The Bodyguard's Temptation

I had read her file twice before I ever turned onto the Calloway property, and twice was already more than I gave most assignments. Seraphina Calloway. Twenty six. Former Vice President of Communications at Calloway Media, a title that told me she had spent her career managing perception for a living, which usually meant one of two things about a person, either they were very good at hiding what they actually felt, or they had simply never had a reason to feel anything worth hiding. Her photograph in the file showed a woman who had learned to give cameras exactly what they wanted and nothing more, chin level, eyes steady, mouth arranged into something that could pass for warmth without ever quite committing to it.I did not need to know anything about her to do the job. That was the entire architecture of how I ran Titan, the reason my company had a reputation worth the fee we charged, and the reason I had survived four years in this line of work without repeating the single worst mis

The first sign something was wrong came before we even reached the ballroom.I clocked him near the coat check, a man in a gray suit checking his phone with just slightly too much attention to the screen, no drink in his hand, no conversation, nothing to explain why a grown man would linger near an exit for six full minutes without moving. I had learned a long time ago that boredom looks different from surveillance. Bored people fidget. Surveillance holds still."Don't look at the man by the coat check," I said quietly, my hand at Sera's lower back guiding her toward the ballroom doors.She did not look. Good instincts, that one. "What about him.""Probably nothing. I want eyes on him anyway."Her breath caught, just slightly, and I felt it under my palm where my hand still rested against the small of her back, warm silk over warmer skin. I made myself notice the observation clinically and then let it go, the way I noticed everything else in a room full of potential threats. It did no

I did not sleep. I sat on the edge of my bed with my phone in my hand, staring at those three words until they stopped looking like language and started looking like a shape, something with teeth.Damian had taken the phone from me within seconds of me showing it to him, his face going through a series of small, controlled shifts I was learning to read, alarm quickly folded away beneath something colder and more useful. He had called Marcus immediately, put the phone on speaker, and the two of them had spoken in the clipped, efficient shorthand of people who had done this before, tracing carriers, checking whether the number matched anything in Cross's known network, none of it landing anywhere conclusive before Marcus finally admitted the number was almost certainly routed through a burner, untraceable within any timeframe that mattered tonight."I see you both," I said out loud, mostly to hear it in my own voice instead of just my head. "Both. Not just me.""I noticed that too," Dam

---The federal building smelled like cold coffee and old carpet, and I hated it immediately.Marcus's contact met us in a small conference room on the fourth floor, a tired looking woman named Agent Priya Deshmukh who shook my hand with a grip that told me she had spent years learning not to be impressed by wealthy last names. She had a folder open in front of her before we had even fully sat down, and something about her briskness settled my nerves slightly, the sense that whatever came next would at least be handled by someone who took the danger seriously rather than someone managing optics."Ms. Calloway," she said. "Walk me through what you found, in your own words, from the beginning."I did. I told her about the late night I had spent scrolling through disclosures that did not add up, the shell entities buried three layers deep in language designed to be skimmed rather than read, the specific pattern of transfers that traced back to Nathaniel Cross rather than my father. Damia

---I heard raised voices again before I heard the word itself, and something in my chest went cold and still the moment I made out what they were saying.Reyes.I came down the stairs slowly, drawn by the same instinct that had pulled me toward danger all week despite every reasonable urge to stay hidden, and found Damian and Marcus standing over a phone in the kitchen, both of their faces set in matching expressions of controlled fury."What happened," I said.Damian looked up, and something in his eyes told me whatever he was about to say had cost him something even before he said it. "One of my own men has been feeding information to Cross since before the gala. Possibly longer."The floor seemed to tilt slightly beneath me. "Someone you trained. Someone who worked for you.""Yes."I watched him absorb that, watched the specific kind of betrayal settle into his shoulders that had nothing to do with the physical danger of tonight and everything to do with a deeper wound, the partic