“Diego,” Rose said, rolling her eyes and smiling like she thought he was being silly. “Come on, be real for a second. You gotta get serious about this stuff. You can’t play on your skateboard forever—all right?”
That was the thing.
He was serious about it.
He just needed to be taught how to do something with it.
“All right?” Rose asked again.
“I guess,” he said.
What else could he say?
He had a manager to meet.
She still wanted him to write that exam.
TWO
Renzo
“Do I have your attention now?”
Considering every stare in the room was currently locked on the projection across the room, Renzo would say his boss achieved quieting the space. An entire team of League members shoved into Dare’s office at the compound made the room seem a great deal smaller than it actually was. Ren found himself a corner for this briefing because he would really only be doing one thing if he’d been called in for the job Dare was prepping to show them. The same thing he always did when The League needed him.
Blow shit up.
It’s what he liked.
Even if it did almost kill him.
“Have you started?” asked a new, but familiar, voice.
Attention flew to the man who strolled through Dare’s open office doorway without a single concern. His gaze barely drifted over the roomful of people, and he walked straight through the projection like he didn’t distort it for everyone else at the same time. Cree, always the one to do what nobody expected him to, took his spot beside Dare who simply stared at the man as if he was considering asking, “Are you quite done?”
He might ask it.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Cree glanced sideways at his partner when Dare didn’t continue with his briefing. “Sorry, were you waiting for me?”
Dare let out a sigh, offering nothing else as he turned his shoulders to face the room once more. “Back to what I was saying—keep your attention on the images. We will not be going over this a second time in the same fashion. And since the job just came in, it’s very likely this could turn time sensitive, and then we’ll need to just move on it. Better for us all to figure out where we all stand here and now. Understood?”
Confirmative murmurs passed over the room. Including Renzo’s and the woman beside him. A good head and a half shorter than him, in a room full of assassins, Luv Moore looked like nothing more than a kid out of her element. From the second he met her, he always wondered how she found herself mixed up with The League, but he knew better than to ask.
While everyone else in the room went with black ensembles and used tactical gear as accessories, she wore skinny jeans with blown-out knees and a bomber jacket she’d zipped up to her throat. With a head full of thin, blonde hair that curled a bit at the ends and big blue eyes that seemed innocent, her small figure and dainty features only added to the whole pixie-vibe she had going on. Add in the fact the girl could bounce from one thing to the next, bubbly one second and then vicious in a breath, and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her.
Except the chick was his new … pet project.
Dare’s words, not his.
All League members took their turns mentoring someone who could match their energy and skills in one way or another. The only thing Renzo understood about his new partnership with Luv while she finished the remaining months of her training was that like him, she enjoyed blowing shit up. She was pretty quick with wires, had a taste for hacking when she was in the mood, and that was basically it.
He didn’t even know her age officially, but it wasn’t hard to tell that she was young. Really young. Barely eighteen, he assumed. If that.
Her age is not important, Dare explained when Ren arrived yesterday. All he was expected to do with Luv was engage her with training and have her accompany him on any job where she wouldn’t be considered a risk until she was cleared to go out on her own after next year’s auctions, and her contract was picked up.
He had a handful of conversations with her. Today was supposed to be training for her while he observed, but then Dare called the team in.
This job.
Whatever the fuck it was.
“A private-owned bank,” Dare said, “currently holding a quarter of a billion in gold owned by one—”
“You got a kid, right?”
Renzo’s gaze drifted down to the girl at his side. “Pardon?”
“People talk. Before you showed up, they said you live in New York with your wife and kid.”
Mostly, he didn’t mind Luv’s questioning because it was innocent enough. He cared more that people at the compound were discussing anything about another member without said member there to join. He would deal with that another time.
“I have a son, yes,” Renzo said quietly as to not gain Dare’s attention from the front of the room. After all, the man was busy explaining the takeover and robbery of a bank in a country across the world. That flight was sure to be fun. Not. “He’s three. Lorenzo. We just call him Lo or Loren.”
“Huh.”
He gave her another look. Her noise gave him the impression she didn’t understand the concept of a parent and child. It made him consider her further—if only because he was curious how she found her way to The League when she looked to be an age where she probably still needed a parent minding her. Then again, who was he to talk when he practically raised himself?
“Orphan?” he asked.
Ren didn’t need to say more for her to understand.
Luv shrugged. “Chosen.”
What did that mean?
He opted not to ask.
At the front of the room, Dare continued on. “The name we’ll be using for this job is Selective.”
The man’s stare found Renzo.
“And why is that, New York?”
Goddammit.
That nickname still stuck.
Cree always smiled when someone else used it.
The room turned on Renzo in the corner. A long time ago, the attention might have annoyed him if for no other reason than he didn’t appreciate people staring just because they felt like it. Right then, however, he didn’t have time to be bothered when Dare was waiting for an answer.
Always testing them, he knew.
It never failed.
“Selective destruction,” Renzo said, looking over the new image on the projection—the layout for the bank and the vaults.
Because apparently, there was more than one.
“Selective destruction,” Dare echoed. “Exactly. It’s how we’ll handle entering and removing what we need from the vaults. Minimal damage to lessen any blowback after the job is done, but also for the client. He would like his gold. Undamaged. You all will receive a secure text with file attachments in two minutes. You’ll find more information on this job. Preparations begin immediately. Don’t waste time.”
Luv bounced beside Renzo. “Well, this looks like fun.”
He didn’t bother to reply because a text had his phone buzzing in his pocket. Pulling the device out to check it, he hoped it would be his wife—Lucia still kept him updated on her day, but now with the addition of pictures and voice memos from his three-year-old son, too.
There, life was a dream.