Warped (The Mercenary Series Book 2) Read online

  Warped

  The Mercenary Series

  Book Two

  Marissa Farrar

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  *You can click on the title to be taken to the selection. Additionally, clicking on the chapter titles will bring you back to the table of contents.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  Copyright Information

  Chapter One

  X

  A rush of cold water hit my body, plunging around my face and over my head.

  Rushing, churning, tumbling.

  Within seconds, I had no idea which way was up. How to get to the surface. It was fast, too fast. Panic filled me at the utter loss of control. I kicked my legs, flailed my arms, but nothing helped. For a split second, I burst to the surface, almost miraculously, and managed to snatch a gulp of air, but then another wave hit me and I found myself beneath the surface again. When I opened my eyes, blinking against the ice cold water, only a reddish brown filled my vision—a combination of silt and blood.

  Yes, blood.

  I was bleeding. Shot. I remembered that now. Shot by the man who had Vee and her sister, Nicole, under his ownership. I needed to get back to her, but right now I couldn’t even take care of myself.

  The cold was squeezing the air from my lungs, and still I tumbled in the water. I’d never been so helpless before, but nature had hold of me now, and nature was a bitch.

  A lucky spin brought my head to the surface again, allowing me a second gulp of air. It wasn’t enough, though, and my lungs burned. I was desperate to open my mouth and take another breath, but I was beneath the surface again, and doing so would kill me. I fought against my body’s instincts, but I was growing weak. Losing blood to the surrounding water. A flash of thought jumped into my head that at least I wasn’t in the sea, and so wouldn’t be attracting sharks. The thought was so distant and ridiculous, I fought against a laugh bursting from my lips. That laugh would have been fatal.

  But I was going to die. I was sure of that now.

  Where at first I had fought against the insistent strength of the water, I realized my limbs had grown weak. I wasn’t swimming, or attempting to swim anymore. Instead, the river buffeted me, pummeling my body like a hundred fists. What sort of distance had the water carried me? How far was I from Vee?

  She was the last thought in my head, the memory of her, the fear in her dark eyes as the bullet from Tony’s gun punched me in the shoulder and sent me flying into the water. I wanted desperately to get back to her, but I was helpless. I was losing blood, and my strength with it. Part of me was amazed I hadn’t lost consciousness already, yet even as the thought went through my mind, I realized the thought had only existed inside my head. I was no longer aware of the outside world.

  The ice cold of the water had retreated, though I still spun and tumbled as though inside a giant washing machine. My lungs burned, but I could think of no reason not to breathe now. I was warm, light-headed, almost comfortable. Hugged from all sides as I turned over and over in slow motion. I couldn’t remember what I was doing, or why I was here.

  So I opened my mouth ...

  And breathed.

  Chapter Two

  X

  “Mr. Mason? Mr. Mason?”

  Someone was saying a name, but I didn’t understand why. Confusion rushed over me, and I tried to sit up, or speak, but nothing happened.

  I opened my eyes. My eyelids fluttered, only for me to squeeze them shut again as bright light blasted against them.

  What the hell was happening?

  “Mr. Mason,” the voice came again, and I realized it was female. “Try to stay calm. You were in an accident, and you have a tube down your throat, which is why it feels strange. You’re in the hospital, but you’re safe. Everything is fine.”

  Was she talking to me? Mason? Was that my name? I searched my memories, trying to remember. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I groaned and clawed at the thing protruding from my mouth. My fingers caught it and yanked, and pain exploded in my throat.

  “Please, don’t do that,” the voice said. “I’ll get a doctor to take it out.”

  The fresh pain had caused my consciousness to retreat again, but then I became aware of more people standing around me.

  A male voice sounded. “I’m going to take out your breathing tube now, so you can talk. Are you ready?”

  I knew I wanted it out of my throat, so I nodded.

  “I need you to give a long exhale while I’m pulling it out. It’ll be a little uncomfortable, but you’ll be fine.” He counted me in. “One, two, three ...”

  I exhaled as the tube was pulled up. I couldn’t help but gag against it and then coughed, the movement sending pain spearing through my ribs and shoulder. I fell back against the bed again, gasping for breath, and a memory flashed in my head of bursting up through ice cold water and trying to breathe.

  A solid hand on my shoulder pulled my attention from my thoughts. A young male doctor looked down on me, concern on his features. “Mr. Mason, do you remember what happened to you?”

  He must have seen the confusion on my face.

  “That is your name, right?” he asked. “Lee Mason?”

  It sounded familiar, so it must be right. I nodded.

  “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  I shook my head. “How long was I asleep?” My voice was low and grating, as though I’d swallowed a bag of gravel. My throat felt that way, too.

  “You weren’t asleep, exactly. We had to put you into a medical coma because of your injuries. You’ve been here a little over a week.”

  The word ‘coma’ flashed up in neon lights in front of my eyes.

  “You were almost dead when you were found and brought here. You had multiple wounds—a gunshot wound to the shoulder, two stab wounds, and you’d almost drowned. You’d also taken a nasty bang to the head and had swelling on the brain, which is why we had to put you in a medical coma to give your brain time to recover. We think it was only the temperature of the water that prevented you from dying. It slowed your body’s metabolism down so much, and diverted your blood from the extremities of your body, so your organs continued to function despite your injuries, albeit at a far slower rate than normal.”

  It was an overload of information, making my head swim. I’d almost died? Someone had shot me. The possibility seemed insane, but this doctor wouldn’t be telling me these things if they weren’t the truth, would he?

  “Do you have any idea who shot you?”

  I frowned and shook my head. “No, I can’t remember any of it.”

  “What can you remember?”

  “I’m ... I’m not sure.”

  “But you remember your name?”

&n
bsp; Yes, the name Lee Mason was familiar, and I told the doctor so. He smiled, as though I’d told him what he wanted to hear.

  His hand on my shoulder made me jerk away. “I’m sure the rest will come back to you soon. I hope you understand that because of the gunshot wound, and the fact we weren’t able to get any next of kin to identify you, we had to bring in the police. They’ll want to speak with you shortly, when you’re feeling strong enough, of course.”

  I nodded. “Of course. Just send them in.”

  The doctor gave me a smile and a nod, then left to move onto his next patient. The blonde nurse who had taken the tube out of my throat reappeared shortly after to check me over.

  “I hope you don’t mind me asking,” she said, her blue eyes not meeting mine as she spoke, “but while we were treating you, we couldn’t help but notice the scars.”

  “Scars?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “On your chest and back. You have multiple scarring.”

  I frowned. “Honestly, I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  “They’re old. Could you have had a dangerous job? In the military, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  She smiled, unsure. “You’re a bit of an enigma to us.”

  I smiled back and noted the way she reacted to the expression. “I’m a bit of an enigma to myself.”

  She left me again, leaving me with my thoughts. What the hell had happened? Why would someone have shot me? I pulled down the hospital gown I wore. My shoulder was patched up by a bandage. I wanted to see the scars the nurse had spoken about. A dangerous job? Yes, I guessed that did ring true.

  I must have dozed again, but was woken by the pretty blonde nurse.

  “Mr. Mason, the police are here to ask you a few questions. Is that all right? There’s a reporter here as well.”

  I frowned. “A reporter?”

  “Yes. He got wind of your story and thinks it might be useful to run a small piece on you, just to see if anyone recognizes you. Someone might come forward and claim you.”

  “That really isn’t necessary. I don’t need anyone to claim me.”

  “But you don’t have anywhere to go. When we release you from here, you’ll be walking out onto the street.”

  “Do you have any idea when that will be? When you release me, I mean.”

  “You’re not under arrest. You can leave whenever you like, though obviously you’ve only just woken up, and your injuries, while they’ve healed significantly since you’ve been here, are still at risk of infection. I certainly wouldn’t advise you to leave any time soon.”

  “Okay, but no reporter.”

  She gave a tight smile and nodded. “Sure, I understand.”

  Despite her words, I knew she didn’t understand. I had no idea myself what was causing me to make the choices I was, so there was no way she did.

  A police officer in his mid-forties, with receding hair and the start of a good set of jowls, approached my bed. The sight of the NYPD navy blue uniform caused everything inside me to tense. It was familiar, yet set my teeth on edge. Instinctively, I knew I didn’t like the police, but I couldn’t have said why. This officer appeared a little bored, if anything. Not particularly suspicious of me, though I couldn’t shake the feeling I had done something wrong.

  “Mr. Mason,” he said, pulling out a notebook. “I hope you’re feeling better.”

  I nodded. “I am.”

  “Good. We found your driver’s license and credit card in your clothes when you were brought in. I’m afraid we weren’t able to find any current record of any family, or even a current address, though.”

  Didn’t I have a family, or a home?

  I guessed not. I wasn’t the type of man to have a family, was I?

  “No, that’s right,” I said. “It’s all kind of blurry, though. I think I’m between homes.”

  He frowned slightly. “You were in the middle of moving?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Moving cities, though I don’t think I had anywhere lined up.” I knew I was basically saying I was homeless, but that sounded right to me. I couldn’t imagine myself with a cozy little place somewhere. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t. What kind of person was I?

  “We checked the address on your license, and they said you hadn’t been there for months. It was a rental and you’d moved on and hadn’t left a forwarding address.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “The bank for your credit card still had the old address as well, so you must not have changed it when you left, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s okay.” I couldn’t remember, but I was filled with a certainty I didn’t want him to probe any further. Why wouldn’t I want him to? Why wouldn’t I want to know exactly who I was and how I’d gotten here? Someone had shot me. Shouldn’t I want the police to investigate? For some reason the idea of cops probing into my background filled me with a rising panic.

  “It’s fine,” I said, trying to put more confidence into my voice. “I know who I am. I was just between homes. I’ll find a new place as soon as I get out of the hospital.”

  The cop frowned at me. “What about when you were shot? Do you remember any more about that?”

  I twisted my lips and shook my head. “No, sorry. I assume if all I was found with was a driver’s license and a credit card, it must have been a mugging. I guess they took the rest of my stuff, and I got shot at the same time.”

  “But you don’t know where?”

  I pretended to think again. “It must have happened down by the river, but honestly, I can’t remember.”

  Exhaustion was starting to pull at my limbs, dragging my body deeper into the bed. My head started to thump with pain, and I could feel my eyes slipping shut.

  The police officer snapped his notebook shut. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Mason. I can see you need your rest.”

  I nodded, barely finding the energy to speak. “Yes, thank you.”

  I was aware of him leaving the room. My thoughts whirred. I was a man called Lee Mason, who was without a home or family, and had a dangerous job.

  I thought someone else came into the room, felt the flash of a camera against my eyelids, but I was too weak to do anything about it, or perhaps I was dreaming already …

  Oblivion claimed me once more.

  Chapter Three

  V

  “Hey, wake up!”

  The tap on my bare foot had me scrabbling up the bed, grabbing the sheets around me to cover my body.

  We were under the protection of Tony the Hound now, my sister and I. All I wanted was to get that call to say it was time for me to go in and testify against my father for all the crimes he had committed. My sister was turning eighteen soon, and I would no longer need to be her legal guardian. She could do whatever the hell she wanted—not that her being seventeen stopped her anyway. If she’d kept her mouth shut in the first place, we wouldn’t be living here now, trapped inside Tony’s world like a couple of caged birds.

  I didn’t like this person I had become. I’d always tried to be in control of my life, but now Tony owned me. I didn’t eat, breathe, or shit unless he said it was time to, and I hated him for that. I also hated him for killing X, but I couldn’t do anything to change what had happened.

  I missed X like a conjoined twin might miss their sibling after they had been separated. I was sure now that he was dead. Yes, he’d been sent by my father to kill me, but if he was still alive, I was sure he’d have come back for me. Or perhaps it was just that I’d rather tell myself he was dead than admit to myself that I might have misread his feelings for me all along. Had he used what had happened as a way to get out of a difficult situation? If everyone thought he was dead, he’d be able to start over again with no one looking for him.

  A part of me understood he hadn’t been good for me—that he was a man who had been sent to kill me, and who had, instead, killed other men who perhaps hadn’t needed to die. I still struggled to align my emotions with what
I was supposed to feel versus what I actually did feel. He hadn’t been a good guy, but when he’d held me, when he’d kissed me and pushed himself inside of me, I’d felt like I’d finally found my home. Perhaps I could deal with him not being a good guy because I knew I wasn’t good myself.

  My heart ached, my thoughts constantly dragging to memories of him, which in turn caused fresh pain to wrench my insides.

  I’d promised myself I wouldn’t allow his loss to break me, that I would remain strong and see this thing through, but it wasn’t easy. All I could do was exist. Move from one day to the next with my only expectation being that of seeing the sun go down and still being alive.

  “Come on,” said the guy at the foot of my bed. “Time to get up. Things to do, people to see.”

  I squinted at the young man trying to rouse me. It was one of Tony’s men, Stefano. Perhaps man was too big of a word for him. He wasn’t much more than a boy—my age, I guessed, in his early twenties. He was attractive in that typical Italian way, dark eyes and floppy black hair, but he wouldn’t have been any match for me. I’d have eaten him alive.

  “What do you want, Stefano?” I asked, conscious that I was only wearing a thin sleeveless top, which most likely showed my nipples poking through, and my underwear.

  “The boss wants you.”

  My stomach flipped. “Did he say why?”

  “Nah. He don’t tell me nothing. He just said he wants you in his office.”

  Was today going to be the day? Was I going to end up in court, facing my father? But no, I didn’t think it was going to be that straightforward. I would need to go through a certain process first—lawyers would want to speak to me before they put me on the stand.

  “Fine, get out of here,” I told him. “I’ll get dressed, but I’m not going to do it with you watching over me.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You ain’t got nothing I haven’t seen before.”

  “Try to see it again, and I’ll gouge your fucking eyes out.”

  “You can’t speak to me like that!”