“You met on a contract, didn’t you?” Leon asked, sounding vaguely relieved.
I wrinkled my nose. “Yeah, sort of. I was dating his brother, Ricardo, a few years ago when our paths crossed.” I ran the story through in my mind, flashes of that year at Ricardo’s estate in Belize conjuring up sour emotions along with bittersweet. If not for my time with Ricardo, I wouldn’t know Carlos. “My thing with Ricardo wasn’t business. We met in a bar and hit it off… He never knew what I really did for a living, and I was happy to keep it that way. Until I wasn’t.”
Leon hummed a thoughtful sound. “I trust this Ricardo is dead now?”
I chuckled. “Very. Carlos and I became friends at family events, and it was pretty clear he was their father’s favorite. His golden child, being groomed to take over their business. Ricardo hated him, and it only got worse when their father died. Turns out, Ricardo had been cut out of the will entirely, with his portion going to Carlos’s son instead.”
“Carlos has a son?” Leon sounded surprised. I bet he hadn’t found that information in whatever background searches he’d run.
“Mm-hmm,” I confirmed, yawning. “Anyway, long story short, I walked in on Ricardo smothering Victor with a pillow. I intervened and killed him but not before he shot me in the struggle.”
Leon sucked a surprised breath. “You got shot? How did I not know this? I thought Prague was the first.”
I snickered. “Far from it. I just don’t advertise when I’ve taken injuries, because I’m not a fucking moron. Reputation is at least sixty percent of our price. Anyway, Victor was okay, Carlos was grateful, but his wife was dead. Apparently, Ricardo had visited her first.”
“I see,” Leon murmured. “That does explain the way he seems so indebted to you.”
I hummed a sound of agreement. “We’re also friends. He took my recovery pretty seriously, and there was a lot of shit to work through about Ricardo. Turned out that he’d been fucking Carlos’s wife for years, and killing her had been an escalation of an already abusive affair. The most ironic thing, though, was that Victor was actually Ricardo’s son. Carlos knew, and so had their father. That was why Victor had been assigned Ricardo’s inheritance.”
He scoffed a laugh. “Sounds like a daytime soap opera.”
“Does that satisfy your jealousy, Marx? Carlos and I are just friends, nothing more. He’s like… family or something. Not that I really know what that feels like.”
“Trust me, it’s not all it’s made out to be,” he murmured. “Thank you for sharing that story with me.” There was an odd tone to his voice, like he was confused about something. Maybe confused that I’d been so willing to open up? It was easier over the phone, though. Without the temptation to put my hands all over him or to pick a fight, I felt closer to him than ever.
“Tell me how you met Layla,” I suggested, rolling onto my side to get comfy with the phone to my ear. I was enjoying this.
He was still driving, based on the background sounds, but otherwise seemed totally at ease chatting with me. “Layla and I met in training,” he told me with a small sigh. “We were sixteen, and I thought I was totally in love with her. She’s the only person I ever confided in, the only person I ever really cared about. If it wasn’t for her, I probably would have been diagnosed with psychopathy.”
There was a distinct loneliness to his voice whenever he spoke about his past, and it wasn’t hard to guess he hadn’t grown up in a loving home.
“She was a lot like you,” he murmured after a beat. “Not… not in appearance or personality, but there’s a similarity in you. Maybe because you both grew up under the Guild’s thumb, you went through the same conditioning bullshit.”
I sat up slightly on the bed. “Layla was an orphan too?”
“Now she would be, I guess.” He was silent for a moment, but I guessed he was thinking over what to tell me, and I didn’t interrupt. “Layla was part of an old Guild experiment called Project Remus. It was when the Guild would—”
“I know what it is,” I cut him off, barely daring to breathe as I sat up straighter. “Layla was an experimental baby? That’s how far back it goes?”
Leon clicked his tongue. “I’m curious how you know about Project Remus, mon cœur, but it’s only fair I answer your questions first. It’s a project that was started about eighty years ago and ended roughly fifteen years ago. And yes, Layla was the product of the Guild playing God. They chose her genetic donors from their extensive catalog of samples and volunteers, then once she was born, her mother got paid to hand her over and never look back.”
Bile twisted in my stomach, thinking of how broken Mo looked when she spoke of her baby being stolen. Also, Leon thought the project had ended fifteen years ago but Mo was targeted ten years ago. Did he not know? Or was the Timothy thing something else entirely?
It made me question, had my own mother been like Mo? Or like the woman who carried Layla?
Why did I even care? It didn’t matter now.
“How did Layla die?” I asked when I was sure my voice wouldn’t crack. “You said it was on a job?”
Leon grunted an angry sound. “It was. But I suspect it was more to do with what she’d been doing in the lead-up to her death.”
Somehow, I got the feeling this was going to provide some missing pieces in my puzzle. “Are you gonna tell me what that was or leave me in suspense?”
“Tempting,” he murmured. “But you told me about Carlos, so fair’s fair. After Project Remus was shut down, the Guild enacted a little bit of a cleanup. Labs destroyed, data wiped, that kind of thing. Before Layla died, she’d been tracking down other Project Remus babies, warning them that there was a target on their backs. Someone was taking it a step further in covering the project up, killing not only the doctors involved, but everyone involved. Whether they knew or not.”
I blew out a long breath. That definitely seemed like the kind of anti-Guild behavior that would get a mercenary killed. For sure. “Do you think that’s why Blanchet wants me dead?”
Leon was quiet a moment, considering my question. “No… Or I don’t think so. For one, Blanchet was never involved in Remus. For another, you weren’t a Remus baby.”
That made my brows rise in surprise. “I wasn’t? But… I grew up in l’abattoir.” It wasn’t the official name of the group home I’d been raised in, but it was a hell of a lot more fitting than its actual name, Bright Starts.
“Lots of kids grew up in Guild-owned homes,” Leon murmured, “but that doesn’t mean they’re all Remus babies. I’ve looked through the original documentation; I would have remembered if you were listed.”
I sank back into the pillows. “Oh. That’s a good thing, I guess.”
“Unless somehow Blanchet caught wind of Remus and decided to just kill anyone he suspected to be linked to it,” Leon pondered aloud. “That could explain the target on your back. It’s something I can look into, but I’d rather find Layla’s data cache.”
“Her what?”
“Apparently, Layla had been compiling evidence and information on Remus. Shit she hadn’t shared with me for whatever reason… and she stashed it somewhere not long before her death.” He sounded annoyed as hell, and I didn’t blame him. He’d thought they were in love, but clearly she hadn’t trusted him. That had to sting.
I drew a slow breath, mulling it over. “Are you sure she’s dead?”
“Positive.” His tone was devoid of emotion, and I didn’t push for details.
“Okay, so we need to figure out where she stashed it. Where do we start?”
Leon gave a soft laugh. “We?”
I rolled my eyes. “Either you let me track down your ex-girlfriend’s data cache or I’m going after Blanchet on my own. But I’m not sitting around in a safe house, waiting to be killed or to die of boredom.”
This time his laugh was deeper, full of understanding. “I love that about you, DeLuna. I’ll see if I can trace her movements in the lead-up to her death, then you can squeeze some fuckers for info. Sound good?”
I grinned at the ceiling. “Sounds delightful.”
“Tell me about the hit,” he coaxed, changing the subject. “How’d they come at you?”
Amused at how interested he was, I detailed the failed attempt on my life after leaving the bar in Dogwood. I didn’t tell him where I was, and I carefully omitted the fact that I wasn’t alone because I wasn’t ready to deal with the Kai versus Leon fight just yet.
“You shot out his knee?” he repeated, sounding increasingly turned on.