he asked, “How old are you?”
“Fifteen. I’ve been here since I was four.”
The boy had answered his next question before he’d asked it, telling him that what his jailers had said was true.
He’d never leave here.
They reached one of the tables and Phantom gestured for him to sit down. There were five other boys, each looking as different as could be from the other, all older than him, but none as old as Phantom.
Two boys scooted along the bench to make space for him as Phantom introduced him to them, his lips somehow not moving, so it would appear to the guards who flanked the hall that he wasn’t talking at all. Each of the boys introduced himself. Lightning, Bones, Cypher, Brainiac and Wildcard.
As they continued to eat, each of them asked him something, about his past life. He emulated the boys in stealth, telling them truths without revealing facts. Then they started giving him equations, which he solved with perfect accuracy no matter how convoluted they made them.
By the time they finished eating, he felt he’d known these boys for a long time. But the guards were announcing the end of the meal, and all the boys stood up to leave the hall.
Unable to control his anxiety, he clung to Phantom’s arm. “Will I see you again?”
Phantom gave him a stern look, making him remove his hand before the guards noticed. But his voice was gentle when he said, “I’ll see that you’re brought to our ward.”
“You can do that?”
“There’s a lot you can do around here, if you know how.”
“Will you teach me?”
Phantom raised his eyes to the other boys. And it was then he realized they weren’t just fellow prisoners who sat together for meals or shared the same ward. These boys were a team. And Phantom was asking their approval before he let him join them.
Suddenly, this was all he wanted in life. To be part of their team. His old life was gone. And he just knew he wouldn’t have a new one without these boys.
He watched each boy give Phantom a slight nod, each filling him with hope he’d thought forever dead.
Before Phantom started walking away, leaving him behind, he said, “Welcome to our brotherhood, Numbers. And to Black Castle.”
Twenty-four years later
Rafael Moreno Salazar stood in the shadows, looking down from the mezzanine of his newly acquired mansion in Rio de Janeiro.
The grand ball was in full swing. All the major names in the marketing world were enjoying his exclusive hors d’oeuvres and free-flowing Moët et Chandon and waltzing to the elegant music of his live orchestra. And he hadn’t yet made an appearance.
He was leaving his guests to...stew, letting their curiosity about him and his intentions reach a fever pitch.
He’d been doing that since his announcement. That Rafael Salazar—the enigma who’d revolutionized financial technologies—was shopping for a marketing partner in the Western hemisphere. Although the announcement’s impact was already huge, he’d kept stoking interest by deepening his mystery. Then he’d added a pinch of spice. A handful of dirt, really.
As he always did with potential clients and associates, he’d let info leak that his background was in organized crime. As it was. Just not in the way people imagined. He and his brothers had had their own shadow operation in their beginnings.
Heads of state had been fascinated by his avant-garde methods from the start, but they hadn’t courted him aggressively except when they’d found out those methods had been forged in the crucible of crime and tested through the ingeniousness of corruption.
But he hadn’t been sure the marketing tycoons he was baiting would be as open to dealing with someone who dabbled in the world’s grayest zones and was one of those zones’ most ambiguous figures.
But instead of being repelled, it seemed everyone thought any illegal skills and liaisons he commanded would make him an even more lucrative partner. And if he was as formidable as it was rumored, he’d also be invulnerable. They could all do with a partner bullets bounced off.
And there they were, the hopeful candidates, pretending to be enjoying his lavish party and trying to be gracious to one another. But he could feel them seething with frustration, wondering whom he’d favor if and when he finally deigned to grace his own ball.
“Will you finally make an appearance tonight, Numbers?”
He slanted a calm glance at the man who’d appeared silently at his side. “I just might this time, Cobra.”
The Englishman he’d called Cobra for the past twenty years curled a ruthless lip as he examined the scene. Rafael had told him the same thing on three previous occasions.
To the world, he was Richard Graves—the name he’d picked when they’d manufactured their new identities. At forty-two, Richard looked like a Hollywood movie star, and at first glance, he could pass for Rafael’s older brother. They had almost the same build and coloring, only Richard’s jet-black hair was threaded with discreet silver. On closer inspection, however, their bone structure revealed their different ethnicities, with Rafael being of Portuguese Brazilian stock.
But there was one other major difference between them, and it wasn’t on the surface. It was in their specialties.
Though Rafael had been trained to be deadly, his main power lay in his mind. He’d rarely relied on his prowess in violence but was the go-to guy to liquidate targets financially. Richard was code-named Cobra for the best reasons. He was the total package of lethality. His liquidations had always been the literal kind. He now hid the deadliness that made him the ultimate assassin behind a facade of refinement. Until you examined him. Or he examined you. Rafael didn’t know any mere mortals who could withstand his scrutiny.
But Richard’s days of eradicating scum were behind him. Or so he said. But whether this was true or not, he now eliminated threats in the worlds of business and politics with an equally ruthless precision. With Richard as his partner and protector, Rafael felt confident that the past would never catch up with him...and that the future could hold no worries.
Richard pulled back, leveled probing eyes on him. “Aren’t you playing this with too much deliberation? You waited years to concoct this plan—I thought you’d be a bit more eager to finally put it into action.”
Rafael jerked one shoulder. “I’m in no hurry.”
“Really? Could have fooled me.” Richard huffed. “Seriously, all you’ve done for two months is set up such events, then stand in the wings watching. Don’t you think you’ve done enough reconnaissance?”
“After twenty-four years, you think two months is too long for me to savor the anticipation of my revenge?”
“Put that way, no.” Richard made a sound of self-deprecation. “Seems I’m the one who can’t contain my
