Black and Brown: Raven Assassins (Ravens #1)

Chapter Eighty-six

Mirage

Ravens Headquarters

One week later

The heavy wood door creaked open as the four men eased inside the director’s office.

“You can go for the evening, Brad,” the director said with his back to them as he stared out the window, drinking whatever liquor was in his glass.

Brad was already gone. Ex had already relieved the guard of his duty.

Their deceitful boss turned and froze.

The atmosphere crackled with tension as they formed a half circle around his desk.

“I told you I’d make you fall to your knees and beg for death.” Each of Meridian’s words dripped with icy menace.

The director began to sweat.

“Fellas, you’re about to make a huge mistake here. I don’t know what you’re looking for. No one here sabotaged your mission. You botched the job in Germany yourselves.” He scowled, trying to add some bass to his voice as if he wasn’t scared shitless.

“We know why Zelmir was targeted. We know of the Green Ravens.” Meridian sounded too calm. “I’ll give you one chance to tell me the truth before I honor my promise.”

Mirage reached behind his back, ready to throw his blunt wood daggers.

“Who and where are the remaining Ravens?”

“It’s best if you answer quickly…he’s out of patience,” Ex offered.

The director’s eyes blew wide a second before he dove for his phone.

Mirage threw the nine-inch wooden stakes at the director’s hand. The loud cracks that followed sounded like he’d broken at least three or four knuckles.

He hollered out, tears welling as he dropped the receiver.

“Please…I have a wife. She needs me,” he pleaded, clutching his hand.

Mirage rolled his eyes. “Your wife’s been seeing another man for two years…I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

The director became incensed. “There are no other Ravens, dammit!”

“If you insist.” Meridian shrugged.

The director reached beneath his desk—where he probably stored a weapon—but not fast enough. Grace drew a dart gun and shot a syringe into the director’s chest.

The poison was potent enough to cause excruciating pain the moment it entered the bloodstream.

Meridian sat in one of the high-back chairs opposite the director’s desk and began consuming the rest of the director’s drink.

Meridian sighed and lit one of his black-and-gold cigarettes.

“Mmm, man, that’s fuckin’ delicious. What is this, John? A forty, fifty-year-aged whisky? What’d that cost you…about six thousand?”

Mirage barely withheld his shock and rage.

Motherfucker.

“Business must be good,” Meridian continued.

The director groaned as ferocious, all-consuming pain mercilessly worked its way through his nervous system.

Meridian crossed his legs and took another sip.

“John, you’ve just been shot with a lethal dose of cyanide. As the poison works through your body, it’ll make every muscle inside you spasm and contract at the same time.” Meridian took a long inhale, then leaned forward and blew the sweet aroma of cedar and nutmeg into the director’s face. “But lucky for me…it doesn’t affect the brain in a way that you can’t think or speak.”

The director fell out of his chair.

“Please,” he wept, his limbs twitching uncontrollably.

“Save the hydration, John, because your tears mean nothing to me, though they are delicious.”

Meridian was the emotionless, evil assassin the director’s own program created. A malfunctioning robot who’d turned on its maker.

“Your death is inevitable, John. But the torture and suffering can end.”

The director managed to crawl toward Meridian on his hands and knees. Grace pulled his silenced .45 Magnum and aimed it at the lying bastard’s temple.

“What’s the code to the safe behind that hideous painting on your wall?”

The director was foaming at the mouth as he spat out the four-digit number.

Grace and Ex got to work.

“How many more Ravens did you make?” Meridian asked.

The director clutched the center of his chest. “What do you mean?”

“I said what the fuck I mean. I do not repeat myself.” Meridian’s voice was as dark as his soul. “Answer.”

The director shook his head. Snot and tears ran down his face.

“Y’know why I love using cyanide, John? It’s because it can take long, agonizing hours before it kills you in the slowest death possible,” Meridian said while still enjoying his cigarette. “And this particular poison heightens your senses, making the slightest touch you feel intensify to the tenth power.”

Meridian stood and kicked the director in his stomach so hard it sent him flying backward into his wet bar that held at least a million dollars’ worth of premium liquor.

All bought with blood money.

“Where are the other fuckin’ Ravens?” Meridian growled.

The director’s breaths were becoming more and more shallow as his throat began to swell as if he’d swallowed a plum whole. But he just managed to get out the answer.

“There’s two more…they were defective and were supposed to be terminated.” The director hacked and spat on the floor, appearing barely able to continue. “They escaped…I don’t know how.”

Grace shot the director in his kneecap.

The deafening roar of pain the director let out did nothing to invoke sympathy in any of them.

“What the fuck you mean defective?” Meridian asked, clamping the director’s jaw in a vicious grip.

“I don’t know!” he yelled. “Something went wrong in the lab.”

“What’s their color? And where are they?” Meridian squeezed harder. “Tell me!”

“I swear I don’t know! They escaped!”

“We gotta go,” Mirage warned, his eyes on his tablet where he was watching the guard rotation.

“Please. Kill me, Grace…kill me,” the director gurgled on the excessive pools of saliva flooding his mouth.

In fifteen more minutes, the poison would make him feel like he was drowning in his own fluids.

“I told you I’d make you beg at my fuckin’ feet for death,” Meridian snarled, then put his cigarette out in the center of the director’s forehead.

“Leave him, Grace. Death is too merciful. Let him suffer for the innocent lives he stole so he could wear fuckin’ Stefano suits and drink thousand-dollar whisky.”

“No, don’t,” the director cried. “Just kill me.”

Meridian turned his back on him, not sparing the dying man another glance.

“I’ll see you in hell when I get there, John.”

The four Ravens left the office, not caring about the mess they’d left behind.

Under his arm, Mirage clutched the computer containing the information they needed for their new mission.

“Let’s go find our lost brothers, gentlemen.”

Grace exchanged a look of accomplishment with Mirage as they fell in step beside the Blacks, ready to change the world in the way they saw fit.

As the Greens had said. They needed to reunite at the beginning.

It would take all of them to make this right.

To make all the ones who’d corrupted their organization pay the same price.

The End

The Green Ravens are Coming Next.