“Look,” I say, “if you take a deal or if you’re convicted, the family will likely sue for your inheritance.”
“I don’t want it. I have my interior design business. I can make my own money.”
“They’ll sue for your daughter’s inheritance.”
“Can they do that?”
“They can. They will.”
She’s silent a moment. “I should have run away and hidden years ago, but I didn’t want to do that to my daughter. And he wasn’t a man to let me run away. He would have found me. What next?”
“Here’s what I want us to do. I met with Reese Summer today. He’s well-respected. He wins. He’s ethical. I want to bring him in as part of your team. Google him. You’ll understand why.”
“I know who he is. I considered talking to him before you, but I really wanted a woman and when I met you, I was sold. This wouldn’t change you being on my team, right?”
“Not at all. This just offers you extra support, but he needs to believe in you how I do. He wants to meet tomorrow morning. Early. He’s got a trial going on right now.” I don’t tell her we’ll have to push back the trial. I want Reese to win her over first. “Can you do it?”
“Yes. I’ll be there.” I give her the address and directions with the help of the bartender.
“Got it,” she says. “Mia, thank you.”
“Thank me by staying strong.”
We disconnect and I return to the table as Reese is standing to leave. “She’ll be here,” I say quickly. “And I’ve reconsidered. I think a partnership works.”
Reese smiles. “I thought you might and I’m glad you did.”
He and I shake on our agreement. He and Grayson shake on their agreement. Cat and I hug. “You two are going to be magic together. I feel it.”
I’m smiling when they depart and Grayson leans in and murmurs, “We’re magic together.”
I turn and wrap my arms around him. “You’re my magic, Grayson Bennett.” I kiss his jaw. “Can we go home now?”
“Yes, baby,” he says, his voice thick with a low, raspy, affected quality. “Let’s go home.”
His arm slides around me and he sets us in motion, and I’m more relaxed than I have been since our return. That is until I find the tall, dark, and lethal-looking familiar man waiting for us at the door. Adrian is here and he’s here because we still require bodyguards. We’re still in danger.
“Hiya, Mama Mia,” he greets, and I do laugh. He’s a funny guy who I sense has a lot more to him than good looks and jokes, like killer instincts. And those killer instincts are both nerve-wracking and comforting at the same time.
“Driver’s waiting on us,” he says, motioning us toward the front door. “His name is Will. If you need him just call out, ‘Danger, Danger Will Robinson.’ His name is actually Will Axe, and that isn’t a joke. We call him The Axe.” He jumps right to another topic, with whiplash quickness. “Are we headed to the hotel?”
“Our apartment,” Grayson says. “We’ll need to get our bags—”
“We’ll pack ‘em up and load ‘em up for you, if you wish,” he offers.
Grayson confirms with me and then gives the go-ahead. Adrian motions us forward. “Willy-boy awaits.” And from there, he keeps talking, and by the time we load into the Escalade, Grayson is shaking his head and laughing. “He’s a character.”
“Yes,” I say, smiling. “He is.”
The driver eyes me from the front seat. “Welcome. I’m Axe.”
I laugh. “The Axe?”
He grunts. “In case you didn’t notice. Adrian talks too much. Just Axe is fine.”
Adrian climbs into the vehicle and leans around his seat to eye us. “Axe me anything you like.”
I laugh and Grayson just shakes his head. Adrian grins and turns forward. “Home we go.”
Home.
That word slides under my skin and nestles deep into my soul. It affects me emotionally on so many levels. Butterflies erupt in my belly. We’re going home. I’m going home. My eyes meet Grayson’s and warmth spreads between us. “Home,” I murmur.
“Home,” he repeats, tenderly stroking my cheek. “And it’s been too long.”
“Yes, it has,” I murmur.
Grayson slides his arm around me and I snuggle in close to him. We don’t speak for the short ride. We just sit there, together. And considering not so long ago, we didn’t believe we’d be together again, it’s a pretty darn perfect way to spend a ride. We’ve just turned onto our street when Grayson’s cellphone rings. He shifts and grabs his phone, glancing at the caller ID.
“Eric,” he informs me before he answers.
He greets Eric and then listens and while there is no outward reaction to whatever Eric says, the air shifts, thickens, his mood darkening. “Blake has a team for that.”
He listens again and then says, “Right. Understood.” He disconnects.
I shift to study him. “What was that about?”
“He’s going with Blake’s team on the mission tonight.”
I know very well that Eric is an ex-Navy SEAL so I don’t allow myself to read too much into this. “Is he missing the action?”
“He says he has a gut feeling they’re going to need him tonight.”
The implications of tonight’s raid on the attorney’s house going wrong, perhaps dangerously wrong, has me turning and sinking against the seat. The scent of trouble is in the air and it’s pungent and harsh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Mia
Eric’s the brother Grayson never had and while I know that he knows Eric can handle himself, he’s concerned for him. He has to be. I am, too. All I know about this underground group is their quest for money at all costs, and money and greed too often lead to destruction.
We arrive at the building and Axe pulls the Escalade to a side entrance. It’s not long before we’re out of the vehicle with both men standing with us. Axe is blond with a square jaw, the silent type who speaks few words. While Adrian is big and tall, Axe is a monster who towers over him a good two inches, which must make him six-five, at least.
“We’ll both be on night shift,” Adrian informs us. “We’ll be watching the building and your apartment. We’re wired into the property’s security camera with some additions we made ourselves.”
“Because we think someone is going to come and attack us in our apartment?” I ask.
Grayson catches my hand. “They’re just being cautious, baby.”
Adrian points at Grayson. “Your man here pays us, and pays us well, to be paranoid little shits.”
And a team of bad guys wants to take down Grayson and get a big payday, I think, but I leave it alone. Bottom line, they do think someone might come at us here, or they wouldn’t be here. It was a stupid question. I shouldn’t have even bothered to ask it.
Adrian motions to the door. “I’ll go first. You can follow. Axe is going to stay right here.”
And I just want to be inside our apartment. Adrian enters the building and Grayson steps behind me, leaning in to whisper, “Relax, baby. Once we’re inside the apartment, all this will melt away.”
He means we can pretend that the danger is gone, but right now, that sounds pretty darn wonderful. Adrian returns and motions us forward. The minute I’m inside the familiar lobby with shiny white marble floors with the towering ceiling, memories explode inside me and so do my nerves. I’m nervous. It’s so silly. This is my building with Grayson. This is my home, but I can’t deny the truth. My belly is fluttering.
I end up with both men framing me on the walk toward the elevator, with Grayson holding my hand. We pass the security desk, where a guard I don’t know is on duty. Grayson leans in close, near my ear, and whispers, “I never took you off the security ledger.”
My heart swells with the emotions this man stirs in me and with the reminder that he never let go of me. I thought he had. I so thought he had and I was wrong. I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong. We reach the elevator and the doors op
en. His hand is on my lower back as I enter the car before him. Once he joins me, his arm is around my shoulders, our bodies snuggly molded together. I don’t look at him. I can’t yet because I know that when I do, when I really look at him and talk to him, it’s going to be emotional for both of us. We’re in love, passionately in love, but we lost each other for a full, painful year and I know now that we are far from that pain. I’m afraid, too, and I need him to know that.
In what feels like eternal minutes we finally say goodbye to Adrian and step into our apartment, our home. A huge part of me wants to just see it again, to feel it again, but it’s Grayson I really need to feel. And I’m not sure he told me everything about that call with Eric. Grayson shuts the door and locks it behind us and I turn to face him, setting my purse on the entry table.
“Eric? What don’t I know?”
He shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it on the entry table. “He’s not a man of many words. That’s all he said.”
“Are you worried?”
He closes the small space between us and his hands find my face. “I don’t want to talk about Eric right now.”
There’s a dark edginess to him that I know all too well. This is the side of Grayson only I know. That part of him that manages to be demanding and fierce, and yet somehow tender. “You’re worried.”
“I don’t want to talk about Eric right now, baby. I want to enjoy being home with you. Do you know how many times I wished for you to be here? How many times it gutted me that you weren’t?”
Emotions do more than well in my chest and for the moment, they quake through my body. As this man I love, seeds deep in my soul all over again, and takes root. I’ve said so much to him since my return and yet not enough. There are so many things I still want to say, need to say, even. “Grayson, I—”
That’s all I manage. Suddenly he is kissing me, his hand closing around a chunk of my hair, the taste of him wild hunger with a big dose of that torment I’d sensed. I moan with the deliciously intense assault, my fears for Eric and his with them, fading into passion. Only he’s not really gone. That torment I taste on his lips, in his kiss, is about Eric, it’s about me, and every part of this story we’re writing that he can’t control.
His lips part from mine and he scoops me up, carrying me through the apartment, our apartment, with the ease of a man carrying a feather, which I am not. I snuggle into his strong arms and the hard wall of his chest as he walks us through our gorgeous home. I have a fleeting glimpse of the wall of windows framing the living room, and overlooking a city of twinkling lights. He’s a man on a mission, and with a destination: he’s taking me to our sanctuary, to our bedroom, the place I most missed when I was gone. The place where he wraps himself around me while we sleep, and holds me in that perfect way no other man could ever hold me.
It’s a massive room, with a massive bed and a wall of windows. Once we’re just inside the doorway, he angles me to the wall and I flip on a dim light, then fire up the fireplace in the corner. Grayson carries me to our special spot, one of the two overstuffed chairs framing the fireplace. He stands in front of it and sets me down in front of him. Before my feet have firmly settled, Grayson’s hands are under my jacket and he’s dragged it down my arms again, caging them and me as he did in the office. He pulls me hard against him, our bodies flush, his lips a hot breath from mine. “You belong here,” he says, and his voice is low, rough, a command, even a demand that I agree with. “Say it.”
“Yes,” I murmur. “I belong here. I missed being here with you so very much. Grayson, I—”
He cuts me off with his mouth, his punishing, perfect mouth, and I can taste the man I know, the man no one else knows, on my tongue. This is my dark, damaged future husband, and I am certain now that we will not be sleeping tonight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Eric
Two brothers don’t need to be in one dangerous place and yet Blake and his brother Luke—my brother, too, as we’re both former SEALs—insisted on raiding Brian Johnson’s house. And they did so even after Blake pinged the Dungeon communications between its members about their plan to do the exact same thing on this very night. Exactly why I’m here: to protect two brothers while protecting a man who’d become my brother in Grayson.
Dressed in all black, including a black beanie and gloves, I squat in the scrub brush outside Brian Johnson’s mansion while Blake works beside me on a MacBook he pulled from the bag on his hip to disarm the security system. He’s already frozen the asshole’s overseas accounts. The man’s got mad skills. He turned over stones Ri’s attorney didn’t think could be turned over, and did it in keystrokes, not milestones.
Brian Johnson is a low-life scum of an attorney with greed and ethics that rival my father’s. In other words, he has a whole lot of greed and very few ethics—just the kind of guy to help Ri feed these underground monsters payoff money. I left behind my family empire for Grayson’s to get away from that shit. Grayson has more morals than anyone I’ve ever known. I won’t allow a low-life loser like Ri or Johnson to take him down.
Kill or be killed.
That’s what Ri turned this into, only he might as well have become a damn zombie because he just won’t fucking go the hell away. The Dungeon isn’t dead though. Its members are, in fact, alive and well and they want money. The question is, why come here, now, tonight? The only thing we can figure is they feel the heat, they have some idea we’re onto them, and they want to grab the money and run. Which means they know we froze Brian’s accounts, which was by intent, a plan Blake and I plotted out. We wanted them to think we knew about them, but not quite be sure. We’re close to shutting this shit down, but if they come up empty-handed and find no money tonight, we believe they’ll stay the course and keep after Grayson. They’re working for the payout. Which brings me to the other reason I’m here: the bag of cash at my hip. There’s a matching one in a safe in Brian’s workplace office. I’ve made millions on millions working for Grayson and in the stock market. Time to pay it forward. Time to end this for him. As long as we’re here before the Dungeon, they’ll find their money.
Blake motions me forward, which means he’s sent a text message to Savage and Luke, telling them the same. I give a nod and prepare to move forward on my own, while Savage will do the same on the other side of the property where he awaits with Luke. After a lot of fucking pressure, he and Luke finally agreed to stay back and run guard. I move forward with two goals: search and deposit, and thanks to blueprints and an old Zillow posting that offered floorplan knowledge, my destination a basement window. Savage’s is a living room window on the other side of the house.
I climb a wall, drop to grassy terrain, and then settle into a squat to watch and wait. Crickets chirp and an owl hoots, but there is nothing else. If Savage is moving, that big-foot Beret is one smooth operator. Staying low, I rush to the window and remove a small flashlight I intend to use to break the window, but when I try it, just to see if it might be open, it is. I’m not sure if that makes Brian stupid or if it tells us the Dungeon has been here and gone. I hope the fuck not.
I slide the window open, use the flashlight, and scan the dark finished basement to find Savage standing in front of me. “You slow as fuck fish-face SEAL. Come the fuck on. It’s all clear.”
The man is a piece of work, but I’m smiling as me and my bag jump into the room, shut the window and face Savage, a small handheld light between us in his big monstrous hand. Savage is about six-five give or take an inch. And broad as hell. Either he’s going to trip over himself and fuck us over or he’s going to jump on top of the bad guys and they’ll suffocate.
“Did we find the safe?” We know he has one from Blake hacking his data files.
“I haven’t been to the office beyond a cursory glance.”
“I’ll head there and handle the safe. See what else you can find.”
“You sure you can open his safe?”
Me and hacking safes have a history thanks to the Navy, who log
ically assumed a savant with a thing for numbers could crack a safe that was all about numbers. “I got this.” I move through the room and leave him to do what he needs to do: find anything we might need to end this hell for Grayson and put away this asshole Brian. “Because I handled the one in his offices so shitty?” I ask sarcastically, because I’d opened that safe in about thirty seconds.
“Yeah, you made that look easy, but that could have been a freak fucking luck kind of thing.”
I shake my head and turn my light to low before I leave him where he stands, wasting no time crossing the room and climbing a winding set of stairs. Nearing the top, I kill the light. I hesitate before rounding the corner, listening for a change that I know won’t exist. Blake and Luke are in my ear, on an earpiece. They’d warn me, but years of missions and the unexpected, taught me to expect the unexpected.
After a full minute, I move forward, guided by open windows and the burn of moonlight and stars, passing through an overly luxurious living area and down a hall to the office. Once I’m there, I walk to the sitting area next to the heavy wooden desk, sit on the couch, and lift the rug. And then I go cold.
The safe is there, but the damn thing is wired to explode.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Grayson
My lips part Mia’s and I can taste a million missed moments on my tongue, a million wants, and needs. A million demands my body craves and I want to bury them all inside her. I reach up and catch the top of her blouse just above her buttons and yank, tiny buttons flying everywhere. She gasps and already I’ve unhooked the front clasp of her bra. Already, my gaze is raking over the swell of her high breasts, the pucker of her pink nipples.
“Grayson,” she whispers, and there was a time not so long ago that I thought I’d never hear my name on her lips again, at least not spoken with that raspy burn of a plea. And that’s what my name is on her lips right now: a plea.
I know what she wants, what she needs and I need. That forbidden burn of submission she has often admitted to wanting, the need in her that answers my need for control. For her, it’s the only time she allows herself to fully let go, to dare to give me that control, and fear nothing. For me, inside that control is her trusting me, her being all-in in every possible way. I’d like to say I know she is, and on most levels I do, but the bite of her leaving is fresh. Her believing I cheated is a bleeding wound, only now healing. But it is healing. That said, it’s true, absolutely fucking true, that her submitting right here in our bedroom and showing me how much she trusts me, feels urgent. It feels necessary.
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