Chapter 5
five
I knew I wouldn’t sleep well.
I never do, after the tough jobs.
Yesterday’s assignment should have been an easy one, though. The fact that I grappled with it until my head hit the pillow had me questioning if I’d lost my edge. And launched me into one of my recurring nightmares.
Long shadows, stakes of wooden crates. A haze of smoke and the smell of gunpowder. Blood that runs between my feet.
This is all my fault.
I jerk awake, my body launching into a familiar, defensive position. The readout on my bedside alarm glows white in the spartan, darkened bedroom.
4:56.
Fucking hell.
I slept for maybe two hours—and none of it was restful. With a groan, I roll to my feet. I’ll have to do something about my sleeplessness soon, if I want to keep functioning the way I need to.
Doctors and Web MD articles like to blame my insomnia on my time in Special Ops. Or maybe my days working for the NYPD. Or, most recently, running security for a billion-dollar company.
Stress. I have stress.
But, actually, the constant need to stay alert has more to do with me than my circumstances.
Even before I had so much to worry about, I was never good at quieting my mind. Ironic, since “quiet” tends to be my most consistent personality trait. Right alongside “observant” and “intimidating.”
All positive attributes for someone in my line of work.
Serene silence greets me as I stretch the stiffness from my limbs. Stupid. Waste of perfectly good adrenaline, I grunt internally, my bleary eyes taking in the world outside my windows.
It’s as dark and peaceful as Manhattan gets. In fact, this view is the reason I chose my new apartment. The quiet calm of being so high above the rest of the city is still my favorite thing about it.
The building is also new and well-built. Solid. Soundproofed. It helps that it’s on the West Side, only a few blocks from the Hudson.
Each time I look around, I shake my head in disbelief. Just three and a half years ago, I was nobody. A former soldier. A disgraced police officer. Too quiet, really, to mix well with others in general.
A week after the incident that cost me my spot on the force, I sat down with a notepad, intending to write out all the qualifications I could put on a résumé. I wound up with one.
A driver’s license.
The next morning, I went to the nearest chauffeur service and took the first job they gave me. Turned out, some trust-fund kid in Manhattan needed a driver to cart him from Columbia University to his father’s development firm Downtown. A kid named Grayson Stryker.
It didn’t take long for me to realize he wasn’t a kid at all.
He was twenty-two with a sick father, a new girlfriend, and an empire to run.
He needed help. When he hired me from the car company, we became a team of sorts.
Three years later, he promoted me from his personal bodyguard to the director of security for his entire firm.
He also offered me more money than I ever thought I’d see. Enough to pay off all my mother’s debt, buy her a new home in Queens, and get myself a three-bedroom apartment in town.
The open-concept space has a modern, masculine feel to it. I like the aesthetic, but not as much as I like the clean sight lines. From my bed, with my bedroom doors wide open, I can just about see every inch of my new apartment. Which is the way I prefer it.
Even now that I’ve “made it,” part of me will always be looking over my shoulder.
Because I learned my lessons the hard way.
Not wanting to think of it, I reach for my dresser. It’s black, like all the clothing inside of it and the four guns laid out on top.
I throw on workout gear and strap my Glock to my chest, sliding a magazine of bullets into the pocket of my joggers. Thinking better of it, I add a second magazine to my other pocket.
“Cautious” bordering on “unreasonable”—more words from the mandatory psych report the NYPD conducted before I left my job. I didn’t like them, at the time. As the years go on, though, I get the sneaking suspicion their shrink may have had a point.
Hence, the knife built into the sole of my left trainer. And the Taser I keep in my gym bag.
It all comes with the job, of course. I am the security director for one of the largest and wealthiest companies in the city. Stryker & Sons has enemies. Which means I do, too.
Sometimes, even my workouts aren’t really breaks. I spend many mornings sparring with Grayson. He likes to feel prepared, should anyone ever come at him. Or, more importantly, should anyone ever come at his girl.
Ella Callahan—soon-to-be Stryker—deserves every bit of effort. She’s a sweet person, and she’s suffered enough to last her a lifetime. After witnessing just how determined her demons were, I take my duty as her protector very seriously.
Most mornings, I do my own workout before I go over to Ella and Grayson’s and kick the crap out of him. They had a date last night to celebrate their new wedding plans, though. He told me he would be “too tired” from “going out.”
More like exhausted from a sex marathon.
I thought I would get used to the pangs of envy by now. Instead, their romance serves as a constant—daily, hourly—reminder of what I want but might never have.
True love. Soulmates.
Maybe most single guys would be thoroughly nauseated by that. But I watched my parents orbit around each other for twenty-seven years before my dad was taken from my mom.
My eyes squeeze shut as I inhale through my nose, doing everything I can to not return to that night. Instead, I grab my keys off the kitchen counter and bolt out the door, jogging to hail the elevator down the hall. Within seconds, I stride into the building’s gym, finding it blessedly empty.
Normally, as soon as I hit the treadmill, my mind starts to clear.
Not today.
I didn’t have a choice, I argue with myself. I had to follow her.
Right now, Alice Moore poses the single greatest security threat to the Strykers.
Being their wedding planner means she’ll have access to Grayson’s credit cards, Ella’s schedule, their townhome, and our office.
Plus, she’s planning the actual event—if she were an untrustworthy person, she could easily sell them out on the day of the wedding.
God knows, there are plenty of people who would pay good money to harm them.
And even more people willing to go to any length to sensationalize their nuptials in the press.
Goddamn it, that’s true. So why does it feel like bullshit?
I’ve been repeating the facts to myself from the moment our eyes met in the coffee shop, but it hasn’t helped one bit.
I suspect the guilt gnawing at my guts might be more rooted in the way the light hit her clear blue eyes. Or how tightly her sweater pulled across her chest.
And the fact that I noticed both things. Dozens of times over.
Maybe I shouldn’t have approached her the way I did. It wasn’t strictly necessary—I’d already done a background check and tailed her for hours. I knew she wasn’t a risk. From what I could tell, the woman didn’t have the nerve to order the muffin she wanted, let alone scheme up sabotage.
But watching her squirm when her card declined made my insides itch—and I figured paying for her breakfast was the least I could do.
Making her smile was just a happy accident.
Liking her smile was unavoidable.
It won’t happen again, though.
I’m just not that lucky.