Chapter 1

Chapter One

The gunshot cracked behind the locked door and rolled through the room like thunder.

Logan Castillejo didn’t flinch. He sat sprawled across the leather couch with one arm draped over its back, and a slow smile spread across his face. It was not a kind smile. It belonged to a man who had long ago made peace with what he was. He tapped a cigarette from the pack on the armrest, rolled it between his fingers, and lit it. The tip glowed orange in the dim office. He leaned his head back and exhaled, and a pale cloud of smoke unfurled toward the ceiling, taking its time, as if the whole world could wait.

The door opened. Dev stepped out, wiping his hands on a white handkerchief that was no longer white. A few dark flecks stood out on his collar. He didn’t seem to notice.

“He wouldn’t talk.” Dev clicked his tongue, the way a teacher might over a student who’d refused to study. “Even after I shot his knee. Tough old bastard.” He shrugged, and the handkerchief went into his pocket. “So I finished him.”

“Good,” Logan said. “As usual.”

Dev crossed the room and leaned against the cabinet by the window. He lit a cigarette of his own, and for a while the two men said nothing. Smoke wove between them. Somewhere on the floor below, a phone rang and stopped.

On paper, Black Eagle Security and Protective Services was the finest protection agency in the Philippines. Senators used its bodyguards. Tycoons slept easier behind its gates. The brochures were glossy, the uniforms pressed, the clients grateful. What those clients didn’t know, or chose not to ask about, was the other menu, the one that was never printed. For the right price, Black Eagle also made problems disappear. Today’s problem was a businessman who had paid to learn about a rival’s secret merger, and then to have the rival silenced. The rival had refused to give up a single name.

Logan’s father, Zobel Castillejo, a respected man with a seat in the right rooms, knew nothing about any of it. Logan intended to keep it that way.

He had been born into money and a name that opened doors before he reached them. He was an only child, raised in rooms with high ceilings and servants who anticipated every wish, and in all his thirty years no one had ever said no and meant it. Somewhere along the way, he’d stopped asking for things. He simply took them, and the world, as far as he could tell, had always let him.

“Mr. Logan?”

Grec slipped in through the door, a tablet pressed to his chest. He was young, a little too thin for his suit, and he fidgeted with his tie as if it were choking him. “You have a meeting at two, sir. Mrs. Castillejo is already at the foundation. The press will be there. She expects you by three.”

“Shit.” Logan had forgotten. The charity event, his mother’s pride and joy, was going to cut straight through his afternoon. It was also going to cut through the afternoon he’d planned with Czarina, the model he’d met in Jake’s office last week, with her long legs and her lazy, knowing stare. He’d been thinking about her all morning. “Bring Czarina to my office.”

“Should I cancel your—”

“No.”

The word landed like a dropped plate. Grec’s mouth stayed open, caught halfway through a thought. He looked at the tablet, then at Logan, doing the math and getting nowhere. A meeting at two. A charity event at three. A woman to deliver. He had no idea how to make all of that fit, and he was afraid to ask.

Dev pushed off the cabinet and smacked him on the shoulder, hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Call the driver, idiot. He picks her up. You call her, tell her to get ready. I’ve explained this a hundred times.”

Grec had been working for Logan for barely a month. His father had served Zobel Castillejo for years, until the day he died in an ambush on a plaza during the campaign, a day nobody in the family ever discussed. After Grec graduated, his mother had come to the Castillejo house in tears and begged Logan to give her son a job. Logan had said yes, mostly to make her stop crying. Now he watched the boy and wondered, not for the first time, whether he was a fool or simply too soft for this world.

“S-sure, Dev. I’ll call Zhaira.”

“Czarina, you moron.” Dev raised his hand.

“Enough.” Logan got up from the couch. He crossed the room slowly, and with every step Grec seemed to shrink. The tablet slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. Logan stopped inches from him, took a long drag, and blew the smoke straight into the boy’s face.

Grec coughed. His eyes watered. He didn’t dare step back.

Logan had meant to frighten him, to see how much he could bend before he broke, but all he found in those wide eyes was raw fear, and it was boring. The last time he’d raised his voice, Grec had nearly wet himself. Cleaning up after that kind of mess wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Never mind,” Logan said, and walked past him.

Dev’s complaint echoed in his head. The kid needs to get laid. Fine. Logan would take care of it. He would drive Grec to Agrianthropos City, to his cousin Trace, who ran the best-attended parties in the country, the kind that ended long after sunrise. Eliot, his partner at Foedus, would be there too. Eliot never turned down a prank, and a nervous virgin in a suit was the best material he’d had in months.

Logan smiled again, and this time Grec, still crouched over his tablet, wisely didn’t look up.

The Life-Changing Foundation sat behind a low white wall in a quiet district, its courtyard crowded with cameras, folding chairs, and balloons tied to the fence. The Castillejo family had paid for the shelter and the school behind it, a place where abused children could sleep without fear and learn to read. Logan hated these events, but he came, because his mother asked, and because a man like him needed a face the public could love.

“Logan, you made it!”

Dorcy Castillejo hurried across the courtyard with her arms open. She was elegant even in a hurry, her silver-streaked hair pinned neatly and her smile warm. Logan let her kiss his cheek, but he wasn’t listening to a word she said.

His eyes had caught on the woman standing behind her.

She wore a white dress that fell to her calves, simple and modest, the fabric moving with her like water. Her black hair hung thick and straight down her back, and sunlight slid through it as she turned. Her face was soft and quiet, with dark lashes that nearly brushed her cheeks when she looked down. Her lips were slightly parted, as if she’d started to say something and forgotten what.

Boring, Logan decided.

She was not the kind of woman he went for. He liked the other kind, the easy ones, the ones who walked into a room already knowing how the night would end. This one looked like she’d never been kissed hard in her life.

And still, the picture arrived without his permission. Her under him, her hair spilled across a pillow, her voice breaking around his name.

He shut the thought down. A date? Hell, no. Why would he ever want a date with a girl like that? He didn’t want to know her. He only wanted to have her, and that was a completely different thing.

Dorcy followed his gaze and smiled, reading it all wrong, or maybe exactly right. “Logan, this is Callista Sandoval, Callixto’s daughter. Calli, honey, this is my son.”

“Nice to meet you, Logan,” Calli said. Her voice was as gentle as her face, and she lifted one small hand in a shy wave.

Something tightened in his throat. He cleared it and stepped close, slid a hand around her waist as if he’d done it a thousand times, and kissed her cheek. “Nice to meet you too, babe.”

She smelled like soap and warm linen. Something strange and unfamiliar rushed through his chest the moment their bodies touched, and he didn’t like not knowing what it was. So he ignored it.

Calli felt it too. Heat poured off him, and his breath brushed her skin, and her heart did something it had never done before, a quick, clumsy stumble. She pressed her palm against his chest and pushed him back, more roughly than she meant to. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her cheeks burning. She couldn’t lift her eyes to his. There was something about this man she couldn’t name, something that made her suddenly, painfully aware of her own body, and she wanted to be anywhere else.

Logan only smirked. He’d been planning to spend the afternoon with Czarina, but the plan was already dead. Czarina was for Grec now. This one, with her flushed face and trembling hands, was far more interesting.

“Come inside, you two,” Dorcy said brightly, though her eyes lingered on them a moment longer than necessary. “The children have been waiting all morning.”

Inside, the foundation smelled of chalk and crayons and floor polish. Laughter bounced off the walls. Calli sat cross-legged on a rug at the center of a circle of children, a picture book open on her lap, doing the voices of a bear and a very stubborn rabbit. The kids giggled and shrieked. A little boy had climbed into her lap without asking, and she let him stay.

Logan stood at the edge of the room next to his mother, arms folded, and couldn’t stop watching. Around them, the nuns moved through the room in their quiet gray habits, tying shoes, wiping faces, calming a crying toddler. He barely noticed them.

“Isn’t she lovely?” Dorcy asked softly. She had been watching her son watch Calli for the past five minutes.

“Mom. Spare me.”

“I’m only saying.” Dorcy folded her hands. “She came here to discern, you know. She’s thinking of entering the convent.”

Logan’s head turned. “A nun?”

“Her father is heartbroken. He’s tried everything, but Calli’s mind is made up, and there’s nothing Callixto can do.” Dorcy sighed. “I’d much rather see her build a family of her own. Look at her, Logan. She’d be wonderful with children. The two of you would look perfect together.”

He barely heard the last part. His mind had stalled on one word.

Nun.

He glanced at the nearest sister, at the heavy gray cloth that covered her from forehead to ankle, and then he imagined Calli in the same thing, every inch of her hidden. The picture made something cold and ugly twist inside him. He had never cared what a woman wore. Now he found that he hated it, truly hated it. He wanted her in nothing at all, and he wanted her looking at him, and he wanted it so badly it made his jaw ache.

Damn it.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Castillejo.”

Grec had appeared at their side, tablet tucked under his arm, shoulders hunched. Logan turned a flat, hard stare on him, the kind that said leave, and Grec swallowed, caught between obedience and terror, unable to move either way.

“Good afternoon, Grec.” Dorcy touched her son’s arm. “I’ll leave you two. It looks like work again, Logan.” She crossed the room to Calli, who looked up and smiled at her like sunlight breaking through a window.

“Mr. Logan,” Grec whispered, “she’s here.” He swallowed again. “Miss Czarina.”

Logan didn’t answer right away. He was still looking across the room. The children had dragged Calli up to dance, and she was laughing, her hair swinging, her white dress catching the light, and the heat that had been building in him all afternoon finally climbed to his skull.

He needed to burn it off. Now, before he did something he couldn’t take back. Czarina would do.

“Get the car,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Now.”

The tinted windows turned the world outside into a dim, silent blur. Logan had the driver park two blocks from the foundation, far enough that no camera would catch the car, close enough that he could return before anyone missed him.

He didn’t bother with gentleness. He took what he needed from Czarina in the back seat, fast and rough, his hand tight in her hair, and the whole time he wasn’t thinking of her at all. He was thinking of a white dress and a pair of dark, startled eyes. When it was over, he straightened his clothes without a word. Czarina stayed where she was, breathing hard, her lipstick smeared, her eyes bright with humiliation and rage.

Outside the window, Grec stood guard with his back turned and his shoulders stiff, staring at the pavement as if it held the answers to everything.

“Hey!” Czarina snapped, pulling her dress back into place. “Seriously? You’re just going to leave me like this?”

“Not exactly,” Logan said. He opened the door and waved Grec toward it.

Grec didn’t move at first. When he finally leaned in and saw her, the color drained from his face, and he stopped as if he’d walked into a wall.

Czarina stared at Logan. “Don’t you dare.”

“He’ll take care of you.” Logan turned to Grec, and his voice dropped. “Do it. Or the two of you are dead.”

No one in the car doubted him. They knew exactly who Logan Castillejo was, and they knew what happened to people who told him no. Czarina’s fury had nowhere to go, and it curdled into a bitter, helpless silence. Grec climbed in. His hands trembled as he reached for his belt, and he kept his eyes on the floor.

Logan didn’t stay to watch. He shut the door and walked away from the car, adjusting his cuffs, and Dev was waiting by the second sedan with a wide, delighted grin.

“You’re something else, Boss.”

“Take care of him, Dev,” Logan said. “Teach him.”

He slid into the back seat of the second car and told the driver to head back to the foundation. As the engine turned over, he stared out the window at the passing streets, one thought circling in his mind, and he couldn’t shake it.

A girl in white, laughing in the middle of a room full of children, who had no idea what was coming for her.