Beckett (THE GOLDEN TEAM #12)

Chapter 1

Beckett

Ihated briefings.

Not the intel, not the mission—it was the talking. The suits. The way River layered his words with politics instead of bullets. I trusted rifles and maps. People? Not so much.

But the moment she walked in, the room shifted.

Elara Voss.

Tall, poised, wrapped in a dark suit that probably cost more than my truck. Her hair was pulled back, away from her face. She moved like she belonged here, like Hydra hadn’t used her face as a mask for their filth. Did he teach her to kill?

My jaw tightened. Because I knew that’s exactly what they had done.

River said she was our “asset.” Said she’d turned. That she was our key to burning Roger Grand and the rest of the Hydra council to the ground.

But the second her eyes met mine—icy, assessing, too calm—I felt two things at once: distrust like a blade at my throat. And an attraction that hit like a sucker punch.

Deadly combination.

I leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest as Cyclone started droning about encrypted bank transfers.

I still couldn’t believe he was an expert on the computer.

I didn’t hear half of it. My focus was on her—on the way her fingers laced together on the table, the faint scar cutting along her wrist, the way she didn’t flinch under a room full of men who would gladly put a bullet in her if she blinked wrong.

Beautiful. Dangerous. Untouchable.

And she was mine to guard.

Hell.