by Christa Wick
“Your sister’s pimp is in deep with a motorcycle club that has strong ties to some Eastern European white slavers.” Trent explained as he sank into the overstuffed leather chair behind his desk. “From what’s in her file and Merl’s, the MC ran your sister when Merl was in jail in exchange for keeping him protected from the other inmates.”
Daniella looked away. Trent’s tone had turned mechanical, robotic, and she didn’t want to cry in front of a robot. She couldn’t stop the tears, just didn’t want to look at him as they streamed down her face.
“I can fold everything into an existing federal contract on the Europeans,” he added.
She wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be some kind of answer as to why he was helping, but she no longer cared. She needed Trent, even if she disliked him.
4
Trent
Falling down the rabbit hole of researching Merl Wagner and his associates, Trent emerged exhausted and starving a little after seven, more than three hours after he had finally distanced himself from Daniella Marquardt. Shoving the papers he had printed into his briefcase, he turned off the lights in his office and walked down to the operations room. Six men were working and they had a strong pot of coffee brewed. He poured himself a cup and spent a few minutes with each team member, talking in hushed tones about the projects they were working on.
These were “firemen” of sorts. Each monitored the data flow, including video and audio, of ongoing operations. They were there to catch problems before they erupted and help put them out if they did. During the day, the room was filled with two dozen team members. Lower risk operations were handled by teams elsewhere in the building or onsite across the United States and the rest of the globe.
By the time Trent made it to his car, it was eight and he had compartmentalized the information he had compiled on Daniella’s case so that he was no longer thinking of Wagner or the baby the convict might have fathered.
Fingers drumming with irritation against the steering wheel, he tried to push Daniella into the same compartment, but she wouldn’t fit.
All those curves refused to yield.
With a growl in both his stomach and throat, he headed east out of the company’s parking structure, his car pointed toward a “gentleman’s” club where he could get a late meal and anything else his appetite required.
Forty minutes later, he pushed away his dinner plate filled with a few remnants of steak and asparagus. His gaze went to the wall opposite his table where women lined up shoulder-to-shoulder. He noted a cascading rainbow of blondes, redheads and brunettes, the color of their skin as varied as their hair. All he had to do was pick one and take her behind a curtain to one of the private rooms in the back.
Trent signed for his meal then approached the wall. There was a subtle wave of coming to attention among the women, their bodies shifting to emphasize what they considered their best feature. One brazen blonde turned to face the wall, an ass full of implants sticking out as she arched her back and spread her legs.
He wasn’t looking at asses, legs, or tits.
He was looking at eyes. In their gazes, he saw traces of clever, calculating, and voracious among a handful of qualities. Mostly, he saw empty.
“You don’t remember me?” one sandy blonde beauty asked after he finished looking in her eyes and started to move on.
He met her gaze again. Pale blue, tenacious, but foreign. It was only when he left her face and saw the sculpted muscles that he realized it was the aspiring cage fighter.
Trent didn’t answer, just moved down the line until there were no more women to evaluate.
Then he drove home, his cock thoroughly asleep in his pants and his mind restlessly pacing inside his skull.
Opening the door to the top floor penthouse, Trent found the hall lights on. The alarm system was counting down and he quickly entered his code, his other hand easing his pistol from its holster. Thumbing the safety off, he moved along one wall to where the entry hall intersected with the main corridor.
A man laughed softly then said something indistinguishable.
Recognizing the voice, Trent holstered his gun and turned the corner, glaring at where Reed Henley stood in the open doorway of the spare bedroom.
“Evening, boss. Was just getting ready to call you.”
“What?” a soft, feminine voice that had no business being in his home asked from inside the room.
Daniella’s head came into view, her eyes going wide. “You didn’t say this was—”
“In my office,” Trent rumbled, his gaze locked on Reed before turning sharply and walking away.
Blood beginning to boil, he heard Reed politely excuse himself, his tone dipping low as he said something that elicited a nervous laugh from the woman.
“Shut the door,” he ground out as Reed entered his office. As soon as they were alone, he fired off an accusation. “Is this some kind of payback? I picked you because I needed someone I could trust—”
Trent cut himself off as Reed raised an intrigued brow.
“You’ve trusted at least a dozen men in that building with your life in the last year alone.”
Trent’s mouth danced, his teeth shredding the inside of his lower lip. “I needed someone who could handle a distraught woman with a light touch. Don’t read anything into it. Now tell me why the hell she’s in my home?”
“Well,” Reed started with an eye roll. “A certain ROYAL pain in the ass flew into town this afternoon from Qatar. Mikhael is babysitting him. But that means I didn’t have a safe house left to stash Daniella and the baby in. Didn’t think you wanted me to drop her off at a hotel.”
Trent didn’t answer, but his hard gaze softened slightly—up until he realized his office chair was missing. With a glowering look, he picked up one of the visitor chairs and moved it behind his desk then snapped his briefcase open.
“Lindsey is working on getting a place first thing in the morning,” Reed added, checking his watch before throwing his boss a loaded look. "And Mikhael's running down the Russia connection with the motorcycle club protecting Wagner while the Crown's enfant terrible sleeps off one hell of a bender."
Absorbing the information, Trent continued to scrutinize Henley. The man may have had no choice but to dump Daniella and the baby on his doorstep, but Reed was enjoying the inconvenience.
“Seems to me like you’re home a little early. Slim pickings at the club?” Reed's expression warped from intrigued to knowing, a smirk lifting one side of his face. “Only spitballing here, but you’re sprinting backwards away from a woman I wouldn’t think you’d give a second glance. Have you stopped to consider that your biological clock is—”
Trent silenced him with an icy glare. “You know me better.”
“All I know is that it’s Friday night and I’m off the clock,” Reed shot back with a loud laugh. “Like I said, Lindsey is working on securing a safe house. For now, that crib sure does look nice in there.”
Trent’s did a double take. “You put a crib in my guest room?” he asked incredulously.
Reed didn’t respond, just chuckled on his way down the hall to bid Daniella and baby Christine goodnight.
Trent didn’t leave his office after Reed went home. He hid behind the familiar comfort of his desk and sifted through the folders filled with printouts on Wagner’s associates. There were a few pages on Daniella, her adoptive parents, her biological mother, and her half-sister. Daniella had a bachelor’s degree in public administration and worked in the district office of her local school system as a sort of ombudsman for special needs students.
She had inherited the three-bedroom ranch in which she currently lived from the Marquardts. She maintained only an insignificant amount of debt comprised of a little less than ten thousand in student loans and another twelve thousand remaining on her car. No balance on her two credit cards, no smaller accounts whatsoever. Never married, no one else using her address, so no serious relationship that he could see.
Not that he cared. It was just im
portant to know all the players.
Yearbook photos found online from her high school showed that she had always been fluffy, played chess, was in the chorus and was on the track and field team for shot put and javelin. She’d either swapped her thick glasses for contact lenses or had laser surgery.
How was that for surprising? Just your normal, mundane, taxpaying citizen whose only excitement in life was her wayward half-sister, until that sister died and a bunch of bikers connected to organized crime took a monetary interest in the orphaned baby she was determined to raise.
With the folder open to Daniella’s staff photo at the school district, Trent fell asleep in his chair. He jerked awake at a little past one in the morning, his mind simultaneously processing two facts. First, he hadn’t checked to make sure Reed re-set the alarm on his way out. Second, he had heard a sound.
Pulling his handgun from a side drawer, he eased around his desk and approached the office door, ears straining. Whoever was walking about was in the kitchen. The refrigerator shut, then he heard the microwave beep. Relaxing, he went to his desk and turned the banker’s light off before putting away the gun.
Either Daniella was heating formula for the baby, or he had a hungry hitman in his home.
Returning to the door, he waited for the sound of Daniella passing in the hall. He slowly counted off fifteen imaginary paces when he could no longer hear her footsteps, then cracked the door open a few inches. A faint glow from one of the bedside lamps in the guest room intruded into the main hall. Trent walked silently from his office to the entry area, confirmed that Reed had re-set the alarm then snuck down the main hall.
Reed had taken the missing office chair into the guest room. Daniella sat in it, slowly rocking the baby in her arms. Standing outside the ring of light, Trent watched the woman.
Love infused her face in the soft glow from the lamp, the total effect like spying on Bouguereau as he painted L'Innocence. The only thing missing was a lamb. Then, as if he didn’t have enough sensory overload looking at the woman, she began to sing ever so softly to Christine, her voice sweet, but the song sad.
Trent escaped down the hall to the sanctuary of his bedroom, Daniella’s lyrics chasing him like a vengeful ghost.
The moon done set and the sun won’t rise,
All around me cold black skies,
I can’t see you.
Ghosts against a winter sky,
The years, like clouds, roll on by,
I can’t see you.
That was the entire point, Trent thought, his chest constricting as he shut his bedroom door. Invisibility was his modus operandi—not being seen, not being looked into, not seeing others beyond what the job required. And if his world was dark and narrow because of that filter over his vision, he was fine with it.
There was power from living in a darkness where everyone else stumbled around blind.
Until Daniella Marquardt was out of the penthouse and his life, Trent would close his eyes to the light she offered.
5
Daniella
Entering the stainless steel and marble kitchen the following morning to rinse out a bottle, Daniella found Trent standing in front of the stove, a muscle hugging sports shirt clinging to his torso and tucked into running pants. She’d had no trouble imagining the powerful body beneath his clothes in Friday’s expensive suit, but seeing him like this reminded her of a sleek panther waiting to pounce.
Stomach and thighs drawing tight, she tried to glue her attention to the bottle in her hand. Failing miserably, she caught the cold flick of his gaze in her direction.
“I cooked you some eggs.”
His tone, like the black ice of his eyes, sent a shiver down her spine.
He was still pissed, it seemed, that Reed had dropped her at the penthouse.
Trent turned, the spatula in his hand moving like an extension of his body. The overall effect gave the utensil a weapon-like appearance. He really did look like coiled menace most of the time, a fact that should have comforted her since he wanted to keep Christine safe. But Daniella felt like the energy of that menace was directed at her.
“You haven’t eaten yet,” he chided, his voice warming to a low growl that reminded her of how he had ordered Reed into the office last night.
“You must be hungry.”
Her lips pinched together.
Trent glanced at the bottle in her hand then turned back to the stove as he lectured on the obvious.
“You have to look after yourself if you intend to continue looking after Christine.”
Her mouth narrowed another inch. Yesterday he had called Christine “the kid” a number of times. Now she felt like he was using the baby’s name to manipulate her.
Without responding, she turned off the water and grabbed a paper towel to dry the bottle and its nipple. He was right that she needed to eat, but the last two months had taught her to keep a few energy bars in the diaper bag. Caring for such a young baby made the days longer and busier. And the hoops that children’s services made her jump through often stretched what should have been minutes into hours. At least, with the stash of energy bars, she didn’t need to take a meal with a man whose body language constantly communicated his disapproval of her.
Daniella had already lived that life as a child.
“Sit,” Trent ordered, nodding at one of the stools that lined her side of the island. He placed a plate loaded with eggs and fried tomatoes on the marble surface then slid it across. An equally large volume of food remained in the skillet.
With her stomach threatening to complain loudly and so much food potentially going to waste, she obeyed. She waited quietly while Trent filled two glasses with orange juice then grabbed eating utensils and his own plate of food. He sat down across from Daniella, handing her a fork and knife and nodding at the glass of juice.
Cutting the tomato slice into smaller pieces, she eyed Trent. He kept his attention focused exclusively on his plate, his fork and knife methodically attacking the heaping pile of eggs and tomato then feeding them into his stern mouth.
His closed expression turned her stomach oily. So did the fact that he wouldn’t look up from his food. She realized that, in preparing breakfast for her, Trent was merely attending to the social graces the situation called for, the same social graces that had sent her in search of Christine’s savior. Only Daniella had genuinely wanted to thank him for his role in Christine’s birth.
Forcing the fork to her mouth, she took her first bite of the scrambled eggs. Trent was halfway through his plate and continuing to ignore that she was in the room.
“I don’t need you…” she hesitated, backed up and tried to rephrase her words more politely. “I don’t need your company or that federal contract you mentioned to shelter me and Christine. I’m putting the house up for sale and I can use my pension to give myself a loan.”
For a second, the only sign Trent had heard her was a light knitting of his brows as he shoveled another forkful of eggs into his mouth. Then he pointed the tines of the fork in her direction, his focus remaining on the plate.
“You won’t be able to sell the house if Merl’s buddies don’t want you to,” he countered. “They’ll park out front, litter the lawn, piss on the porch and generally harass the realtor at more than just your place. Your listing will get tossed like a hot grenade.”
“I understand it will take time,” Daniella answered, attempting to swallow a second small bite of the eggs despite her stomach’s sudden revolt. “That’s why I’m loaning myself enough for Christine and I to start someplace new.”
“No.” A scowl lit his face and he finally looked up to meet her gaze. Not a single line of his expression softened as he gestured at the room and the hall beyond.
“I know the furnishings are a little severe, but it’s temporary. Lindsey’s working on something more suitable and I can have her bring in some stuff to brighten the place up in the meantime—and get you a proper chair to use while giving Christine her bottle.”
<
br /> Daniella shook her head.
“It’s not the decor that’s severe,” she bluntly stated. “It’s the company.”
His mouth opened, like maybe he was going to protest. She shook her head again.
“I grew up in a house where I wasn’t wanted. I know the signs even when someone’s trying to hide it,” she went on. “Not that you’re trying to hide it.”
She pushed the plate away, its contents intact except for the two small bites.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure it tastes marvelous.” Standing, she moved toward the hallway. “I’ll contact Reed so I can retrieve my car.”
6
Trent
Daniella’s leaving wasn’t acceptable. It was foolish, dangerous, and ridiculous, Trent snarled to himself as he texted Reed and told the man to stall or find a way to convince the woman that she needed to remain under the company’s protection. When he was finished with the text, he cleaned up the kitchen then went to his office, closed the door and called Lindsey at home to make sure she was working on an acceptable safe house.
Yes, of course, no worries, just rounding up the leasing agents who actually get weekends off, any minute now…
Certain he heard a smirk in Lindsey’s voice as she offered him any number of assurances, Trent hung up and opened the office door. He tried working at his desk but his attention strained for any sound of movement down the hall. He didn’t think she had started packing yet. Not that she had a lot to pack based on his understanding.
She had left work Thursday with no overnight bag, just some dry cleaning she had picked up that morning. For the night at the hotel and the afternoon at the sitter’s, she had purchased essentials for the baby. Reed had seen to securing some additional items, but it didn’t amount to much more than a single suitcase and the diaper bag.