Christ… the things I would do to her when I had her back… I regretted very little in my life. Very little. But the opportunity that I missed that night in New York when I’d kissed her to mess up her lipstick and she’d melted into my arms… Fuck me, I regretted not taking that further.
“You can’t do this,” Brenton was saying, shaking his head and giving the Reaper boss an imploring look. Oh yeah, I was working. Head in the game, Leon.
“Sorry, bro,” Roach said with a shrug, “Shadow Grove doesn’t mess around in Guild business. You sealed your own fate when you started flapping your trap. Go quietly with this scary bastard, or we will forcefully remove you from the premises.”
Brenton blanched but still looked undecided. With a sigh, I pulled out my gun. “I don’t have time for games, Brenton. You knew this was coming, now let’s go before I have to make a mess in this lovely establishment.”
The tattooed gangsters all snickered, and Brenton looked like he was seriously considering running. He thought better of it, though, and sighed heavily.
“Fine,” he groaned. “But I need to tell you some shit before you kill me.”
They always did.
“Let’s go,” I snapped, turning my back on him and striding out of the grimy bar. He would follow, because he knew it was pointless to try and run. He was also smart enough not to try and shoot me while my back was turned, because right now he’d be hoping for a merciful death. Pissing me off wasn’t the way to achieve that.
Once we got out into the street, I arched a brow at him in question. “I parked a couple of blocks away; you have until we get there to tell me all the things you need to say. Then you’re dead. Understood?”
Brenton winced but nodded quickly. It was so much easier when they were cooperative. More often than not, they just wanted to tell me about where they’d hidden their fortune—because it was unusual for a merc to die a pauper with what our contracts charge—or messages for loved ones that never get passed on. My job was to clean up the Guild’s loose ends, not deliver messages from the dead.
Except for Layla. Her last wishes had taken me several years to complete, but I owed her that and so much more. She’d been too fucking good for the Guild.
“Okay,” Brenton started, licking his lips nervously as we walked down the street together, “okay, so I know you’re just an executioner, but have you ever heard about Project Remus?”
Just an executioner . Much like how Danny thought I was just a hacker. Ugh, sorry, tech bunny. Fucking Danny, inside my head again.
“Enlighten me,” I drawled, despite the fact that I probably knew more about that fucking experiment than most Guild employees. Well. Those who were still alive, anyway.
Brenton nodded, like he wasn’t surprised to be explaining it. “Okay, you’re gonna want to slow down a bit, there’s a whole lot of info to get out.”
I shrugged. “Talk fast.”
“Fine. I’ll stick to the important parts. Project Remus was an IVF program that the Guild started running after World War Two because so many mercs had died in combat and they needed to swell the ranks again. They didn’t want to be recruiting subpar skilled people from the general population, though, so some sick fuck in the Circle came up with the idea of breeding genetically selected mercenaries. Super soldiers, kind of. Like there was no supernatural sci-fi shit going on, no one was born with wings or whatever, but they did this whole breeding program by using genetic material—you know, sperm and eggs—from their elite level mercs. The guys who, well, you know. Like you. Lifers.”
He was rambling, but so far his intel was correct. No wonder I’d been assigned to kill him.
“That was nearly eighty years ago, Brenton, better get to the point quick.” Because now I was interested in what he thought he knew.
“Shut up and listen,” he snapped. “So they started this whole program with making babies to be raised in Guild-owned orphanages where they would be raised to be like… child assassins. Kids in these orphanages were being sent out on kill missions as young as seven or eight, because literally no one would suspect a child, right?”
I gave a vexed sigh. “And?” He hadn’t really hit on the worst of it. The part that saw the project get shut down. The reason that I’d spent the last several years cleaning up the last remaining project leaders and burning their research. Layla’s uncle had been one of them, right here in Shadow Grove.
This fucking city was a constant source of fascination and frustration.
“That doesn’t make you sick?” Brenton exclaimed. “At least the rest of us make a choice to join the Guild. These kids were literally bred into servitude.”
“Tell me this,” I said, pausing on the sidewalk, since we were almost back to my car already. “How do you know all about Project Remus?”
Brenton scowled. “My best friend was one of their test tube babies. He never knew it, none of them do. But some girl tracked him down a few years ago and told him to watch his back. Apparently, someone was killing anyone involved in Project Remus, wiping all the information off the face of the earth. Something seriously fucked up must have been going on if the Guild was killing off anyone who knew anything.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Fucking Layla. I knew she’d been up to no good before her death.
“Where’s your friend now?” I asked.
“Dead,” Brenton replied. “A week after he tells me all this shit, he gets sent on a run-of-the-mill protection detail job. Gets shot point blank by the man he was meant to protect. The paperwork says it was a case of mistaken identity, but… I think the Guild had him killed.”
Probably. But that sort of accidental death wasn’t an executioner like me. That was something less sanctioned. Something a whole lot like Danny’s ambush in Prague.
Fuck.
“Do you know anything else about this Project Remus?” I asked casually, starting to walk again.
Brenton nodded. “Yes. I do. Maybe I could be useful if you keep me alive.” I just gave him a flat stare, and he grimaced. “Worth a try. Look, I ran from the Guild because I knew I’d be next. It seems like anyone who knows anything about these genetic freak babies is being killed, and I thought maybe I could start over.”
“You thought wrong.” Low level mercs could occasionally cut a deal to “retire” from the Guild, but those were special circumstances and usually benefitted the Guild in some way. The rest of us? Whether we knew it or not, we were in it for life.
“The girl who contacted my buddy? She said there was more to it all, that Project Remus was hiding a huge secret.” Brenton looked at me in panic as I turned into the alleyway where I’d parked my car. “Something that the Circle never wants anyone to find out… or something like that.”
As far as I knew, only two members of the Circle knew about the existence of Project Remus, and one of them was missing… presumed dead. It wasn’t a joint project, that was for sure.
“And did this girl tell anyone her big secret?” I asked him carefully. I thought I knew everything Layla had uncovered on Project Remus… but maybe not. Maybe she’d hid something, even from me.
Brenton nodded. “My friend said she was worried someone was going to kill her, so she hid the data.”