Novels by Johnmark Jnr

Damien's flight to Calloway left at 7:40 a.m.He had been awake since four.Sleep had never come.Instead, he'd done what he always did whenever something mattered.He prepared.For years, that habit had made him successful.Every meeting needed a strategy.Every negotiation needed a plan.Every possible outcome had to be considered before walking into the room.This shouldn't have been any different.Yet somehow...It was.His phone was filled with notes.Half-written apologies.Deleted messages.Words that sounded right one minute and completely hollow the next.I'm sorry.Too small.I should have known.That sounded like an excuse.I never stopped thinking about you.No.That wasn't true either.There had been weeks...Months...When Mara hadn't crossed his mind at all.Admitting that hurt more than he expected.The truth was uglier than any apology he could write.He hadn't realized what he'd lost until it was already gone.In the end, he deleted every draft.If Mara gave him the

Garrett's reply came sooner than Damien expected.Three weeks of investigation arrived in the form of a single encrypted email on a quiet Tuesday morning.Damien was halfway through a board meeting when his phone buzzed.He glanced at the sender.Garrett Cole.His pulse quickened.Without waiting for the presentation to end, he excused himself and walked straight to his office. He locked the door behind him before opening the email.He thought he was ready.He wasn't.The first page was simple.Subject relocated to Calloway approximately three years ago. Currently employed as Senior Consultant at Varden Legal Group.He read it twice.Senior Consultant.A slow ache settled somewhere deep inside his chest.Pride.He had no right to feel proud.Everything Mara had achieved, she'd achieved without him.Still...He was proud.The report continued.Promoted twice within eighteen months. Regarded by colleagues as one of the firm's most capable consultants.A small, bitter smile touched his l

The thought came quietly.That's how the dangerous ones always did.Damien was still in his office at almost eleven at night. The city lights stretched endlessly beyond the floor to ceiling windows, beautiful in the way things looked when they didn't care whether you were falling apart or not.Without really thinking about it, he opened his laptop.His fingers moved before his mind caught up.Mara Cross.He pressed Enter.Nothing.No social media. No interviews. No recent photos. No trace of the woman who had shared his breakfast table every morning for six years.It was as if she had disappeared the day she walked out of his house.He frowned.She had never been the type to chase attention, but this...This felt deliberate.He shut the laptop.Four minutes later, he opened it again.He told himself it was curiosity.Anyone would wonder what became of someone they had once spent years with.That was all.Nothing more.Vivienne was asleep in the bedroom.Or at least she was supposed to

She heard his footsteps before he spoke.Steady. Unhurried. The particular cadence of a man who had decided something and wasn't going to be talked out of it. She had memorised that sound over six years without realising she was doing it."Mara."She stopped walking.Not because the sound of her name in his voice still did something to her. She had spent three years dismantling that particular weakness brick by careful brick until there was nothing left of it but dust.She stopped because running would frighten Lucas. And frightening Lucas was the one thing she would never do.She turned around slowly.Damien stood three feet away. Closer than she had allowed herself to register from across the street. Close enough that she could see the details the photographs in Garrett's file — she had assumed someone like him would eventually hire someone like Garrett — hadn't captured. The tiredness behind his eyes. The slight tension in his jaw that meant he was choosing his words carefully.He

The Calloway Grand was the kind of hotel that existed in every mid-sized city — polished marble lobby, a coffee bar near the entrance that charged too much for things that tasted too little, staff trained to be helpful without being warm.Damien had checked in that morning under a company name.Old habit. When you had money and a recognisable surname you learned quickly that anonymity was something you had to engineer deliberately. He had taken a corner suite on the eighth floor, set his bag down without unpacking it, and spent the better part of the day doing the thing he was worst at.Waiting.Garrett had given him her routine. The coffee shop on Birch Lane every morning. The school drop off at eight fifteen. The Varden Legal Group offices from nine until six, occasionally later. The same route home most evenings — Selwyn Street, the small Italian place on the corner twice a week, the park on Saturdays when the weather held.A life of clean reliable patterns. The life of a woman who

Garrett's file arrived at midnight.Damien sat at his home office desk, door locked, the rest of the penthouse dark and silent around him. He had waited until he was certain Vivienne was asleep before opening his laptop — a precaution that would have seemed absurd to him three years ago and now felt entirely necessary.He opened the email.The file was thorough. Garrett was good at what he did and charged accordingly, and every cent was visible in the quality of what sat in front of Damien now. Twelve pages. Photographs. An address. A employment history. A life reconstructed from the careful, deliberate distance of a woman who had clearly not wanted to be found.He started at the beginning.*Subject relocated to Calloway approximately three years ago. Currently employed as senior consultant at Varden Legal Group. Performance record indicates two promotions in eighteen months. Regarded by colleagues as exceptional.*Damien read that twice.He wasn't surprised. Mara had always been exce