But we both knew this was just the beginning.
Chapter 4
Mia Thornton
The screaming had left my throat raw and burning. I could taste salt—tears and snot mixing—while my body wouldn’t stop shaking. Violent tremors that started in my chest and radiated outward until even my teeth chattered, the sound sharp in the sudden quiet of the room.
He held me. The man who’d just locked me in my worst nightmare held me like I was something precious, something that might shatter if he let go. His arms were steel bands wrapped in false gentleness, and I hated how perfectly they fit around me.
Six years since he’d held me. Six years, and my traitorous body still recognized the exact pressure of his embrace, the way his right hand splayed between my shoulder blades, how his left arm curved around my waist.
Ryan.Coop. I didn’t know who he was anymore. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe a stranger wearing a familiar face.
My fingers had twisted into his shirt sometime during the panic, and now they wouldn’t let go. The fabric was damp with my tears and probably snot, and God, I was pathetic. A trembling, pathetic mess clinging to the person who’d traumatized me. Who’d known exactly how small that closet was when he’d shoved me inside. Who’d listened to me scream and counted the seconds before letting me out.
But I couldn’t pull away.
It was biology, nothing more. My nervous system seeking regulation from another human body. The primitive mammal brain that saidsafewhen it felt arms around it, even if those arms had just proven they weren’t safe at all.
My body’s betrayal was complete—my lungs matching his breathing rhythm, my heart rate slowing to sync with his, every cell in my body leaning into comfort it shouldn’t want.
The confusion felt like static in my brain, white noise drowning out rational thought. This was Ryan—my Ryan, who used to wake up at three a.m. when he had nightmares from deployment and I’d hold him until the shaking stopped, who’d learned to cook my grandmother’s soup recipe when I was sick, who’d talked about our future kids’ names over Sunday breakfast.
But he was alsoCoop, who’d grabbed me in the barn with hands that promised violence. Who’d let those men think I was his property, something to be used and discarded. Who’d learned about my claustrophobia and, within seconds, had figured out how to weaponize it against me.
This was not the Ryan I’d known or fallen in love with.
“I’m undercover.”
The words were barely audible, breathed against my hair like confession in a church. Or something that could get us both killed if the wrong person heard. They slipped between us, fragile as spun glass.
I went still. Even the shaking stopped. My mind struggled to process, to shift realities, to understand that the last few hours had been—what? Performance? Necessity?
“What?”
“Undercover. This whole thing—the Coop persona, these men, all of it. It’s a cover.”
Understanding came slowly, like ice melting in reverse. Cold, then colder, then a different kind of numb. The way he’d switched between roles suddenly made sense. The desperation in his eyes even as he’d shoved me toward that closet—not pleasure in my fear but anguish at causing it. The way he was holding me now, like he was trying to put back together something he’d broken with his own hands.
He was undercover. Of course he was. Nothing else made sense.
It helped, a little. Not enough to stop the phantom sensation of walls closing in or the memory of a gun pointed at me, but enough to make breathing easier.
Ryan had broken my heart when he’d left six years ago—right when I’d been sure a proposal was coming, when every conversation seemed to includewhen we’re marriedorour kidssomeday. But even then, his sense of morality had been unshakable. Black and white. Right and wrong. He’d rather die than become the monster he was pretending to be now.
At least, that’s how I remembered him. People change in six years. God knew I had. The woman he’d known wouldn’t have clawed at her own skin like an animal in that closet. Wouldn’t have frozen at the sight of a small bathroom. Wouldn’t have needed to work alone, outside, away from anything that could trap her.
“Yo, Coop!” Diesel’s voice carried through the wall. “She’s got some lungs on her.”
“Told you he knew what he was doing,” the one with the normal name, Tom or whatever, echoed.
“Shut the fuck up.” Ryan’s voice transformed mid-sentence, ice and authority and barely contained violence. The change was so complete I felt it in his chest, the way his muscles coiled like he was ready to go through the wall. “I don’t need commentary from the dumbass peanut gallery.”
“Just saying?—”
Ryan’s voice cut through cold and hard. “I’ve got my way of doing things.”
Silence from the other room. Then Diesel’s laugh. “Whatever you say, Coop.”
