My fingers were already itching for the keyboard, ready to track down any and all details. We liked to be well aware of what we were getting into before walking into a job.
“Something about this is not adding up,” Ronan admitted as he took a sip of his drink, glaring down at the paper. “As far as dossiers go, this is limited. He’s not even listed with a Family.”
“Then why would Victor give it to us?” Nikolai questioned, his voice echoing out from across the room. He’d taken up a post in his usual armchair by the fireplace.
“That is the question of the ages, brother,” Ronan drawled. He shoved a hand through his rose-gold hair before dropping into a chair.
“Then we dig. What’s the target’s name?” I questioned, getting almost annoyed with my best friend. It wasn’t like him to be so tight-lipped, but I knew better than to call him out in the moment.
“Elias Vance. I truly think this is some kind of test. Victor wanted us to see if we’d give him flack for a low job.”
“No,” Nikolai said, already shaking my head. “There are a lot of things Victor Crow is, but petty and testing us is not usually his style.”
I ignored their current argument as I downed the rest of my drink, setting it on the bar top and heading out of the room.
They could find me later in my office.
For now, all I wanted to do was dive deeper into this name, because Nikolai was right. Victor didn’t just give out assignments to us without a purpose.
We were his elite team. His go-to when he needed something done right. We didn’t leave behind clues or drama. We were clean and efficient to a fault.
Which meant this was delicate and far bigger than he let on.
There was more to the story, and I needed answers. Like why he wasn’t giving us all the details.
Once I had a purpose, I had a hard time letting go of it. My mind latched onto this and I wouldn’t rest until I found what I was looking for.
Exhaustion was my constant companion, even when the search was closer to home. Like Aries.
I’ve spent the last eight years tracking down every lead I could find on the missing omega. It was like she didn’t exist after that day.
Sure, there was the standard publicly available information on her disappearance and even an obituary. The girl looking back at me in those pictures was just a child, but she haunted me.
She was barely eighteen when she disappeared and only twenty-two when she was presumed dead.
Without a body or a positive DNA match. The police had fabricated an entire death and cremation all to get Nikolai to move on and stop bothering them.
I may or may not have sent a virus through their systems routinely as a way to let them know we wouldn’t let that lie slide. Nikolai may have focused his anger elsewhere, but I made sure they still had their once a month visit one way or another.
But that little slice of revenge didn’t bring answers. Aries was still out there and none of my software or contacts could find her.
I’d even used software to age her up the twelve years that had passed, but it was never right. Something just didn’t click into place.
Letting go wasn’t an option. We were pack and she was likely my omega, too.
Despite trying not to think about it, I found myself pulling up the tab I kept just for her, the one I checked religiously every time I sat down.
There were no pings for Alice Davis or Aries as an alias.
With a sigh that felt all too familiar, I closed the tab and started a new search.
The Crows had their own network. I’d coded it years ago and it was keyed to certain accounts, so not just any Crow could access it. This didn’t just hide our searches, it went down the darker avenues as well.
Elias Vance didn’t ping any of the normal searches.
So, I dove deeper.
Finally, Eli Vance seemed to be a common denominator in far too many files and reports.
He was not the head of anything, but he had his fingers in it all. One of those people that you thought was at the bottom, but clearly was a weasel. It was a bit too easy to go unseen and fly under the radar.
The exact kind of man that Victor Crow would be very interested in.
We all knew this job had to mean something or he wouldn’t have assigned us as the team to eliminate him.
The deeper I went, the more I uncovered. It was like the tip of the iceberg and it had so much more under the surface. The kind of thing most would miss.
Not only did he have a pretty extensive record under his true name, Elijah Blake, but it was some of the worst kinds: trafficking, sexual assault, auctions, the works.
This man didn’t seem to have a whole lot of boundaries and was exactly the kind of man the Crows would eliminate.
Victor himself didn’t have very many things he wouldn’t touch. Money and power were paramount. But the one thing that Nikolai made certain he understood was that we would not be participating in anything to do with omegas or trafficking.
It was another hard line, but it seemed Victor respected it. Sometime in the last eight or so years he’d started to see Nikolai as his son, not that he’d admit it out loud.
As the years wore on, Victor pulled away from several deals because of it. It made our rivals a little richer in those areas, but it also gave him more reason to take them out, something Nikolai never hesitated to do. The Hellhound was always out for blood as long as it had a purpose.
While the Crows themselves might play on the darker side of things, Nikolai was happier when it was shades of gray.
“Holy shit,” I breathed out as I pulled up another piece of the puzzle, realizing I’d finally struck something.
“What is it?” Ronan demanded as he walked in. Of course, the smug bastard was lingering in the hall waiting for this moment.
“I’ve got him,” I said, my voice picking up, letting out a sharp breath. “He was buried deep. Did you have any idea who he really was?”
“Obviously not,” Ronan said, giving me an exasperated look and waving me on. “But please, inform the class.”
“We knew this wasn’t some low-level bullshit—”
“It never is,” my packmate agreed as he sat down in the leather armchair in my office, making himself at home.
“This Elias, is Spectre,” I said. “It seems your father figured it out far before anyone else. His whereabouts have been largely unknown until now, haven’t they?”
“Of course, my father knew,” Ronan said with a snort.
Nikolai walked in and Ronan caught him up as he settled into the remaining seat. This was our usual tradition before a job. My office was the easiest place to make plans since I was the one with the answers.
“If we take out Spectre, that means we’re handling one of the biggest thorns in your father’s side. It will double his territory.”
“It could give us some time to focus on finding her,” Ronan pointed out. Every time we tried to take time away there was always something popping up. This big of a win would give us the chance to stop that.
“We got intel on our last job that he was in the area,” Nikolai said.
“We did,” I confirmed, glancing his way. It was so weird hearing him speak so much, but something had him rattled today. I just wished I knew what it was.
There was a lot I wished I knew about Nikolai, but he kept himself far too guarded, never letting us in fully. The most I saw him come to life was during his fights. Ronan and I hadn’t missed a single one in years.
We’d more than proven our loyalty to him, and someday I hoped he would understand that. It often felt like he’d given up on having a real pack when he lost her, but we weren’t going anywhere.
“I need to dig deeper,” I said, popping my knuckles and massaging my hands, readying myself for what I was sure was going to be a long day of research.
“There’s a fight tonight,” Ronan reminded me.
I looked at my watch, then back at my packmates.
Nikolai tensed, but he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was locked across the room but his attention was on me as if he was waiting to hear what my answer would be.
“I’ll be there,” I promised. “I never miss one.”
Nik nodded and stood up, leaving me to work.
Ronan hesitated at the door, turning back to me. “Anything?”
“No,” I said quietly. Even if we’d never met her, Aries was always on our minds.
I set a quick alarm before locking in. My hands were already over the keyboard by the time he walked away, my multiple screens lighting up with lead after lead as I dove deeper now that I had better keywords.
At some point, Ronan brought in coffee. My favorite order from the shop down the street. He was long gone by the time I noticed it.
I took a long pull, realizing it was cold by now, but not caring. Caffeine was caffeine, and who was I to be picky at this point?
I had a whole web uncovered. There were incidents we didn’t even realize Spectre was behind.
The bad business deal we’d gotten into last year that had lost us good men? That was his doing.
Someone must have been feeding him information. It was just a bit too convenient that his men appeared during a routine job. We’d lost money, a connection, and our people.
This was the exact kind of hit that would send Victor into a frenzy.
I started building a file, one bulked with everything I’d found.
Until my alarm blared, shocking me out of it. Knowing I’d already waited too long, I pushed back from my computer and rubbed a hand over my tired eyes.
Three hours had passed since they’d walked away from me.
I had just enough time to rush through a shower before throwing on some clothes. We tried to dress down when we were going to these fights, mainly faded jeans, old T-shirts. Anything that let us blend in but was baggy enough to hide our guns.
They were already waiting in the car by the time I walked down, which wasn’t surprising. They knew me well by now.
Nikolai was silent like always as we drove through the city. It was his moment of calm before the fight.
We always arrived earlier than the crowd, Ronan and I finding Nikolai’s side of the cage near Dimitri.
Nikolai no longer had any sort of deal with the old alpha. He didn’t need the money and didn’t want the headache, so he kept Dimitri as his agent.
To his credit, Dimitri was fair. He always made sure that Nik didn’t get fucked over, and earned more than his fair share in the process.
The crowd filed in not long after we did, giving us a wide berth. We had a reputation, no matter how much we dressed down for this.
Nikolai had his face set in a grim expression as he stepped out, ready to face his first opponent.
They called him Hellhound, because he was out for blood and never let go once he caught a trail.
He always eased them in, too, letting the other alpha get a shot or two. Then he swept the floor with them and barely broke a sweat.
Nikolai moved like a ghost, circling around his opponent, his fists moving so fast the man had no chance to react.
Every kick and jab sent blood splattering across the concrete below them.
Nikolai stayed focused, his expression never changing as he systematically took out all of his opponent’s weak points, sniffing them out like a hound.
Both opponents were breathing heavily, chests heaving, eyes narrowed. It looked like a fair fight on the outside.
It wasn’t.
Two more hits and the alpha went down in a spray of blood that had the crowd cheering.
Watching him fight was truly like a work of art.
The other two fights went the same, ending in a spray of blood and an alpha dropping. The crowd was going wild and Nikolai looked more alive than he had in weeks.
Hopefully this would clear his head for the job ahead, because in a few days’ time, I’d have more than enough information for us to hunt down our next target.