Chapter 3
ROMAN
I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate on work, and had paced back and forth for so long I was sure I’d wear a hole in the floor.
I still couldn’t believe she’d been that close…
our fingers brushed, she’d smiled at me…
my chest ached from the speed of my heartbeat, my cock wept at the memory, and my head hurt as I tried to resist climbing in my car so I could drive to that shitty little town Thomas dragged me to, in the hope of catching sight of her again.
But now I was back home. Hours away from her.
No cameras on her. No way of knowing she was okay.
What if I hadn’t been watching her finish work when that jerk turned up?
She was alone in the dark. Anything could have happened.
I hacked that man’s phone from the shadows and sent his wife the information he had on there that I was sure he didn’t want her to see.
I saved Hana. It was my job to protect her. I’d made a promise.
I shoved my hands into my jean pockets and stared up at the ceiling, my mind going back to that day… that phone call.
“Roman, I don’t have long. Shit, things are falling apart. I don’t think I’m safe. I need you to make me a promise. You owe me, remember? If it weren’t for me, you’d be in here with me. If I don’t get out of this… if I don’t make it, watch Hana.”
“I made a promise,” I said out loud to no one.
I needed my cameras back; not watching her was killing me.
I’d spent all night trying to convince myself she was just a job like the others, but the need I felt, the craving, the overwhelming urge to see her…
that wasn’t normal. And being that close last night and having to walk away, that was the worst kind of torture.
“Fuck it,” I muttered, reaching for my keys and heading towards the front door, knowing I needed to make a deal with the devil if I had any hope of getting what I wanted.
“Is he in?” I grunted at the receptionist, who sat outside the three large offices in the over-polished penthouse floor of Lanton House. The blonde looked up at me, her eyes widening as she took me in, and then a flirty smile spread across her lips. “Let me guess. Roman Black?”
I tilted my head. “How did you know?”
“He mentioned the beard.”
I raised an eyebrow, but her warm smile was incredibly disarming.
“Give me a second. Do you want to take a seat?” She pointed to a gun-metal grey sofa across the room, but I shook my head. She then pressed a buzzer on her desk. “Mr Lanton, he’s here.”
Minutes later, a door opened in one of the offices, and out walked a suit-wearing Thomas, looking more like a CEO of a bank rather than a deadly mercenary who ran an agency full of ex-servicemen and women who helped him rid the world of monsters.
He was followed by an equally scary looking grey-haired man, who offered me a two-fingered salute.
Sean Slone.
“Welcome to the team,” he muttered as he passed.
I’d worked with both of them in the past, but my conditions were always clear: I didn’t see them, they didn’t see me, and I remained freelance.
Me even being here meant Thomas was about to get the one wish he’d admitted again and again over the years—for me to come and work for him… with him. Face to face. No more hiding.
My gaze flicked to Thomas, who replied with a one shouldered shrug.
“I thought you’d retired years ago, old man,” I mumbled.
“I did, but Sean’s working on another job right now, so you’ve got me.”
He unfastened his suit jacket as if to remind me he was armed.
Not that he needed to. His reputation in this fucked up world we worked in preceded him—the man was always armed and ready for a fight.
Which, I guess, was why he was who he was.
But, despite knowing all this, I couldn’t keep my anger to myself, my hands fisting at my sides as I stared at him.
“Sorry for the attire. We had to deal with a little problem this morning, so I needed to look the part.” I frowned, wondering if I should ask what the problem was, but Thomas continued speaking. “So, Roman, what brings you here?”
I huffed and rolled my eyes, and he chuckled. “Can we go somewhere to talk?” I asked.
He held out his arm in the direction of the office he’d just come out of, and I stormed towards it, sitting in the chair on the other side of his desk while he closed the door.
“I have to say,” he started as he slipped off his jacket and took off his holster, placing it and the guns in a drawer next to where he sat.
“I thought I would have heard from you before now. I mean, it’s been a whole thirty-six hours since my little surprise.
” He sat, steepling his fingers beneath his chin.
“Really? And why would you think that?”
Thomas offered me a half smile, letting the silence settle between us as I seethed at his calm demeanour.
“What’s she doing here?” I fired out when I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Who?”
I leaned forward, grabbing the edge of the desk. “Hana. Who else? What did you do?”
“You mean the woman you’ve been obsessed with for almost ten years, the woman you hunted down for four of those years, and now you’re stalking.”
“The woman I’ve been watching quite happily. From. A. Distance. Because watching people is my job. How the hell did you even get her here?”
Thomas shrugged. “I’m a very rich man.”
I glared at him. “Good to know. Remind me that next time I need a loan.”
“I bought Pete’s Place and the cottage she’s living in, and then I put an advert in front of her that she couldn’t resist. Oh, and I might have arranged a surprise health inspection on the place she worked and had her building condemned, so it was the perfect time for her to make the move.”
“What the fuck?” I spluttered, not believing what I was hearing. “You bought a diner and a house for a woman you’ve never met. And you say I’m messed up?”
He rolled his eyes. “I never said I wasn’t, but I own my darkness. You hide in yours.”
I almost smiled at his honesty. “Why? Why is she here?”
“I like you, Roman. You remind me of me.” I laughed.
“And while I might look like a hard bastard, I have a giant heart. I waited such a long time for my Lissa, and I know what that feels like. I didn’t want you to have to wait for her, or worse, watch her from a distance anymore.
You helped me once. I wanted to do the same for you. ”
Curling my lips into an expression I wasn’t sure was a smile or a snarl, I continued to glare at him.
I knew all about his past. I’d been the one who fitted a tracker to his now-wife’s engagement ring that saved her life, but this was different.
I was different. This man faked his own death in the name of love.
I wasn’t that crazy. I shook my head. “Difference is, I’m not in love with her.
I’m watching out for her. I’m keeping a promise. Paying a debt.”
I tried not to think about how it felt to be in front of Hana last night.
To finally see her in person, to notice the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes and to have her smile at me—actually at me and not down the lens of a camera…
it hit me like a punch. The realisation that I was a goner for this woman.
My promise to watch her had morphed into something more, but I wasn’t admitting that to anyone, especially not Thomas.
“Well, I would bet my business on the fact you’re full of shit, and you’re so in love with the woman you can barely think straight.”
I pushed up from my chair, slamming my hands on the desk, but the fucker didn’t even flinch. “What the hell do you want, Thomas, because I know this isn’t about my supposed love life?”
“It’s simple. I want you to work for me. You’re the best, and we’re the best, so it’s a shame we don’t join forces.”
I knew it was what he wanted, but hearing him say it caused my temples to throb. “And? I know that can’t be it.”
“I want you to move here. Move here and work for me.”
“To this shithole?” I straightened, looking out the wall of windows over this tiny town.
I’d lived in the city for years. Lost in a sea of faces.
If I lived here, I would stand out like a sore thumb.
Thomas would drag me out of my solitude.
Demand I participate in real life when what I wanted was to stay holed up behind a screen. Life was so much easier that way.
I let out a sigh because now there was another thing to consider in his offer.
Hana was here.
I didn’t need to think about my answer. It was a no-brainer.
“If I say yes, I want eyes on her again. Cameras. I need to keep my promise and keep her safe. You owe me that.” Even saying it caused relief to flood my veins like ice water on a summer’s day.
“Walk with me.” Before I could answer, Thomas was moving from his office through reception to the lift. “I’m showing our guest downstairs,” he announced to the receptionist before holding his keycard to a reader on the wall.
“You have a meeting in fifteen,” she told him.
We stepped inside, and he held his keycard up again to another reader. The doors closed, but he didn’t press a floor number, and the elevator began moving anyway. I was confused a minute later, when the doors opened, and instead of being in reception as I’d expected, we were somewhere else.
“Welcome to the basement.”
I looked around, and it dawned on me. “Do you have some secret underground lair down here? What the fuck? How long’s this been here?” Disbelief hung in my tone as I took it all in.
“Since the building opened. You would have known that if you’d ever called in to our meetings with your camera instead of just doing audio.
” Despite how fucked off I was with him, I couldn’t contain my laugh.
“This place is state of the art. We have training rooms, an armoury, a shooting range, but we also have somewhere that’s much more you.
” He steered me towards a closed door, indicating for me to open it and look inside.
As I did, my mouth fell open.
“This place manages the comms and tech requirements for our jobs all over the world. We have tech that doesn’t even exist yet,” he winked, “and some of the most high-spec spyware.”
I tried not to show how excited I was at what I could see, but it was like asking a kid not to leap around inside Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
“And we also have some of the best people.” He walked away from me to where two men sat, one with headphones on, typing frantically, and the other staring intently at a bank of screens.
“Wren.” The man without the headphones looked up, his curly hair bouncing.
“Boss? We don’t usually see you in here. Something wrong?”
“This is Roman Black.”
Wren nudged the man next to him, who pulled off his headphones. “Babe, I’m in the middle of something…” He followed Wren’s gaze. “Boss.”
“Lev. I won’t keep you. You’ve spoken to him on the phone, but let me introduce you to Roman Black.
Roman, this is Wren and Lev West. Just in case you don’t remember their very specialist skills, Wren is our resident forensic analyst. You could have typed something on a computer before the internet even existed, and he’d be able to find evidence of it.
Lev is our hacker. He can write code in seconds and has got us out of more than a few tight corners with his fast thinking.
We have a team of about twenty tech people.
Each job I assign has a lead techie on it, and they bring in whatever support the guys in the field need. ”
“Nice to meet you both in person. You’re both—”
“Younger than you imagined. Yeah, we get that a lot,” Lev spat back before I could finish.
“I was going to say ‘impressive, but we can focus on your age if you want.” I smiled, hoping we wouldn’t get off on the wrong foot, but I didn’t get to find out because Thomas offered Wren and Lev a curt nod before taking me by the elbow and leading me back to the door we came in, ensuring we went the long route as if to tempt me with all the high end tech filling the large room.
“You want to fulfil your promise and go back to watching Hana, right? But the problem is, as you’ve seen recently, those two men can shut down every camera and live feed you have.
” I knew he’d done something to my camera feed, and his words were confirmation.
“In fact, they can run distraction on the cameras you have on all your clients.”
My head snapped to the side as I stared at him accusingly. “Are you blackmailing me? I come, work for you, or you destroy my business?”
Thomas held up his hands. “No. I’m just telling you how good the people who work for me are, and I’ve been watching your work for years.
I’m so impressed that I want you to come and run that part of my business.
If you say yes, then you can put cameras back on Hana.
Outside her house only. No more stalking.
That would be a condition of your employment. ”
“Like you’d know if I broke that rule.”
Without pause, he replied, “I know everything, Roman. You’d do well to remember that.”
I thought about it. Working on my own was great, but to be surrounded by all this tech and these experts excited me in a way I’d not felt… well, ever. And I’d get to watch Hana again. Just to check she was safe, I told myself.
“You know, I do all right on my own. You’d have to pay me a pretty penny to make this worth my while.”
He pulled out his phone and typed something before turning the screen to face me. I almost choked when I saw the number. “This is what I pay. I expect a lot—loyalty, discretion; this is a dangerous job, but you already know that—and I’m happy to reward the people who give me that.”
I huffed out a breath. “Fine, but I get to re-establish those cameras tonight, and no one—not even you—gets to see the footage.”
“Deal. You start on Monday. A minimum of a twelve-month contract. I don’t want you walking away when you get pissy about working well with others.”
“You’re a dick.”
“I’m your boss now, so you can call me Mr Dick.”