Born of Fire (The League #2)(8)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

It showed the boy at ball games and one at a graduation ceremony. But none of the later ones had Syn in them and they were all taken from a distance.

She scrolled back through the earlier photos of Syn with his family and a painful knot of longing filled her stomach. It was the kind of family she’d always dreamed of having. A man who would look at her the way Syn looked at his wife and son—like he lived and died for them. You could plainly see how much he adored them.

Surely a man who could show that kind of dedication to his family couldn’t be all bad.

Could he?

Closing her eyes, she saw the life she’d always wanted. Her in a fine home with a decent man who loved her. Kids playing in the yard while she didn’t have to scrounge for every crumb they ate. A world where people didn’t harass her for money . . .

But that wasn’t her fate. She didn’t trust men to not lie to her. Betray her. Abuse her. And face it, in her occupation, it wasn’t like she met anyone who wasn’t a scam artist or convict. Yeah, the scum of the universe were the only men she ever dealt with.

Still, it didn’t stop her from dreaming. She looked down at the photos and sighed. “If I had a life like that, I’d never let it go.”

The fact that Syn had told her much about him. Only a conceited, selfish ass would walk out on a family like he’d had.

Cautiously, Syn entered his flat. He scanned the room, half expecting Shahara to be waiting beside the door to whack him with another bottle.

Instead, the room was clear. Tempted to check the bedroom, he decided it would be safest just to stay away from her. Besides, the sight of her sleeping in his bed was not a memory he really wanted haunting him. He already had enough images of her he was sure would torture him for the rest of his life.

She was one of Caillen’s beloved sisters and he must treat her that way.

Yawning, he looked at his couches. He hadn’t slept in days and he really, really needed to sleep for awhile.

Too tired to think, he stretched out on the couch facing the window. With any luck, she’d be a late sleeper and he could get enough rest to deal with her without losing his temper.

And in just a few more hours Caillen would be back. He’d left an urgent message for Caillen to call him. As soon as Caillen returned, he’d turn her over to her brother. Let Caillen deal with her stubbornness.

All he wanted was sleep.

Shahara heard the creak of the couch under Syn’s weight. The sound of him entering the flat had awakened her instantly. She lay in bed, trying to calm her rapid heartbeat, fearful that any moment would find him coming into the room.

Her nerves stretched almost to breaking, she waited until she thought she’d scream in anxious nervousnes. But no footsteps came any closer to the bedroom.

Sliding out of bed, she walked silently toward the bathroom door.

Was he truly sleeping, or just waiting for another opportunity to catch her unawares?

She went through the bathroom and pushed open the door. She hesitated in the doorway, clenching the icy knob, ready to slam the door shut and lock it if he moved.

He didn’t.

She studied the steady rise and fall of his chest and realized he was fast asleep. Breathing in relief, she released the knob.

Against her common sense which urged her back to bed, she stepped into the room. The dawning sun brightened the area around the couch and she saw the outline of his perfect, relaxed features. He’d pulled his hair out of the ponytail and the dark, wavy strands spilled over his cheeks, softening the harshness from his face.

Asleep, he didn’t look intimidating, he looked like a small, defenseless child. A warm tremor ran through her body as she remembered what he’d looked like holding his son.

Convict or not, he was an incredibly handsome man. Every bit as devastating as her brother.

He shifted on the couch.

Shahara stepped back, her heart slamming against her ribs. He didn’t wake up, but his new position showed her his blaster that was still strapped to his hip while he slept.

A glimmer of hope ignited inside her. This was her chance. She couldn’t let this opportunity pass.

Without a second thought, she crossed the distance between them and jerked the blaster from his holster.

In an instant, he sprang to his feet. “What the . . . ?” He focused on her, then relaxed. “Oh, it’s you.” He wiped his hands across his face.

His indifference angered her. How dare he dismiss her so readily as if she were of no more consequence than an annoying little pest.

She clicked back the safety release and leveled the blaster at his chest. “Open the door.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up, showing her his damnable dimple. “That—” he indicated the blaster in her hand, “doesn’t give you any leverage. If you kill me, you die, too.”

Shahara gripped the hard, bone stock and raised the barrel to his head. “I said open the door, convict. I’m not playing a game here.”

Syn sighed as if she bored him. “Go ahead. Shoot me. You’ll have to kill me because I have no intention of letting you out of here when we both know you’ll just turn around and head back for me the first chance you get. Besides, I’m as good as dead anyway if the Rits ever lay their grubby hands on me. So go ahead and shoot.”

Shahara stared at him in disbelief.

What should she do?

“Or give me my gun, and go back to bed.” He reached his hand out to her.

She caught herself right before complying. She couldn’t give him back the blaster. If she gave up the weapon, then she’d never get out of here.

It would cede all of her power over to him.

“Open the door,” she repeated, feeling somewhat foolish.

“No.”

She stared into his mocking eyes. He knew she was trapped. If she relinquished the blaster, then he’d never respect her, or free her.

If she didn’t get home soon, Tessa would die.

She had no choice in this.

Lowering the barrel, she fired.

The jolt of the blast knocked Syn off his feet. His breath left him as he slammed against the hardwood floor. Pain ripped through his arm like fire.

He closed his eyes against the throbbing agony. Warm blood streamed over the hand clutching the gaping wound. Son of a . . .

He sucked his breath in sharply between his teeth as his entire body ached.

Shahara approached him like a hunting lorina. She stood over him with her feet braced wide apart. Her hand was as still and steady as any assassin’s he’d ever seen.

She aimed for his heart. There was no pity or trembling in any part of her. “I said open the door, convict. Or die.”

Syn stared up at her cold eyes, unable to believe he’d allowed her to deceive him so completely. So be it. He’d always been prepared for the possibility of death. Hell, he’d wanted to die since the day he’d lost Paden.

But he wasn’t about to die in a Ritadarion prison at the hands of an interrogator. He would sooner take his secrets to the grave.

And if she died with him, Nykyrian would have one less tracer after him.

“Shoot me,” he said calmly.

Her eyes narrowed. She grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him up to her face.

She pressed the cold, steel barrel against his cheek. “This is your last chance. Open the door.”

He shook his head slowly. “Fine,” Shahara snarled. “Then I’ll see you in hell.”

CHAPTER 4

Shahara stared at Syn’s blank gaze. Her mind screamed at her to kill him, but try as she might, she kept seeing the picture of him as a child with the girl gripping him. The haunted look in his eyes while he held onto the girl, the bruise on his young face, and she just couldn’t make herself pull the trigger.

Besides, she wasn’t a murderer. She’d only killed a dozen men in her career, all out of self-defense. Every instance left jagged scars on her soul and she had sworn she’d never kill again unless she absolutely had to.

Today, she didn’t have to.

With a fierce curse, she flung the weapon away from her and released him.

Syn lay on the floor, looking up at her with a taunting stare she found hard to tolerate.

Did nothing scare this man?

Did he want to die? If that was the case, then she was definitely in trouble. A man with a death wish couldn’t be controlled or intimidated.

“No stomach for it?” he asked bitterly.

She curled her lip at him. “Unlike you, I don’t find pleasure in killing people.”

Without responding to her words, he pushed himself off the floor and made his way into the bathroom. She told herself he deserved it, that he’d hurt more people in his career than she could count and he deserved to pay for his crimes. But it still didn’t shut down her conscience or keep it from nagging her.

She’d shot a defenseless man and broken the code of a seax. What she’d done was wrong and no matter what arguments she might make, deep inside, she knew it wasn’t justified.

When did I sink so low as to become one of the monsters I hunt? Caillen always said that if a person stared too long into the darkness, it would absorb them.

But she didn’t want to be one of the bad guys. Determined to try and redeem her cruelty, she followed him.

As she entered the bathroom, her gaze focused on his bare back and she gasped in shock.

Syn looked up from the doctor’s bag he was rummaging in and caught her horrified gaze in the mirror. “Thinking of ways to add to them?” His tone was frigid.

Slowly she shook her head, still transfixed by the awful scars crisscrossing the muscled planes of his back. She’d seen plenty of street people beaten by an enforcer’s glazen whip, had even received a lash or two herself by desperate felons, but never to the extent of what marred his flesh.

How could anyone survive such a beating?

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop staring at them. “Are they from prison?”

Syn wiped a pungent smelling cloth over his wounded shoulder. “Some.”

“And the others?”

He looked over his shoulder and captured her gaze with his own. Something strange and primal darkened his eyes before they turned dead.

“My father,” he said simply.

Shahara bit her lip while Syn returned to tending his wound. She glanced away as he picked up a searer to seal the wound closed and did her best not to hear the sizzle of knitting flesh. She knew from her own experience how bad that hurt. To do it to himself . . . she was impressed.

And appalled.

Still she saw those scars. What could he have possibly done for his father to have beaten him so ferociously? “Did you deserve it?”

Syn tossed the searer down, then moved to stand right before her. She could feel his body heat, smell the masculine scent of his skin, and even though she was sure she imagined it, she could almost swear she heard his heart pound in fury.

She trailed her gaze up from the steely muscles of his chest to the bandage over his shoulder and finally up to the loathing that flickered in the black depths of his eyes. They were every bit as cold as space.

“Why else would he have beaten me?”

The question hung in the air between them and it left a deafening silence. She didn’t know anything about his past except what the contracts read and what his prayer box contained, which wasn’t much. There was no family of record. No known acquaintances or friends.

He worked part time for The Sentella which was a freelance assassin service run by Nemesis—one of the most feared and wanted outlaw assassins in the business. But the bounty hadn’t even listed his job title there.

For all she knew, he could be Nemesis.

Or something worse.

So maybe he had deserved it. Maybe he’d been given his name because he’d been evil from the womb and his father had sought to curb his criminal impulses by beating them out of him at an early age.

And yet . . .

She saw the image of the beaten child. The boy Syn had looked frightened, not evil. “What did you do to deserve it?”

He paused while returning his medical instruments to their case. Without looking at her, he said quietly, “I tried to keep him from selling my sister’s virginity.”

A lump of emotions gathered into her throat and choked her. The loyalty of his action reminded her much of her own brother. Caillen would die to protect her.

Syn tossed his torn shirt into the garbage, then moved past her, into the bedroom.

She continued to stare at the scars on his back. Could a boy who took such a beating for the sake of another person become the menace of Syn’s reputation?

Some psychologists would say no. It was people who’d lost their ability to sympathize with others, to care for others, who turned into ra**sts and murderers.

Still, it wasn’t beyond the realm of speculation that he could be capable of committing those heinous crimes. Many serial killers and ra**sts had close friends and spouses who had never suspected they possessed such deep psychosis.

A man didn’t have so lethal a reputation without cause . . .

Until she knew more, she had no choice except to believe in what his bounty sheet said: C.I. Syn, Ruthless and Calculating. Kills without remorse. Proceed at own risk.