Chapter
One
January 3rd
5:11 P.M.
The list of crimes he was guilty of was growing.
All the things he’d feared for so many years had come to fruition. All the reasons it was best for him to stay away from people, to shove them out of his life with a ruthlessness his cold-hearted parents would have been proud of, had turned out to be true.
All the reasons he’d given up on Cassandra Charleston proved true.
Dragon stared at the tablet he clutched in his hands as he watched footage from a CCTV camera. It was almost impossible to drag his eyes away from the woman on the screen. Not only was she drop-dead gorgeous, but she was one of the strongest people he had ever met in his life. Given that he’d gone through rigorous special ops training, that was saying something.
Even after all the revelations of who she was and what had happened to her parents, in part because of her very existence, Cassandra still stood tall and proud. She hadn't crumpledand fallen apart after learning she’d been conceived when her mother had been gang raped. Or when she learned that the man she considered her father had been targeted and killed along with his SEAL team to set up her mother as a traitor. Or when she learned that her mom and stepdad had been arrested and killed to shut them up, so the truth could never come out.
Her entire life had been upended, and yet she kept moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other, as she figured out what she wanted the rest of her life to look like.
With the maturity and grace with which she’d handled finding out the horrific truth, Cassandra seemed so much older than her twenty-four years.
But he’d smelled the tears she shed in the middle of the night when she thought no one was paying attention.
“I hear you, Cassandra, I see you,” he murmured as he watched her cross the street.
As though she somehow heard his words, she suddenly looked up, checking all around her to see who had spoken. It wasn't possible that she’d heard him speak, several states were between them, and even if he’d been close by, he wouldn't have let on that he’d intruded in her quiet moments of weakness by standing outside her bedroom door.
Those months that Cassandra had stayed with them had changed something inside him.
Something he had fought tooth and nail against.
“Keep moving, little rabbit,” he urged when he saw that Cassandra was still standing in the middle of the street. “Don’t want you to get hurt.” She needed to finish crossing the street before the traffic started moving.
Thankfully, the universe somehow pushed those words into her mind because she shook her head as though to clear it, then quickly crossed to the other side of the street just as the lights turned green and traffic began to roll.
Since he was watching her through a camera, he couldn’t get a clear shot of her face, couldn’t stare into her light green eyes, couldn’t see her long chestnut locks that were tucked beneath a beanie. With her bulky winter coat, he couldn’t get a clear view of her soft curves and slim legs. Cassandra was a vision, and he’d been hooked the moment he first laid eyes on her.
“Why couldn’t you have been more like Steel?” Dragon asked himself, but the too-silent room offered no answer as he watched Cassandra disappear inside a store.
There was another woman with green eyes he was forced to offer begrudging respect to. Rose Gardner was the younger sister of the man who had played God with their lives. Ridge Gardner had turned them into monsters and cost him the future he could have had with Cassandra if he didn't sicken and terrify her.
Using Rose was supposed to be easy. Abduct her, terrify her into breaking, video it all, and send it to her brother to lure the cowardly scientist into a trap.
It all would have worked if Rose hadn't turned out to be a little bit psycho, too.
The crazy woman had turned their plans on their heads, and in doing so, she’d bought herself a reprieve when their team leader fell for her. Despite Steel’s attachment to the woman, Dragon still would have been prepared to follow through with their plans, but he’d been outvoted and threatened that if he laid a single hand on Rose, he’d not only lose it but his life as well.
Taking out his anger on Rose for losing Cassandra because of their plan to use Rose wouldn't have been fair, but it hardly seemed fair either that Steel and his little ladybug had gotten their happy ending while he sat in his room alone. Right now, the couple was downstairs getting tattoos to mark each other as theirs.
The thing was, even with the jealousy coursing through his veins, he was happy that Steel had found love. Happy evenfor Rose, who had suffered more at the hands of her deranged brother than any one of them. She’d put her life on the line to help them get revenge and almost lost it.
Her brother might be on the run again, slithering back under whatever rock he had been hiding under, but they were going to find him. When they did, the man’s screams would soothe that fury that raged inside him every second of the day.
Most days, Dragon could barely keep it under control.
The only reprieve he’d had in the last decade was the months when Cassandra’s warm spirit filled the cold, dark rooms of the Gothic mansion where he and his team lived.
Even after the threat against the Charleston Holloway family had been eliminated, Cassandra had chosen to stay. He knew it was because of him and the attraction that hummed between them. There had been no more than a single kiss shared between them, but it had been all it took for him to know that she was his.
