8. Chapter 8
T he drive into downtown Washington took no more than twenty minutes, even with traffic.
The District had offices on the first floor and the basement of an old building near the U.S.
Capitol. The rest of the building remained unoccupied but under our ownership.
We didn’t have special gadgets that you see in movies, keeping things simple.
The only thing The District really invested in was high-tech, which gave us important intel or allowed us to hack into places we didn’t belong.
We weren’t solely used to kill but to destroy lives as well.
Malik grew up on the streets of Syria, where he learned how to kill at the ripe age of eleven.
He and his family moved to the United States when he was sixteen as refugees and eventually honed his skills with a Syrian gang.
His family was poor, and they struggled, so he did what he could to bring in money.
Eventually, Malik parted ways with a lot of blood on his hands and worked solo on contracts he’d slowly built over the years.
He met Sid when he was on a joint assignment, and while Malik worked freelance, he was hired to work with Sid and mentor him further into the world of political espionage and assassination.
Now, at fifty-two years old, Malik still remained distant and unattached.
It wasn’t unlike us not to commit to a partner, but Malik had been alone for as long as I could remember.
After watching him for the past seven years, he either denied his homosexuality or was asexual.
At least, that was what we assumed since we were all queer, and one of the reasons The District was formed.
We would never know, since he was the most closed-off bastard I’d ever met, but I had the utmost respect for him.
Sid stumbled back into Malik’s life when he was twenty-eight, after searching for the older assassin when his cartel nearly killed him for being gay.
He was caught with a guard, frotting out of sight.
The guard was shot instantly, but because the leader saw Sid like a son to him, he kicked him out, beaten and bloody. But he lived.
Eventually, the two men decided to form a business.
It took a long time for the profits to trickle in.
With perseverance and quality work, eventually, they grew and brought in more people.
I was the third to come on board at the age of twenty-three, after Sully and Maverick.
Layla came on board four years ago. Shortly after, it was Khai, and the last to arrive was Easton, a seventeen-year-old, who was being personally trained by Sid.
My story was a painful one, but it wasn’t unique among the men I worked with.
All that anyone needed to know was that Sid found me and saved my life seven years ago.
Then he gave me a purpose. He was the father I would rather have had other than the one I put a bullet into despite Sid not quite being old enough.
I parked the car in an underground parking garage that was empty of cars except for a few who worked here.
I got out, and Luca followed me to the elevators.
He stood with his body pressed against me, but he didn’t reach for my hand this time.
I looked down at him and his nervous eyes.
He’d been so happy this morning, beyond the kiss, because he got to pick out his own clothes to go out in, picking a pair of slim-fitting khaki shorts, a white T-shirt underneath a dark blue short-sleeved button-up with bananas all over it.
While the shirt was absolutely ridiculous, it was also slim-fitting to make him appear more mature.
He chewed on his bottom lip and pressed closer to me.
Perhaps I should’ve let him bring the rabbit, but I was trying to get him to let it go and use the strength I knew was inside him.
Hopefully, when I was done with him, he would be confident enough to go out into the world on his own and do something with his life.
I kept asking myself why I cared so much, but I couldn’t come up with an answer. I just did. He was hard to be indifferent to.
“You’re safe here,” I said.
“Yes, because I’m with you.”
“Then why are you so nervous?”
“I’ve been locked up all my life,” he said, so simply with that intuitiveness he shouldn’t have but did.
“Makes sense.”
“Can I hold your hand?”
“Not here. You can trust them, but they won’t understand.” He didn’t argue, thank fuck. “Just stay away from Sully. He’s batshit nuts.”
Once the elevator doors opened, we were greeted with the lounge area full of cushioned, traditional furniture, wood floors, and walls, and an extensive library on either side of the walls up on a higher platform that held tables and chairs for us to read.
Straight back led to massive, floor-to-ceiling windows, which were blacked out so no one could see inside, that looked out over the nation’s capital.
There were several hanging televisions showing different news programs, but the volume was on mute.
Sullivan Beauchamp, also known as Sully, sat on one of the tables above on the platform with his legs crossed, reading some book.
He was two inches taller than me with red hair that was cropped and groomed neat, wearing a three-piece suit that he preferred to wear, but he had his jacket off and hanging somewhere.
His shirt sleeves were rolled up, exposing tattoo sleeves over his freckled skin.
Despite him not looking at me, he was very much aware of my presence. Nothing slipped by him. He was also a little crazy, suffering from PTSD after a rival family slaughtered his entire family. There was always a price to pay to be a part of a crime syndicate.
Sully was only twelve when the bullets tore through him.
He was just the only one to survive. He not only lost his mother and father but his baby sister and brother, who were two-year-old twins.
They sent him off to foster care until he was sixteen, where he killed one of his foster fathers for molestation of another boy, then ran away until Malik found him.
He had been attached to Malik’s side ever since and more than Malik was comfortable with.
I eyed him warily as we walked by because you never knew what he was going to do.
If I thought he was distracted enough not to interfere with us, I was sorely mistaken.
He leaped from the table and dropped down, landing on all fours between me and Luca.
My hackles raised, sensing danger. I told the boy he could trust us, and he could, but Sully was twitchy as fuck.
He flicked out a small knife, twirling it between his fingers. “Stranger danger. Who do we have here?”
“Sid knows he’s coming.”
“Does he? Little, dangerous boys don’t belong here.”
“Tell that to Easton.”
“He doesn’t count. He’s one of us. This little bird is not.”
My protective mode was set to an all-time high, and I didn’t give a fuck that I had to work with Sully or that we were practically brothers.
Seeing Luca’s apathetic face was worse than seeing his fear.
It meant he shut it all down with the impending violence.
The same face he gave me when I held a gun to his head.
The same face that said ‘do it,’ and Sully would if I didn’t stop him.
I reached around to his throat, grabbed it tight, and shoved him against the wooden wall of the platform.
He looked down at me with a sinister smile, and the little knife pressed to my jugular.
But I had a knife of my own, I pulled out, resting the tip next to his groin.
His copper eyes dilated in pleasure from the danger and our little stand-off.
“Nice face, Dante. Run into someone’s fist, did we?”
I ignored his barb. “You touch him, I won’t care what Malik does to me. I will fucking gut you.”
He raised his hands in the air. “Tsk, tsk, my little Dante Wante. Getting attached, are we? Your little boy wants to die. I was only going to do him a favor.”
I didn’t grace him with an answer, shoving him hard against the wall again. “Don’t even fucking look at him.”
Sully never stopped smirking as I let him go and grabbed Luca’s arm, and yanked him down toward the offices, passing Khai Linh, who watched the entire thing, saying nothing.
His almond-shaped dark eyes were shrewd and deadly, and they weren’t focused on me but on Luca, making me want to pull him into me and protect him even from my own family.
Khai came to us three years ago, at twenty-three years old, after spending six years in a Vietnamese gang here in Washington, D.C.
He left his gang when he realized he was bisexual.
They would’ve killed him for it. And they would’ve killed him for leaving had he not heard about The District by word of mouth and sought us out to join.
“That’s Khai.”
Luca gave him a wary finger wiggle in greeting. “Hello.”
I jutted my chin at him in greeting and kept moving with Luca by my side.
“Get your fucking pet under control,” I hissed to Malik as we passed his office.
“Pet? He’s not my… forget it.”
I didn’t bother to stop until I reached Sid’s office and knocked on his door.
“Come in.”
I opened it and led Luca inside, sitting him down in one of the chairs.
I ran a hand through my fallen long bangs and sighed out my frustrations to calm the fuck down.
The fact that I was willing to kill Sully, someone I’d known for years and was family, over a boy I’d only met a few days ago was telling… and disturbing. I was royally fucked.
Sid sat behind his large, atrociously ornate wooden desk left over from a bygone era.
His dark blond hair was closely cropped and neat.
He wore a dark gray suit and royal blue button-up that matched his eyes, with the first two buttons undone.
He looked more like a damned politician or a stockbroker rather than a killer.
Don’t let his good looks and business sense fool you.
He sat back in his plush chair and steepled his fingers. “So, this is the boy.”
“Yes.”
“You should have killed him,” he said, uncaring about Luca sitting right there, but the boy was unflinching. He truly seemed not to be afraid of death, only about angering me.
“I’m aware.”
“The only thing that protected us was the fact you were hired to kill twenty-one people and not twenty-two. Not to mention, they left out this little detail, and most likely intentionally. Now I’m curious as to why, especially when you told me he wants to hire you.
Our client was silent on this little issue, which begs to question again, why? ”
I said nothing, letting him work out the details in his head, answering his own questions as he was prone to do.
“You should’ve told me that night you couldn’t kill him.”
“I didn’t want him to die.”
He raised a brow. “Since when have you cared?”
I couldn’t give him answers when I had none to give myself. I glanced at Luca, who sat there as he was trained. Silent and unnoticeable. Except I was perpetually aware of his presence, no matter how quiet he was.
Sid sighed when I said nothing. “Do you have them?”
I dug in the pocket of my jeans, pulled out the satchel of diamonds, and tossed them onto his desk. He picked it up and emptied the contents, lifting one of the diamonds toward the window and looking closely at it. “I’ll have Layla analyze them to make sure they’re real.”
He put all the diamonds back into the bag and handed it to Luca, who tentatively took it. “You said you got these from your… employer?”
“Father. He didn’t pay me. He paid for me.”
Sid twitched a smile and nodded. “I stand corrected. And he didn’t suspect you?”
“No, but they searched my room, anyway. He was angry, but instead of taking it out on his men, he took it out on me. I’m not sad he’s dead.”
“Dante here told me your story, but I want to hear it in your own words. What would you like us to do for you?”
“You can have all my diamonds. I want to hire Ang… Dante to kill those who sold me and hurt me. I want to find out who my parents are and if they gave me up or… And I want to learn to fight and defend myself.”
Sid’s smile was large, full of white, straight teeth. “Well, it seems you have all your bases covered. Once we check the validity of the diamonds, then we can discuss the terms.”
I had to ask to figure out my next steps. “And if they aren’t real?” I really fucking hoped he wouldn’t tell me to take out Luca. Only four days, and I was already protective over him. I wasn’t sure what I would do if ordered to kill him. At this point, I wasn’t sure I could.
Sid must have noticed my unease because he frowned. “He’s seen us, Dante.”
My fists in my lap tightened, and my jaw clenched. “I’m fucking aware.”
Luca must have sensed the tension and reasoning behind it because he stood and rushed to my side and stood in front of me as if trying to stop a stray bullet. And I sure as shit didn’t know what to make of that other than it confirmed how strongly he felt about me.
“They are real. I heard Father. He said they were worth a lot. And I won’t say anything about you, but I also have no one to tell. Dante is my protector. He was sent to me to save me. I would never hurt him.”
“Interesting,” Sid chuckled. “Go see Layla, have her check the diamonds. If they’re as real as he says they are, have her get started on documents for him—driver’s license, passport, bank account.
You know the drill. Then have her start a trace on his parents.
Let’s start with them and work our way forward.
If he was kidnapped as a child, there would be a record of it.
Even if they were involved, they would have to report something to explain away their vanished child, so let’s start there. ”