Page 1 of Captive Souls

One

Knox

The room I stood in reeked of expensive cigars and bespoke aftershave.

My body craved the scent of iron. Blood.

Soon.

The man in front of me was a necessary evil, one who thought controlled me. I’d let him believe that as long as he served a purpose—offering me an endless supply of victims.

“I need you to catch someone for me.”

“Catch?” I repeated, even though I’d heard him just fine.

He nodded once, steepling his fingers as his elbows rested on the oak desk between us. “Catch.”

I was standing in front of him. He’d offered me a chair, as he did every time I was in this room. And as always, I stood. My posture didn’t change, my expression stayed the same—blank, uninterested. But Stone knew me as well as anyone could truly know me. Which meant he understood that I was questioning his request.

He leaned back in his chair, smiling. “When I say catch, I mean alive. And she stays that way until you hand her over to me.”

I felt the dynamics of our relationship shift as I processed this request. “You want me tocatch, not kill,a woman?” I wasn’t one to ask rhetorical questions, but this ventured far outside our regular formula. Stone and I had enjoyed a stable, predictable and mutually beneficial relationship over the years. I enjoyed stability. Predictable. Controlling all the variables.

He thought that I worked for him. His rabid, dangerous dog who obeyed his every command and never stretched the leash.

Maybe he thought it was because I was loyal to him or because he paid me well or because I was scared of him.

None of that was true.

Without a leash, I was scared of myself.

His leash kept the world safe from monsters like me.

“Catch, not kill,” Stone said for the third time. “And keep her safe. Whole.”

Irritation bloomed in my gut, yet I didn’t show it, giving him a flat stare. “You want me to babysit. I don’t babysit. And I do not keep people safe.” It annoyed me that he even asked this of me. He was stretching the limits of what I would tolerate.

Stone chuckled. He did that, laughed often and easily. He had a decade on my forty years with creases in his face to show it. The creases did not just signify his age but the variety of expressions this man wore, plenty of them smiles.

He was tall but not overly so, fit but not cut with muscle. His hair was cropped close to his head, a sensible cut. He was always clean-shaven. He wore exquisitely tailored suits, one of the only shows of his wealth. Otherwise, he looked like any other middle-aged banker.

He did not look like the don of one of the most dangerous and lethal organized crime syndicates in the country.

Most of the time, he looked and acted like the American archetype of the ‘fun uncle.’

I’d seen him peel the skin off someone who’d betrayed him without breaking a sweat. You’d be very unwise to let his demeanor lower your guard or think you could best him.

More than one Made Man had been stupid enough to try to steal power from him. I’d killed them myself.

That was my job, after all.

Killing.

He did it when he needed to get the point across, but mostly he didn’t like getting his hands dirty. Literally or figuratively.

Hence our mutually beneficial relationship.

“I know this job may seem beneath you.” He stroked his chin. “But rest assured, there is no one else in my organization I want in charge of this. Of her.”

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