Chapter Two
CallumsteppedintoVivianMaddox’s office in the Victorian mansion of polished wood panels and stained glass that Titan Protectors, the new personal security division of Titan Group, had converted into their headquarters.He didn’t know why he’d been called into a meeting when no one else, except for their lead tech analyst, was on site.
A few months new to this team, he hadn’t been there before when it was so quiet.With its soaring ceilings and oversized solid wood doors, the place felt more like a gothic horror movie set than anywhere he’d worked while in the Army.Those days were gone.He’d been burned and didn’t want to look back.
A slight perfume hung in the cold office air.The woman behind the fancy desk, with long red nails and bright lipstick, watched him with a stillness that set his instincts on edge.
“Hey, Boss.”
Her eyes narrowed.“Hale.”
He’d returned from an assignment late the night before and hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in his crappy apartment.Exhaustion gnawed despite the coffee he’d slugged back after he read the message to report in immediately.
Vivian tapped her fingers three times.Something else was amiss.
Callum sat across from her, not liking the scrutiny.“What’s going on, Viv?”
“How’s the transition back to civilian life?”
Meaning, had he gotten over the backstabbing shitstorm that had fucked his world?No.But in an effort to act casual, he crossed his arms, leaned back, and raised his shoulders.“Yeah.Sure.”
She snorted.“I bet.”
Viv double-clicked her computer awake.After a few keystrokes, the flat-screen wall display lit up with their assignment portal.“I have a job for you.”
What kind of assignment came when most of his colleagues were out of the office?A foreboding hummed in the air.
She continued to click through their database until her cursor blinked over the assignment file.Then she waited, finger hovering over her mouse, and eyed him one more time.“I have a special request for you, and I need to make sure you’re okay with it before you take the job.”
His eyebrows arched.“Me?Yeah.Fine.I’ll let you know if I can’t pull off a gig.”
Though he couldn’t think of a single assignment that might come across her desk that he couldn’t handle, unless it was something technical like comms interception or interpretation.She wouldn’t give him that, though, and no one would ask for him by name.Callum understood his role.He was strategic muscle and tactical ops.Not intel analysis.
The screen lit up with the photograph of a woman he hadn’t seen in years, and his heart stopped.“Grace Willoughby.”
“Grace Willoughby,” Vivian confirmed.“What do you know about her?”
Everything.Callum had spent the better part of his life pretending he hadn’t fallen for his best friend’s younger sister.Grace was as off-limits as a woman could get for two reasons.
The first was simple and deemed her completely and entirely untouchable: bro code.That unspoken rule that had sealed his mouth shut and glued his hands by his sides had seemed like the most important rule of his twenties.
The second reason was the one that had shown him how stupid his first rule had been.Grace was dead.Losing her shattered him and fundamentally remade him into a different person.
“She died about five years ago during her ex-husband’s trial.”His throat dried.Anything else he might say simply vanished.
Unless he stepped into the Willoughbys’ house, Callum never saw any pictures of her.The photograph on the screen wasn’t the way he remembered her.That Grace with vacant eyes and photo-shoot-ready makeup was the woman who had married a very wealthy, criminal-as-fuck piece of shit.His Grace was bold with a smile that could power a nuclear generator.
Once, he thought he hated Grace.She had married Dominic Marino and had transformed into something unfamiliar, with fake long lashes and rouged cheeks that served as a billboard for the man she’d married.Then Callum realized he hated himself for not taking a chance.
Once Hayden told him she’d filed for divorce, a spring of possibilities surfaced in his mind—only for her to die in a fire.They rarely spoke of her again, and Hayden and their parents acted as if mentioning Grace would unearth a pain that their family couldn’t process.
The world sucked.
It took more and more and more, and whenever Callum thought it had taken all that it could, it took again.He cleared his throat and could not fathom why Grace’s photo was on Vivian’s screen.“What’s going on?”
“To be totally honest, a lot.”
“If there was a problem with her family, her brother would have reached out to me.”He jerked back.“Something happened to Hayden?”
