ANMELDENMarcusDave Harrison lived on the quieter side of the city.The kind of street that wasn't rich exactly but was comfortable. Wide enough. Clean enough. The houses set back from the road with small front gardens and cars parked in the driveways.I found the address without difficulty.The gate was open when I got there. No security. No intercom. Just an iron gate pushed back against the fence like it hadn't been properly closed in a while.I walked straight through.The house was modest from the outside. Two floors. A short path leading to the front door. Curtains drawn on the upper windows.I knocked.Waited.Nothing for a moment.Then footsteps from inside. Unhurried. The footsteps of someone in their own home with no reason to expect anything unexpected.The door opened.Dave Harrison was tall. Broader than me across the shoulders. The kind of build that came from actually using your body rather than a gym. Dark skinned, clean shaven, with sharp eyes that took in information fast. H
Marcus Three years of holding that boy. Three years of feeding him and sitting beside his bed when he cried in the night and watching him learn to walk by gripping my fingers. Three years of hearing him say daddy and feeling like that word meant something real and permanent.All of it.One night that she never told me about."How could you do this to me?" I said. My voice came out strange. Hollow and thin. "After everything I gave you. After everything I did. You looked at me every single day for three years and you let me love that boy and you never once..."I stopped.My throat was too tight to finish it."I'm sorry," she whispered. "Marcus I'm so sorry. I was scared. I didn't know how to tell you. I thought maybe it wouldn't matter. I thought...""Sorry." I laughed. It came out wrong. Nothing like a real laugh. "You think sorry covers this? You think sorry gives me back three years? You think sorry fixes what it felt like to sit in that hospital and find out from a doctor? From a
Marcus She ordered food to the room before we left.Eggs, toast, and tea.I sat across from her at the small table and looked at the plate and tried to eat. My stomach rejected the idea almost immediately. I managed half a piece of toast and three sips of tea and gave up.My mind wouldn't stay in the room.Twenty four hours.His voice saying my mother's name.My sister's face."You're not eating," Nadia said."I know," I said.She didn't push it.We left the hotel twenty minutes later.I stepped out of the entrance behind Nadia and stopped immediately. Scanned left. Scanned right. The street was ordinary and morning-busy. People walking. A bus pulling away from a stop. A fruit seller setting up his cart on the corner.Nothing obviously wrong.I kept scanning anyway as we walked to her car. My eyes moved constantly. Every face that came too close. Every vehicle that moved too slowly. Every shadow in a doorway.Nadia drove without asking for directions at first. Just pulled into traffi
MarcusI didn't sleep.Not really.Every sound the hotel made kept pulling me back from the edge of it. Footsteps in the corridor. A door closing somewhere above me. A car outside. Each one sent my heart straight into my throat and I would lie there rigid, listening, waiting for the handle to turn.Nadia had taken the bed without discussion. I had taken the small couch without complaint. It was too short for me and my neck was at the wrong angle the entire night but I said nothing because she had already done more for me than she owed me which was everything because she owed me nothing.I lay there in the dark and stared at the ceiling and thought about my mother. My sister sitting in that prison cell. What the Boss's voice had sounded like on the phone. The way Ethan had looked at me in that warehouse before he left.At some point, without noticing it happening, I fell asleep.---The phone rang.I was upright before I was fully awake. Heart already slamming. Hand already grabbing fo
MarcusShe was still glaring at me.Not the panicked glare of someone who was frightened. The steady, cold glare of someone who was deciding exactly how angry they were going to be and in what order.I stayed very still.She reached down, grabbed her towel and wrapped it tightly around herself. Then she walked to the wardrobe, pulled it open and took out her clothes with the particular efficiency of someone who refused to be rattled.She turned her back to me while she dressed.I took the opportunity, grabbed my shirt from under the bed and pulled it on as fast as I could. Smoothed it down. Tried to look like a person who had not just sprinted through a hotel lobby, kissed a complete stranger and nearly been shot twice in the last ten minutes.She turned back around.Fully dressed now. Arms crossed. Eyes on me like two points of a blade."You care to explain," she said, her voice completely level, "who the hell you are. How you barged into my room." She paused. "And how you had the ne
MarcusI didn't think. My body made the decision before my mind caught up and I was already running hard before I understood that I was running. Another shot. Closer. Then another.I looked back without slowing.Three of them. Masked. Dark clothes. Coming out of the shadows between two buildings like they had been waiting there the whole time.I ran harder.My lungs were burning immediately. I hadn't run like this in years. My shoes were wrong for it and the pavement was uneven and another shot cracked past my ear close enough that I felt the air move.God. God. I don't want to die. Not like this. Not here on an empty road in the dark.I could see lights ahead. A building. Music coming from inside. People.A hotel.Small. Modest. The kind of place that stayed busy on a weeknight.I hit the entrance at full speed and burst through the door.Warmth, noises, bodies and music swallowed me immediately. People dancing. A bar along one wall. Coloured lights moving across the ceiling.Nobody
Ethan Ashford "There has to be something else," I said. "Some way to trace this back to whoever created it."Dave thought for a moment."The financial documents," he said. "The fake bank statements showing embezzlement. Those had to be created using real data from Lawrence Global's systems. Whoeve
SerenaI didn't understand why Ethan didn't trust Dave.It didn't make sense to me.Dave was a nice person. Kind, thoughtful, and professional.He had saved me from danger. Not once, but twice.First from the kidnappers, And then in Dubai, when he literally pulled Ahmad Khalil off of me.If it were
Ethan Ashford When I turned around, Serena was standing in the middle of the room, watching me."You don't trust him," she said quietly.It wasn't a question."No," I admitted. "I don't.""Why not?" she asked. "He saved me, Ethan. If he hadn't been there...""I know," I said. "And I'm grateful for
EthanThat bitch.That absolute, unbelievable bitch dare to show her face to Serena after everything she's done?I stared at the note in my hand, reading Isabella's words over and over again, and felt rage building in my chest like a fire I couldn't control."Ethan and I belong together. He still l







