Chapter 3
Caleb
The rain didn’t come, but I fucking wanted it to. I wanted something to break open, something to soak the dirt and drown the silence because the weight pressing down on my chest hadn't let up. Alan’s death was building a quiet, calculated rage within me. A kind of anger that had been simmering under my skin for far too long.
He had been a goddamn idiot. A reckless, dumb as rocks bastard with a smile that made people forget the knife he kept behind his back. I should have let him rot years ago, life debt or not. I owed him for pulling me out of Istanbul when the knives were already drawn for my throat, but the price of that debt had ballooned into something I never intended to carry this long. He should have been smarter. He should have kept his dick in his pants and his hands off things that didn’t belong to him. And now he was gone.
The Turks don’t kill their golden boys without warning. Alan had been stealing from our family, from me, someone who took him in. Who gave him a new life, a new home, and introduced him to my family, and he threw all that away for a few million dollars. My grandfather considered it a betrayal, and his orderwas executed just like any other would have been. Because if you didn't go through with what Emir Killic ordered, you'd be found in a ditch somewhere, only after your body parts were meticulously detached from your body. And if it were his family, he'd be brutal. Your name would be forgotten, and the only one allowed to mourn your death was your mother. You'd be buried out back with the dogs, and he made sure your name would never be spoken about again.
He was ruthless, a visceral human being who would do any and all type of harm without blinking an eye. And he had been watching and waiting to implement his revenge. When my grandfather gave the order, he had stated the kill be executed by his youngest grandson. His way of having me prove myself was in killing my best friend.
Alan never saw it coming. There was no struggle. No warning. He simply opened the door and I fired. Empathy was for the weak, but as I watched my friend's blood drain from his head, I knew there was no turning back. My soul had been sold, and my life had been bound to the Turkish Mafia and owned by the devil himself.
I was chained to this fate a long time ago. I was fourteen when I saw my first execution. My father slit a man’s throat in front of a marble fireplace while sipping Arak and humming a Turkish lullaby under his breath. He told me it was justice. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t cry. I just watched the blood stain the rug and the body twitch.
That’swhen he knew I’d be useful.
By sixteen, I was delivering messages that ended in bodies. By twenty, I was in too deep to climb out. They called me a bodyguard, but that was just a polite way of saying I kept thingsclean. I made people disappear. I made assets behave. I was the blade they used when diplomacy failed.
What does this mean for a man like me?
It means I have gained a large number of enemies in this world. Enemies that want to destroy anything I'd built and ruin anyone I love. I knew the risks when Alan didn't. Now he was dead, and I was moving up in the system.
I stared at the casket even after the crowd had left. The wind was sharp, cutting across my cheeks, and the burden of what the silence brought with it, settled on my shoulders. I clenched my fists in the pockets of my coat, the leather gloves stretched taut over knuckles that were meant for violence.
And then there was her.
Stephanie fucking Winters.
She had no right standing there looking like a sex kitten wearing those black sunglasses; her lips were a bright red, an invitation for more. Her long, dark hair grew wild in the wind, sexy curves poured into black denim, fist clenched at her side. She was holding her rage back. A rage that matched my own.
I knew every inch of her. I had memorized the way her ass swayed when she walked, the sharp flick of her eyes when she was about to lie, the way her breath caught whenever I got too close.
I hated how much I noticed. How much I wanted her to notice me.
She was poison. Beautiful, burning poison.
But I didn’t trust her. I never could. She was too calm. Too collected. Alan might have died in a pool of his own brains, but she hadn't even shed a tear. That told me more than any police report could.
Stephanie knew something. Maybe not everything. But enough. And I was going to find out exactly what.
When Alan broughtStephanie into the fold, when he let her touch the books and sniff around in places she never should have been allowed, I knew he was sealing his fate.
And yet...
Goddammit, she was magnetic.
The first time I trailed her, I watched her walk out of a bank in Echo Park, hips swaying, boots clicking against the pavement as if sounding off a countdown. She didn’t look back, didn’t flinch, didn’t check her surroundings. She knew I was there. And she loved it. The little smirk at the corner of her mouth told me everything I needed to know.
She was built for trouble.
She paused at the crosswalk, took a short look over her shoulder, and dared me to follow. I should have turned back. Should have let someone else handle her. But I didn’t. I followed her into that underground bar. I watched her laugh and press those curves against Alan, knowing the entire time my eyes were on her. I watched her dance in that short dress, hypnotized by the way her body curved to the sultry beat of the music. Her legs toned, thighs built to destroy men, and tits meant to feed them.
Fuck! I hated her for it.
I hated that my fists clenched when Alan touched her. I hated the way she looked in red. I hated the sound of her laugh. The way she bit her lip. The way she could tear a man apart with her words and leave him hanging on a thread, hoping for more.
I wanted her. Badly.
