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  Memento Mori

  Masters and Mercenaries: The Forgotten, Book 1

  Lexi Blake

  Memento Mori

  Masters and Mercenaries: The Forgotten, Book 1

  Lexi Blake

  Published by DLZ Entertainment LLC

  Copyright 2018 DLZ Entertainment LLC

  Edited by Chloe Vale

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-937608-82-8

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

  Acknowledgments

  There’s a passage in this book that comes straight from my childhood. River talks about her father taking her into the woods to see the stars. My dad was fascinated with astronomy. I remember vividly him talking about the stars and constellations. Then he explained to me that the light we see is thousands of years old and that many of the “stars” died long ago, their light still traveling the universe. When I was a kid it seemed like a terrible thing. As so often happens, we grow up and live and view the world through different eyes. All things die. It is inevitable. There is no way around it. One day we’re here and the next we are nothing but memories, pictures in an album, stories to be told. But those stories, those memories are like the light from the stars. They give us a path to follow. They remind us of the love we were given. Nothing is wasted. Only transformed.

  Memento Mori means “remember that you must die.” What I’ve learned over the last months is that it is only in the inevitability of death that we remember to live, really live. It is because this life ends that we should live it to the fullest, love as much as we can. Do one thing that scares you. Do one thing that intrigues you. Do one thing that helps another human being. So that in the end, death is merely a doorway. So that in the end there is only love.

  This book is dedicated to my mother and father. They’re together again.

  For the rest of my life, I will walk in your light.

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  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Author’s Note

  Tabula Rasa Coming Soon

  Discover Lexi Blake writing as Sophie Oak

  About Lexi Blake

  Other Books by Lexi Blake

  Prologue

  Brittany, France

  Eighteen months before

  He could still hear the screams, the shouts of the men who’d gone down. Still see the blood as it started to flow. His brother…god, he could still see his brother.

  He’d been caught, locked away in his cell and unable to join the fight. Not that he wanted to fight. When the first splatter of gunfire had sounded out, his instinct had been to breathe a sigh of relief. He’d known one way or another it was over. Live or die, he wouldn’t be under her thumb any longer.

  Someone was finally coming for Mother. Someone was going to save them.

  Then his training had taken over and he’d known he had to try or die. Mother didn’t accept failure in her boys. It still made him sick, that trigger in his brain that went against all his instincts and told him to obey.

  He didn’t fucking obey.

  “Do you know what happened to the man outside your cell?” There was a massive blond man on the other side of the table from him. He was the one who’d led the charge. He was the one who’d directed his men to secure what he’d called the Lost Boys.

  The blond guy was right. He was so lost.

  “George? Are you talking about him?” What was the man’s name? He struggled with names. Even his own, but then he’d been “born” a fully-grown man, waking up on a hospital bed with no memory of anything before that moment. “He was my brother.”

  His brother. He’d been there when George had been “born.” Mother never brought a new
recruit on alone. He’d been there when George had opened his eyes, confusion clouding them. He’d been kinder to George than Sasha had been to him.

  And he’d watched as George had realized he couldn’t win, as George had done what Mother had taught them to do when they failed.

  Clean up your mess. Don’t make me do it for you.

  He hated Mother. It was easier and easier to shed the skin she’d forced him into. He was one of the bad boys, one of the boys who didn’t clean up his mess.

  “Yes, that man.” The blond dude had been joined by a gorgeous woman with skin the color of velvety night and dark eyes that looked at him with sympathy. Ariel. That was her name and she was some kind of doctor. A shrink, maybe.

  How was it that he could remember what a doctor was and that a doctor who studied behavior and the mind was a psychologist, but he couldn’t tell anyone what his name had been before Mother had taken his past away?

  “George had been on patrol.” He said the words with a calm he didn’t feel. “He wasn’t in his cell when the incursion happened. His training took over when he realized Mother was gone and that he would be taken.”

  Good-bye, Harvey. We have to clean up the mess. Don’t let them take you. I’ll see you soon, brother.

  “His training?” The doctor looked at him expectantly.

  Now was when his training should take over and he should shut up. They weren’t allowed to talk about this. They were to be polite boys, to do their duty.

  Or someone would beat the shit out of them. Out of him. Because he was stubborn and arrogant and joking wasn’t allowed. They were to be serious at all times.

  “He killed himself because Mother…the insane lady who kidnapped us and wiped our memories…planted the impulse. Tomas’s brother was coming through the doors at the time. We were all taught to not get caught.”

  “His name is Theo,” Blond Dude said.

  Yes, Theo. The mission hadn’t been about freeing himself. It had been about saving Theo Taggart. His own rescue had been incidental, but then his life seemed fairly random. After all, who would have guessed he would get selected for experimentation? He would bet it was a fairly uncommon thing to have happen.

  “George was what the doctor called one of the good ones. He rarely required correction,” he explained. “Are you going to kill us?”

  Us. He and Dante and Sasha and Tucker were the only ones left. George was gone. They’d lost Charles and Albert during the mission to Dallas to retrieve Robert and Theo—a mission that had gone poorly. He still had the scars.

  He wasn’t upset at the thought, merely wanted to know if he should prepare himself for execution.

  Ariel leaned forward, putting a hand on his. He stared down where she touched him. He couldn’t remember anyone touching him with kindness. Not ever. “No. No one wants to hurt you. Any of you.”

  “Well, I might punch that Russian fucker. He’s obnoxious,” Taggart said. Ian Taggart. Yes, that was his name. Theo’s oldest brother.

  “Sasha can be an asshole.” He flinched.

  Taggart looked at him with serious eyes. “She didn’t like you cussing?”

  He sat up straighter. He didn’t have to follow her rules now. The inkling that this was actually a good thing had started in the back of his brain. Theo and Robert were here and they seemed good. Happy even. Maybe they weren’t going to be handed over to people who would toss them in jail for the crimes the doctor had made them commit or vivisect them in order to find her secrets. Maybe the man in front of him meant what he’d said. He’d offered them protection and to help figure out who’d they’d been before.

  “She fucking didn’t. Bitch. Actually bitches are female dogs and I like dogs. Dogs are cool. I’m not going to insult them by calling her a bitch. She was an asshole. She killed George. She killed a lot of my brothers.”

  “Damn straight she did.” Taggart leaned forward. “No one is going to hurt you here. We’re going to take you and the others to London. We have a safe place for you to stay there, and we have a whole team ready to work with you. Ariel is going to help you process what happened and transition into a world where you don’t get your ass handed to you on a daily basis. No more drugs. Well, not the kind she used. Like I said, I might tranq up the Euros.”

  He wouldn’t argue about that. Dante was kind of a dick, too.

  He looked at the good doctor, the not evil one. “You know the worst part?”

  “The torture and memory wipes? I can’t imagine how bad it was.” She squeezed his hand.

  He was done being careful. It was a new world and he was going to be…him. Whoever the hell he was. He made those decisions now. “The lack of hugs.”

  She gasped a little, her eyes sympathetic. She stood, but before she could move around to embrace him, Taggart stopped her.

  He shook his head. “You’re going to be trouble, aren’t you, you horny bastard?”

  For the first time in his memory, he felt a grin slide onto his face. It was over. He was out and he didn’t have to go back. She wouldn’t come after him again because Mother Asshole was dead and gone and he was free. Free to be stupid and to eat carbs and to be horny. “I think I am going to be trouble. And I’m definitely the other thing, but seriously, the lack of physical affection hurts my heart. I’m very damaged.”

  Ariel’s expression had changed from sympathetic to amused. “I can see we’re going to have to work to get you to take your therapy seriously. But for now, I wanted to give you the option I’ve given the others.” She settled back down. “She named you. I thought it might be meaningful for you to change that, to choose your own name.”

  He considered it for a moment. “No one chooses their own name. Parents do that. The people who are there when you’re born select a name. But I hate Harvey. I don’t feel like a Harvey. I don’t want it because she gave it to me.”

  “You look a little like a character from a TV show I liked,” Taggart said. “Though he came to a bad end. He was a badass though.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Jax.”

  Yes, that felt much more suitable.

  “My name is Jax.” He wouldn’t forget his fallen brothers. He would remember them and that life was tenuous at best.

  Days before he’d prayed for death, but when the time had come, he hadn’t the will to do it. Something inside him had overridden the training, the triggers she’d planted deep in his mind. Something inside wanted so badly to live.

  He would live in honor of them.

  He suddenly couldn’t wait to see the world.

  * * * *

  Creede, CO

  18 Months Before

  River Lee wanted to shut the world away.

  She looked down at the note for the fiftieth time. It was still there, still written in clean, masculine handwriting. The words hadn’t changed.

  Sorry for this, love, but it’s what I do. I regret the timing though. You were a lovely woman. If I had it in me to be a real husband, I would have wanted you as my wife. You’re strong. You’ll survive.

  He’d taken all the money. Her accounts were empty, both personal and business because she’d been stupid enough to give him access to both. After all, he’d been her husband, though now she understood the marriage wasn’t legal. He’d conned her for over two years and finally gotten his big payoff when her father had signed over power of attorney and put his entire life savings in her hands.

  She’d lost it all. Her father was dying, the cancer eating away at his body and soul. How would she take care of him?

  How would she tell him how foolish she’d been?

  She put the letter down and thought about calling the police. Who would she talk to? She lived on unincorporated land between Creede and a tiny town called Bliss. She lived in a ramshackle cabin her grandfather had built back in the fifties. Every bit of cash she’d had she’d put into her business.

  And now she couldn’t work. She would have to sell off the equipment.

  She walked out
onto the porch, staring at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains all around her. The Rio Grande ran through her backyard. She would call Nate Wright in the morning. The sheriff of Bliss County was a good man. At least he would file a report on the con artist she’d thought loved her.

  The man who had betrayed her utterly.

  Over the gurgling of the river, she heard the sound of her father coughing. It seemed to rattle the cabin.

  At least he wouldn’t suffer for long. The doctors had given him three months at most. She could hold everything together for three months, surely. Her father didn’t have to know that she’d ruined everything.

  She sank down on the Adirondack chair she’d bought when she’d married Matt. There were two of them, and she’d imagined she and Matt growing old together right here.

  She watched the river and cried for the longest time.

  Chapter One

  Bliss, CO

  Present Day

  Jax stared out the massive windows, his gaze trained on the vibrant colors in front of him. The sun itself seemed different here. Brighter, as if someone had a remote and had turned up the picture clarity. He’d spent all his time inside. His logical mind knew Hope McDonald’s compound had been in the countryside, isolated for privacy purposes, but he hadn’t been allowed to wander the land. He’d known the white walls of the facility and the inside of his utilitarian cell. Even when he’d been taken someplace new, it had been by plane, the land below so far away as to seem unreal. But this, this was something from a dream, a good one.

  Greens so deep they looked like they came from an artist’s palette. Massive pines rising from the ground up and up and up into the sky. The mountains dominating everything. And the river. He loved the sound of that river. He’d gone to sleep to the lullaby it created.