Page 65 of Gorgeous Misery

“Your twin? Your fucking—” Harrison turns to me. “What is going on?”

But when I answer him, I’m looking at Nick. “That’s what we’re here to find out. I want the whole story, Nick. From that moment we left you on the beach to this one right here—”

Nick scoffs. “That’s like a whole novel of shit.”

But I put a hand up. “Make it a short story. You’ve got twenty minutes. Then we’re back in the air. Wendy won’t keep forever.”

Nick’s face goes hard. “What the fuck does that mean?” He looks the same and utterly different all at once. He’s still got that golden-boy persona, but it’s not the first thing you see anymore. It’s hidden now. His hair is a little too long and it’s not surfer blond the way it was when he was a teenager.

His brown eyes seem a little darker than before, but that’s probably just the shadows in the dimly lit room. Because the way I remember them, they were golden too. He’s tan, well-muscled, and tall. Nearly as tall as I am, which is a change. The last time I saw him, he was eighteen and not nearly this big. He’s wearing a black t-shirt, a pair of black tactical pants, boots, also black, and a watch. Not the smart kind because it’s got hands.

His whole I’m-a-mercenary look aside, he comes off pretty normal.

I wasn’t in Kansas when Sasha shot his twin. I didn’t see any of that. I was only brought in after it was all over and that was just to pick up my girls. So for me, there is no disconnect with the way he looks. But Harrison is having problems.

“You’re not him,” Harrison says.

Nick smiles indulgently. “I’m Nick. Trust me. That guy you saw in Kansas was my twin.”

Harrison squints his eyes, trying to decide if he’s telling the truth.

“He’s telling the truth,” I say. Then I look back at Nick. It is Nick. There is no doubt. I mean, I didn’t really have any doubts about his identity coming here—there were all those clues—but it’s good to know definitively that this is the same kid I knew all those years ago. “We don’t have much time—”

“Why? Why don’t we have much time?” Nick is agitated. “Where the fuck is Wendy?”

“The sooner you start talking, the sooner you’ll be reunited with her.”

Nick turns his back to me.

It’s a mistake. Not that I have any plans to attack him, I don’t. But he should know better.

He turns back around quickly, like he’s reading my mind and this thought just occurred to him as well. “Where do you want me to start? And don’t say the beginning. This is not a twenty-minute story. It’s thirty-eight years, Merc. The beginning starts with the day I was born. The Company isn’t an organization, it’s a plan. And what I’ll tell you is just my role in the plan. The whole thing? That’s a thousand years old, at least.”

Harrison huffs and Nick turns on him. Fast. His reflexes are no joke. He’s not a kid anymore, but he’s a lot younger than both me and Harrison.

“You think that’s fuckin’ funny?” Nick snarls. And finally, the man I was expecting shows up. “I don’t really know who you are—” Nick puts up a hand when Harrison begins to fill him in. “Oh, I know what you do for them.” He nods his chin at me, indicating I’m part of ‘them’. “You’re the pilot. You’ve been around a long time. I get that, Harrison. But you don’t know shit about how this world works.” Nick’s gaze rotates over to me now. “And neither do you. You saw a lot, Merc. Hell, you did a lot. Much more than any other outsider in the history of the Company, that’s for sure. But you don’t know why you were doing it. You have no clue.”

“So fill me in,” I say. “That’s why we’re all here, Nick. Tell us why you had to break Sasha’s heart. Tell us how that pain benefits the Company. Because you’re still in, aren’t you? It didn’t go away, did it? And sure, I’ll admit that I’m out of the fucking loop. By choice,” I growl. “But that just means you’re in the loop by choice as well.”

Nick’s laugh is loud. “Judge me? Really? That’s what you’re gonna do here? I talked to Indie, Merc. I know what this is about. Donovan, right? Or should I say Carter? You’re trying to decide if Adam Boucher is gonna kill you and your family if you don’t help him out with his little problem. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you have Wendy. But you should know, Wendy is loved. Adam might hate me, but not Wendy. She is our Sasha.”

It takes all my learned self-control not to hit him when those words come out of his mouth. I rage inside for almost five full seconds. But when I finally speak, I am calm. “Our Sasha? Is Wendy the new pet, Nick? You got big plans for her, huh? Is that why you’re so mad? You need her to kill you—”

He hits me and then there’s no going back.

We fight.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - NICK

I’ve had enough of Merc and we’ve only been face to face for about sixty seconds. But I’ve been watching him this whole time. I’ve seen him. I know him far better than he knows me, that’s for sure. And somewhere along the line in these past nine and a half years since I’ve been officially dead, I decided that I don’t like Merc.

He’s not one of us.

He cannot be trusted.

And now he wants my secrets if I want Wendy back?

My fist hits his jaw hard. Merc’s head spins a little and I’m just about to gloat about that when his knuckles deliver an uppercut under my chin. My teeth crash together, the vibration hard enough to shake my brain. Then… fuck if I know what happens. It all goes way too quick to do a blow-by-blow.