The Organization’s “recruiters” chose their potential operatives using unerring criteria, and they went to great lengths to “acquire” them. They delivered them to that prison in the depths of the Balkans, where they were kept segregated from the world in that sinister fortress his brothers had named Black Castle.
The Organization acquired children as young as possible, the easier to shape them. The ones they acquired a bit older, like him, or younger but strong enough to resist, like his brothers, they broke first, before they put them in training.
Training was a euphemism for the hell, both physical and psychological, that they put them through to forge them into lethal weapons. Once they graduated to fieldwork, they were sent out in teams according to the skill set each mission required. They performed under the airtight surveillance of their “handlers.” Death rewarded any attempt to escape.
Yet he’d survived escaping and, before that, the years of oppression and abuse. Not that it had been because of his own strength. He’d had none left after that first period of isolation and torture. If he hadn’t met his brothers, he wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Then, four years later, Richard had taken him under his wing, too. Richard and his brothers had saved his sanity, and his life.
Phantom, now Numair Al Aswad, had fulfilled the promise he’d made that day in the dining hall when he and the boys had recognized him as a kindred spirit. From that point on, they’d made life worth living, their brotherhood replacing the family he’d lost. After proving himself worthy of their total trust, they’d included him in the blood pact they’d sworn. That they’d one day escape and become powerful enough to bring the entire Organization down.
To that end, Phantom had maneuvered the Organization into constantly teaming them up together until they became their prized strike force. This inseparable unit had been vital to their very long-term plans.
Phantom had also made them believe they’d eradicated their individuality, had turned them into inhuman weapons to be pointed wherever they pleased.
Once they’d become trusted and depended on, they’d been granted more autonomy, until that laxness had allowed them to execute their escape.
When they’d finally broken out, they’d gone deep underground, using their combined covert expertise to forge new identities....
“Reminiscing?”
Richard, his onetime handler, always read him with uncanny accuracy. It was how he’d found Rafael and the others after they’d escaped—by tracing him.
His brothers’ handlers had thankfully had no insight into their true nature. But since Richard had been assigned to him when he’d been twelve, an unbreakable bond had developed between them. Richard, ice-cold and implicitly trusted by the Organization, had hidden it perfectly. But there’d been no hiding anything from his brothers. Especially from Phantom and Cypher. Those two saw everything. And seeing his growing rapport with Richard had made them more apprehensive by the day. Their trepidation had proved well-founded when Richard had found them.
They’d distrusted Richard as totally as Rafael trusted him, considered him one of their enslavers. Their decision had been unanimous. Richard had to die.
Rafael hadn’t known whom to fear for more. Richard was the most lethal operative the Organization had ever had and certainly capable of wiping them all out. There’d been only one way he could avert that catastrophic situation.
He’d declared he’d stake his life on both sides, so if there was any killing, they had to kill him, too. Thankfully, they’d trusted him and his judgment implicitly, and it had been enough to make them all back down.
Yet even after he’d proved their escape plans wouldn’t have worked without Richard’s covert help, they’d still suspected Richard’s motives. It had taken proof that Richard had been a hostage of the Organization himself for them to believe that he wanted to bring them down, too.
It had still taken his brothers ages to warm up to Richard. Never in Numair’s case. Rafael remained the link between them, since he didn’t relish tearing Richard and Numair’s fangs out of each other’s flesh.
Those two had never had a truce, not even while they’d collated their unique skills to guide their brotherhood into building their joint enterprise. The one thing they’d ever agreed on was the name of their business—the name they’d given their prison, where they and their brotherhood had been forged. And so Black Castle Enterprises had been born.
Their business now spanned the world, with each becoming a billionaire in his own right. Each was also on a personal quest. Some searching for the family they’d been taken from, others for the heritage they’d been stripped of, some for a new purpose in life. But beyond planning the Organization’s downfall to save other children from their same fate, they had one more quest in common. Investigating how they’d ended up in the hands of the Organization.
Rafael had recently found out exactly how.
“Ferreira is down there?”
Richard’s question brought him out of his musings. “Of course.”
“So when will you put the man out of his misery?”
Rafael glanced fondly at his friend. “I wouldn’t put it past you to mean that literally.”
Richard gave him his patented predatory smile. “Oh, no. I think your plan is a much worse fate. I couldn’t have thought of a more diabolical one.”
“High praise from the man who puts 007 to shame.”
Not one for false modesty, Richard only said, “You know I’m a fan of subtle and protracted torture.”
Indeed. And his impending torment of Ferreira would have an abundance of both elements. Disgracing him and oh-so-gradually stripping him of his wealth would only be the beginning.
“Your plot is far more effective than putting a bullet in his brain. I just wish you’d get on with it.”
“So you no longer disapprove of my direct approach?”
Richard shrugged. “A remote one remains better. It would be the perfect setup if he didn’t realize where the blows were coming from. But that’s logic talking. And there’s more than logic involved here. You need the satisfaction of looking that git in the eyes as you stick the knife in and turn it.”
Richard had originally advised against getting close to Ferreira, with the inherent drawbacks and dangers that entailed. It now warmed Rafael that his friend not only understood his need, he empathized. He wanted this for him. This gratification. This closure.
And he would come close. He’d make Ferreira taste everything he’d ever hungered for...before snatching it away. Rafael would have a front-row seat to his betrayal and desperation.
Putting his glass down, he sighed. “But you’re right. It’s time I got that satisfaction. I won’t single Ferreira out tonight, though. I’ll dangle myself, pretend to take pitches, let the mystery around me build a bit more, before...”
Something sizzled at the back of his neck. As if a soft hand stroked him there, or a hot breath blew over his skin.
Frowning, he turned to investigate the source of the disturbance. It couldn’t be someone’s gaze. He wasn’t in anyone’s line of sight.
As expected, no one was looking his way. But those sensations only increased, enveloped his body and...
Everything seemed to fade as his senses converged on the beacon of disruption. A woman.
Framed in the ballroom’s doorway, she stood as if at a loss for what to do. She was swathed in an ethereal off-the-shoulder cream evening gown, gleaming hair swept away from a face that seemed almost unreal before cascading to a tiny waist that...
“Before