CHAPTER 3: WHAT'S YOUR NAME?

REBEL

The Gala ballroom glowed in the honey, golden light which made them all richer, happier, and far more important than they'd ever been before. Perfume and wine and syrupy string quartet music wafted through the air, dense enough to drape around, sending shivers to the corner of the far side of the room. Couples waltzed to precise rhythm across the highly burnished floor, each step memorized, each smile synchronized.

I followed behind them, my hips moving to the beat of the music as if they were mine, but they weren't. The host for whom I was hired—a finance banker, I barely recall his name—talked business deals and real estate exchanges. I smiled where I was instructed to and smiled occasionally when it appeared I should. But I wasn't listening.

Because I knew it.

His eyes.

Daniel.

I was unaware the gala was for him when I got there. I'd not yet seen him, at least not yet—not the billionaire they talked about, the man who had more power with a single signature than most governments had in law. But when finally I did see him. I regretted that I had. For since that day, his eyes had not released me.

I acted dense, even when every nerve in me screamed otherwise.

My heart also betrayed me. It thrashed too hard, too loudly, though I kept on smiling at the foolish man in front of me.

Then Daniel intervened, his voice echoing through the room.

He barged in without a please, no apology, no courteous invitation—but only a voice which could not be denied: "I'm cutting in."

The banker smiled once and stepped aside as if he knew he couldn't do it any longer. And Daniel had me in his arms, arm around my waist, arm around my waist. The music came swelling up, and the world around us melted.

My heart struggled back, revolted against me.

He leaned against me, mouth on the rim of my ear, warm breath. "What's your name?"

I smiled—bitter, not sweet. A dazed smile. "What?" I panted back, moving, pulling him into my arms as though this were a game too. "Daniel's men found nothing on me, Daniel?"

I could sense his body tighten to my words. His arms held me closer against him, pulling him closer, so close we were to the obscene light of the chandelier. His thudding heart and roughened voice.

"If they could, I wouldn't be asking twice," he panted, his voice almost starving. "But isn't that unjust?

I forced a white smile and stepped back just so, to provoke him, but his grip did not let go. "Names are only words."

"Not to me," he snarled. "I require yours."

I edged closer, my lips tracing the curve of his jaw as I gasped, "Why?" My voice was soft and alluring, but underneath it was steel.

He breathed. He needed to know, though he tried to keep it hidden.

"Because you intrigue me," he admitted, as if it hurt him to say so. "And I don't care not to know."

I smiled. Low and wicked. "Are you sure you're ready for what you'll see?"

"I like danger."

"Beware what you wish," I breathed, smiling more wickedly than flirtatiously.

But rather than pushing me out of the way, he stepped closer. His knuckles pressed hard into the curve of my waist, his face set with a fierce glare that he would not let me go.

"I'm not a problem to be solved by you."

"Then talk, tell me your name," he taunted, his eyes blazing mine.

I smiled and said absolutely nothing. Silence was my answer.

We danced, circling one another the way predators circle each other, testing who will strike first. Again, his hand dropped, too low to be hurtful. I tensed—shock—not with his bravery, but with what he would find.

And he did.

His fingers followed the lip of the barrel of my skirt, the machined metal hidden within. My gun.

I stiffened, gasping. I was held in terror for a moment—then fury. I struggled to throw him off, but he was fixed, rigid, a pillar of will and muscle.

His fingers crept down the length of the gun, hesitated, glanced, then crept up higher—too high. His fingers brushed against the edge of the lace of my knickers. I lost a tiny involuntary sound, a moan that escaped from my mouth before I could bring it back in. My body was betraying me once again, burning as my head was screaming at me to get grip again.

I leaned in. He recoiled, his face impassive, though his eyes blazed with something that made my cheeks flush with heat. Interest.

"You're carrying a weapon," he stated, his tone low and questioning. "How did you make it past all the roadblocks?"

I didn't speak. I stared at him, my silence a blade-sharp thing.

He smiled on my cheek. His smile made my stomach turn, not from fear but something appallingly close to excitement.

I needed to leave.

I tried to step away, but he grasped my wrist, drawing me in, his voice falling to one that took my breath away.

Please forgive me," he breathed into me, his mouth against my ear. I could feel every word against my skin. "Because I want you and I'm not letting you go. I'll do whatever is necessary to make you mine. To marry me. To have my babies. To tear you asunder so you're mine. So, forgive me beforehand… but your island days are over. I'm in charge.".

Those words would have scared me. Would have upset me.

They shook me, though.

Music was interrupted, sparing me. I was dragged out of his arms, panting, my head reeling. I spun and I walked away and did not speak a word. He did not pursue me, but I could sense the heat of his eyes down my back.

I remembered why I was there. Focus. This had nothing to do with Daniel. He was a distraction.

Five minutes, and the victim died. No one was suspicious. No motive was observed. I was that good at what I did. The headlines tomorrow morning would be announcing it as cardiac arrest. A clean, beautiful kill.

I was on the roof, city lights before me, wine in my hand. It was cold, nipping and biting. I replayed the night again and again in my mind—the dance, his words, the way he touched me, the way my body betrayed me.

I should have been angry. I should have been outraged. And all I had were butterflies.

It was crazy. He was volatile. Wrecking. Too curious for his own good. But in some hidden part of me, somewhere out there, I was content. And I knew—he was speaking the truth.

I called the group, checked for a hit, and exited the building. If they brought Daniel in, if they even thought he was snooping around on me, they'd kill him without a second thought. I never wanted to lay eyes on his face again.

And my phone beeped. New message.

"Reb, there are people who are searching for you. They're not nice folks. Did you happen to irritate the wrong individual?"

My stomach fell. My head knocked. I didn't want to know whom.

Daniel.

I closed my eyes and sipped wine. Tomorrow will be trying.

I placed the wine glass against the rooftop railing, gazing out at city lights that burned like a thousand disapproving glares. The message still sat on my phone screen.

My lips twisted into half-smile, half-groan. If only my contact could see how real that was.

I didn't have to think. Who else was it going to be, anyway? Who was so unencumbered? One dance, one talk, and already they had their people following me. It should've made me angry. It should have made me sever all connections, fly before he even caught a scent of the actual me.

And so. I was trapped in a grin; the music blew on the breeze.

Because it meant he wasn't a liar.

Daniel'd said he'd be intrigued, obsessed, that he'd never let go. I'd anticipated bluff, words of lust and adrenalin. Not. He'd meant it. Already he'd changed.

That was dangerous. For us both.

I raised the wine again, sipped again slowly, and closed my eyes. I experienced something that I had not experienced for years: fear. My work never troubled me before. My killings never annoyed me. My life was pure, unsoiled, like a knife. I never allowed people in me.

And yet tonight Daniel had somehow invaded my thoughts. His eyes, his fingers, the voice as though he'd already claimed me as his own—it went round and round in my head.

I should have despised it.

Instead, butterflies. Actual butterflies.

I snapped my hand against my belly back and forth back and forth and tricked myself out. "You're crazy, Rebel," I smirked. "He's a distraction."

But even though I said so, I was talking to myself.Slowpokes did not make your heart palpitate when you thought about how their hands caressed around your waist, thighs, and gun as if they had the right to put their hands on something nobody would ever dare fantasize about.

He threatened because he looked at me.

Not the "mask." Not the facade. Me.

And that is the reason why I could not go.

I talked into the phone once more, issuing my caller a crisp command:

"Don't worry. I'll take care of it."

I hadn't explained. They didn't have to know. The fewer people who knew about Daniel's life, the safer. If the organisation got wind of the fact that he was besotted with me, they'd make a specimen of him. No questions asked. No argument.

And maybe. Maybe that would do me good too.

But I hadn't wished for it.

It angered me. I had never once thought about saving someone. My life had been about living, about ordering, about getting things done and melting away into the darkness without even glancing over my shoulder. But Daniel? Someone trying to kill him made me feel something, and all I could get tangled up in each other and hurt.

I leaned against the railing of the roof on one hand and looked out over cars that throbbed like veins across the city. "What in the devil's name are you doing to me, Daniel?" I growled.

There was a peaceful evening otherwise only disturbed by the growl of traffic far, far away.

I remained there until my wine was fully spent and finally the biting wind had penetrated to my bones. Before I arrived at my hideaway, my mind was made.

I must disappear.

At least for the time being.

The next day, the city was still recovering from the "tragic death" at the ball. The newspapers carried pictures of the old man I'd had taken out of play, with salacious headlines splashed across of cardiac arrest and stress collapse. Clean. Just as I'd said.

But beneath the spin doctoring, something else.

Whispers.

Rumours.

A billionaire dancing with a red head mystery woman. A woman nobody seemed to know.

I growled low in my throat as I flipped the pages. That was what men like Daniel did—assert dominance by appearing. And now, in proxy, so did I.

My phone rang again. Another call from my source.

"Reb. Whoever is stalking you—they don't give up. They have a bottomless budget."

It was him. Again. Always him.

Half of me just wanted to run. To destroy myself, to destroy myself before he yanked the string too tight and unraveled all that I'd created. But the other half of me—the blacker, wilder half—knew what was going to happen next. Wanted to know how far Daniel would go.

I remembered his promise, muttered under his breath as a curse on my flesh:

"I will make it impossible for you. I will take you. Swallow you and mold you. So I ask for a pardon in advance… Your days as a pariah are over."

I stood rigid, not out of fear, but because I was vigilant. Because he had not been joking.

And for the first time ever, I did not know if I would run away from the fires or approach them.

I was standing on a rooftop later, looking out over the city. The wine had been drunk, and there was only wind in my hair and the pressure of the gun against the skin of my leg. My heart still raced after the adventure at the gala.

I was deceiving myself. I was there for a briefing with the organisation. I was being prudent, I was deceiving myself. But life?

I waited.

Waiting to see if Daniel would appear once more, if his hand would extend even here, where I was in the dark.

The city pounded beneath me. My phone pounded in my fist. Another message.

This time only two words:

"Found you."