Prologue
The world is a fucked up place.
That was probably the first lesson I learned in life. A hard-taught lesson when he’d yell at me or slap me. Or worse.
He was supposed to love us. To protect us.
But “supposed to” is only the truth in a fairy tale world. We lived in the real world, my sister and me. And when it got to be too much—when there was nothing and no one we could turn to except each other—that’s when we ran.
I’ve done things I’m ashamed of. Things I had to in order to survive. To keep us safe.
And I learned a long time ago not to trust anyone but myself and my sister. Because the people who are supposed to protect you will fail you. And the people who are supposed to love you can just as easily be monsters.
But lately, things have started to shift. My world is opening, and people are surprising me. I’m letting down my guard; I’m letting people in.
It’s a mistake, and I know it. Because now he’s come into my life.
And though I know I need to keep my distance—though I know damn well that he’s going to hurt my heart—I can’t help but slide down that hill toward him, terrified all the while that he won’t be strong enough to catch me.
And even more scared that he will.
Chapter One
“Any luck?” Antonio Sanchez stood with his arms crossed as he stared over Noah’s shoulder at the nonsensical string of numbers, letters, and symbols that flowed across the screen in time with the tapping of Noah’s fingers on the keys.
“Almost there,” Noah said, his attention never veering from the monitor.
Tony shifted his weight, then took a step back and leaned against the massive oak table that made up one of the three sides of Noah’s cluttered workspace. Despite being the top dog at the Austin division of Stark Applied Technology, Noah’s office looked more like the basement of a kid who loved to code and play video games.
Then again, Tony could hardly fault his friend for that. Noah Carter had mad skills with computers, electronics, anything tech. Tony had skills, too, but his leaned toward the more deadly variety. A skillset for which he’d been well-paid in the past, though only for jobs that were on the right side of his conscience.
Those paid gigs, though, had been simply a means to an end. Even the time that Tony had spent working with Noah for a vigilante group called Deliverance had been for a purpose. Tony fully supported the work that the group had done rescuing kidnapping victims and taking down their tormentors. But he’d also utilized the organization’s massive resources for his own purpose.
Specifically, the search for one man, known only as The Serpent.
Tony could never get back what The Serpent had stolen from him. His mother. His uncle. His whole goddamn life. But he could have revenge.
And he was getting pretty damn close to the prize.
He had Noah to thank for much of his recent progress. His friend was the one who had set Tony up with a secret identity on a notorious dark web message board. A place where, over the span of years, Tony had cultivated a reputation as a badass mercenary with skills for hire. Not a lie … but not exactly the truth, either.
He’d posted fake details to boost his reputation and taken just enough real jobs to support the cover. But only jobs that he’d vetted first, carefully making sure the targets weren’t innocent. In fact, far from it. Murderers, sexual predators, and the like.
He’d built his reputation slowly until he had enough cred to ask questions about The Serpent without attracting too much unwanted attention.
Still, progress had been a slog. For over three months, he received no leads. Then a few trickled in, but none panned out.
Months passed, and even though he’d known that this was a long-haul game, he’d started to lose hope.
Then a private message from The-Asst had appeared. A woman, or so she said. And she promised Tony that although she didn’t know where The Serpent was at the moment, she knew how to learn his true identity.
More important, she promised to share that information if Tony would meet her at the exclusive Debauchery Resort, a no-holds-barred sex party island located in the Caribbean.
She named the date—exactly five days from now—and that was an appointment he intended to keep. So long as it wasn’t a trap.
Like his own dark web identity, The-Asst’s profile had no identifying information. Which meant that he had no way of verifying if she was even really a woman, much less someone in a position to, possibly, have access to information about The Serpent.
And that, of course, was why Tony had come to Austin to see Noah. Because if anyone could peel through the layers to discover who The-Asst was, it was his tech genius friend.
Dragging his fingers through his close-cropped hair, he once again came up behind Noah as words and symbols flashed rapid-fire across the screen. “What’s—”
His friend held up a hand, cutting off Tony’s question. “Almost done. Just one more—yes. Got it, you slippery little fuck.”
Tony looked from the nonsense on the screen to Noah, then back to the screen. There was a reason Tony didn’t do tech. There wasn’t a damn thing on the screen of interest that he could see.
“I could explain it,” Noah said dryly, looking over his shoulder at Tony. “But then I’d have to kill you.”
“Funny man.” Tony pulled over one of the chairs and sat, rolling close for a better view of the nonsense. “Don’t explain. Just tell me what you’ve learned.”
“I can’t get a name for you. Not yet. But I’m working on software that will—”
“—do something magical with bits and bytes and quantum physics. Yeah, man, the whole world knows you’re a genius. What’s the bottom line?”
“Eighty-seven percent probability your contact really is a woman. I derived that from—”
“Ah, ah. Do I bore you with ballistics?”
Noah rolled his eyes. “There’s nothing boring about ballistics, and I’m a damn good shot, too.”
“I’m better.” Tony grinned, enjoying himself. Hell, the first time he’d laughed in months was last night at Noah and Kiki’s new house overlooking Lake Travis.
“Right now, the only cojones that count are mine. You want the intel or not?”
“You know I do.” He leaned back in the chair and kicked his feet out, prepared to get schooled.
Surprisingly, though, Noah skipped over the miracles of semiconductors and whatever programming language was in vogue these days. He dove straight to the results from his still-in-beta software.
“I can’t confirm your contact is a woman, but the probability is high. And based on where I’m pinging back from the shadow on her messages, she’s located in Southern California.”
“I didn’t think you could trace that kind of thing on the dark web.”
“Most can’t. I can. At least to a seventy-two percent certainty rate. Like I said, this is still in development.”
“So there’s a good chance she’s in California.”
“Either that, or knows her way around this nerdy tech stuff as well as I do and is purposefully shielding not just her location but the shadow of her location that I’m tracking.”