Chapter One
Gideon
"Ihave a cousin."
"Since when?" I ask, cutting my eyes at Bryant Denver, who is spotting me at the bench. It's not even six in the morning, but the gym is already packed with guys just like us those who spent far too much of their lives getting up at the ass crack of dawn for God and country.
Bryant and I are both out of the Navy now, but old habits die hard. They do for most of the guys in the gym.
"Always, I guess. Gia had me do one of those goddamn DNA tests," he says, smiling when he says his wife's name. For a hard motherfucker, he's soft as silk when he talks about his wife. It's always been the same story with him. On our last deployment together five years ago, he told me that he met the woman he was going to marry. As soon as we made it back stateside, he followed through.
He's been living in domestic bliss ever since.
It's nice to see, even though I don't want the same shit for myself. He's never had family or stability. He deserves it. I've had a Ma and two brothers driving me up the fucking wall my whole life. I'm good on the family front.
"Her name is Maya."
"You met her?"
He nods, his grin growing. "She's sweet as hell, man. It was always just her and her mom, but her mom died about a year ago, so she's been on her own since then. She just got married."
I heave the weights back onto the bench, grunting. "Fuck me. I'm too old to work out like this."
Bryant laughs. "You're in better shape now than you were when you were deployed, Gideon."
"That's called hydration, motherfucker. I'm better hydrated now than when I was deployed."
"Shit. You ain't lying." Bryant laughs again. "I do not miss dying of thirst in the goddamn desert."
I haul myself into a sitting position and swipe my towel from the floor. "Facts," I mutter, wiping sweat from my brow. "So you like your cousin?"
"Yeah, I do."
"That's good. You deserve to know where you came from, man."
"Yeah." He clears his throat and then grimaces. "That's not why I brought her up, though. I need a favor."
"I'm not looking into her for you." My brothers and I run a private security firm. We spend our days protecting people who pay us an obscene amount of money to do it. But we all have military backgrounds. We know how to find information and tail people when necessary.
Bryant shoots me a dirty look. "I don't want you looking into her. She has a sister-in-law, Kenna Maxwell, who needs protection for a charity event. There have been some issues. Her brother wants to hire your firm."
This surprises me. Bryant does security, too. He mainly works for corporate clients but has been known to take on a private client now and again. He's just as capable of protecting his cousin's sister-in-law as we are.
"Why can't you do it?"
"Because my wife is going to have a baby any day now."
"Shit. I forgot." He and Gia pop out kids like they're trying to start a baseball team. "What kind of trouble is she in?"
"She's a musician playing at a big charity concert with a fuckton of big stars. Someone has been sending her some sketchy, threatening shit lately, and she's afraid something may go wrong with the event. She wants to ensure that doesn't happen."
No offense to Bryant, but this already sounds like a pain in my ass.
"What kind of sketchy, threatening shit?"
"Dead flowers, a creepy ass poem. Two days ago, a dead songbird was delivered to her front door."
"Jesus Christ. Did he go to movie villain school?"
"Right? The motherfucker isn't particularly original, but he's pissing off her brother and starting to freak her out." Bryant bends to grab my water bottle from the standard-issue gym carpet before tossing it to me. "Her manager wants to go to the police, but she wants to handle it quietly. She just signed her first record deal. She doesn't want this to scare off the label."
"Will it?"
Bryant shrugs. "Could if they decide she's more trouble than she's worth."
"Is she any good?"
"She's fucking incredible."
"You know I hate working with musicians." They're a pain in my ass for a whole lot of reasons. Crazy comes out of the woodwork around musicians. They have rabid fans, and more often than not, in situations like this, it's a rabid fan who's the problem. But trying to pick out which fan is the issue is like trying to find a goddamn needle in a haystack. They sneak into their houses. They follow them across the country. They dress like them, talk like them, act like them. It's fucking creepy.
But trying to convince a musician that they need to exercise caution with their fans is an exercise in futility. They never fucking listen. Ever. They are as devoted to their fans as their fans are to them. It makes them walking targets. You can only do so much to save someone who isn't trying to help you out.
I can't tell Bryant that, though. And we my brothers and I can't tell this girl no, either. Musicians may drive me nuts, but Bryant has been a friend since we were eighteen. He's basically family at this point.
And while dead flowers and creepy poems may be unoriginal, they still follow a playbook that tends to end with shots fired and blood spilled. The dead bird is nothing short of a threat. We can't leave someone in danger just because I don't want to deal with the headache. I may be a dick on occasion, but I'm not heartless.
"You know I wouldn't ask if I didn't think there was something to it."
"Why do you hate me?"
"That ugly ass mug."
"Man, fuck you," I say, cracking a smile. "Asshole."
Bryant shoots me a grin. "Seriously, please don't make me ask Zayne. He scares people."
"Yes, because he's an idiot." It's true. My older brother is an idiot. He stresses people the fuck out...and by people, I mean me. And my younger brother doesn't do well with crowds since losing partial hearing, so he's not even an option here. If this girl needs a bodyguard for a big event, I'm the last Carmichael standing.
Son of a bitch.
"Fine," I growl, giving in to the inevitable. "I'll help. But I swear to God, if she gives me any problems, I'll be camping outside Gia's hospital room to kick your ass as soon as the baby is born."
"She won't," Bryant says.
I don't believe him. They're always famous last words.
"Hey." I pop my head into Zion's office to find Zayne already seated across from him with one foot propped on the edge of Zion's ridiculously tidy desk. You can take a motherfucker out of the military, but you can't take the military out of the motherfucker.
Zion's a testament to that. Out of the three of us, he's the one who was born for that life. Most people assume it's Zayne because he's direct and to the point, but Zion thrived on the order of military life. He lives for being in control. Unfortunately, a hail of bullets changed everything for him. Shit. It changed everything for all of us. We damn near lost him. But he's resourceful as hell. It'll take more than a few bullets to take out my little brother.
Maybe a plague or two. Possibly our Ma.
"Ma, we're not hiring you," he says. Well, speak of the devil. He leans back in his chair, his good ear tilted toward the phone. I guess it's on speaker.
"Jesus Christ. Not this shit again." Zayne scrubs a hand down his face. Ma has been trying to convince us to hire her damn near since we started the business. Dad already warned us if we did, he was sticking his boot up our asses. Not that we have any intention of hiring her crazy ass. We're not complete idiots. She only wants to work here so she can boss us around and try to marry us off.
She wants grandbabies, and she's convinced none of us are capable of finding a good woman on our own. It's a valid point, considering none of us ever date. But we do not need Ma around here more than she already is. The woman is a menace. Love her to death, but she's terrifying.
"Don t you take that tone with me, Zion Alaric Carmichael," Ma says. "I didn't say you should hire me. My job pays me just fine. I said maybe I should come and answer phones for a few days."
"We don't need you to answer phones, Ma."
"Well, you boys need something," she huffs. "Because clearly, prayer isn't working."
"You been prayin' for us, Ma?" Zayne asks, grinning.
"I've been praying for Jesus to take the wheel with you boys since you were born. He's not answering. Apparently, not even He can help the three of you."
"Ma!" I protest.
"Well, it's true."
"We love you too, Ma," Zion says. "Please stop fucking calling us now. We've got shit to do."
"Fine." She huffs again. We all know she isn't really annoyed, though. She loves the hell out of us. She just gives us a hard time because she can. I think it drives her a little nuts that we're all grown and on our own now. "But don't come crying to me when your business crashes and burns because you don't have anyone there to answer the phones."
"What am I?" Zion mutters. "Chopped liver?" He tends to hang back and manage the day-to-day of the office while Zayne and I deal with most of our clients. He prefers it that way. And he's far more fucking organized than Zayne and I are.
Ma ignores him. "Love you, boys. Bye."
"Love you too, Ma."
She hangs up on us.
Zion leans forward, hitting the button on the phone to end the call. He laughs quietly. "I swear to Christ, the only reason she wants to work here is because she can't stand not knowing what we're doing every moment of the day."
"Nah, it's because Dad told us not to hire her. It's driving her fucking crazy that we're listening to him instead of her," I say.
"Shit. Why didn't I think of that?"
"You have to have a brain to think," Zayne says, earning a middle finger from Zion.
"Just let her answer the phones when she's here." I shrug. "It'll make her feel like she's got one over on him, she'll feel included, and she'll quit bitching about it."
"That's actually fucking genius," Zion says, eyeing me like I'm brilliant. Which I'm not. Ma isn't that hard to figure out. He and Zayne are just idiots who shouldn't be allowed to call themselves adults.
"I have a meeting with a client."
"What client? What meeting?" Zayne gapes at me like I just told him the world is round. "When did this happen?"
"Two hours ago, at the gym. A musician."
Great. Now I sound like a game of fucking Clue.
Zayne narrows his eyes at me. "Is this a dick appointment?"
"What the fuck is a dick appointment?"
"An appointment in which someone gets dicked down."
"Jesus Christ," Zion and I both mutter.
"No one meets our type of clients at the gym at six in the morning." He shrugs. "That's where you meet someone you want to fuck."
I shoot him a dirty glare. "I don't have dick appointments, you idiot. And I'm not fucking anyone at the gym. Jesus Christ. I'm not fucking anyone, period. I was at the gym with Bryant. His cousin's sister-in-law needs security."
"Well, now I think you're dicking someone down," Zion mumbles. "Bryant doesn't have a cousin."
"First of all, I hate you both." I point between them, which only makes them grin. "Second of all, if you'd stop fucking talking, I could explain. Third, the next time one of you says dicked down, dicking down, or dick appointment, I'm quitting."
"I don't think he's dicking anyone down," Zayne stage-whispers to Zion. "He's cranky."
I throw up my hands and turn to stomp out of the office.
"Wait!" Zion says through laughter. "Where the fuck are you going, Gideon?"
"To my meeting!" I shout back, refusing to turn back around now. I'll fill them in after the meeting. When they aren't pissing me off.
"With who?"
"None of your fucking business!"
"Rule Two," he shouts back.
Son of a bitch. He would break out the rules we put in the employee handbook. We don't have many of them. Most of what we put in that handbook are stupid things like replacing the roll if you use the last of the toilet paper or sharing popcorn if you insist on making it in the microwave you know, the minor shit that makes working together easier.
But we treat everything in the handbook as inviolable. Especially the major rules, like not dating clients. Not going anywhere unless someone knows where the fuck you're going. Not doing anything dangerous without backup. And using your goddamn head.
I backtrack to his office. "Bryant did a DNA test and found out he has a cousin. Her sister-in-law is a musician here in Nashville. She's getting ready for some charity event and needs security. She has a stalker or something. I don't know all of the details yet. I'm going to meet her."
"He did a DNA test?" Zion asks.
"What kind of stalker?" Zayne wants to know.
I flip them both off, satisfied that I've met the requirements of the rule. They can stew with their questions until I get back. It serves their asses right for getting on my nerves this early in the morning.
"Gideon!" Zion shouts after me when I walk away again. "You're really not going to answer our questions?"
"Nope!" I shout back. "Peace out, bitches!"
"I still think this is a dick appointment!"
Why did God give me brothers? I just wanted a dog.