Chapter Three
Alpha
Staring at the laptop screen, not believing what I was seeing, I heard the graceful click of her heels in the hall before she walked into my office.
“The new client is in the conference room with Zane. Are you going to join them?”
Her reserved voice going straight to my cock like it always did, I glanced up at the woman I loved more than life itself.
She frowned. “What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t keep this from her. At best, it would rain down a shitstorm of emotions I never wanted to put her through.
Worst-case scenario, it would destroy her trust and derail everything we’d built.
But I’d never outright lied to her, and I wasn’t going to start now.
Buying myself a few seconds to cauterize the blow before I landed it, I stood and aimed at another truth.
“Besides another man’s name passing your lips? ”
Color flushed high on her cheekbones as she took in my full height. “It’s Zane. Since when have you been jealous of him?”
“I’m not jealous.” We both knew who owned her, which was half the problem with the image currently sitting on my computer screen.
She raised an eyebrow at me in an eerily similar manner to how her brother used to. “Then why mention it?”
“Because I only like hearing you say my name.” Momentarily dropping my guard, I visibly exhaled in frustration. “And I was buying myself a few seconds.”
The other eyebrow lifted. “For?”
Stunningly beautiful, my wife stood with an air of regalness she’d come by the hard way.
She was no longer the smiling, carefree little sister of my best friend, who’d skinned her knees more times than I’d seen her cry.
She wasn’t the motherless five-year-old daughter of a Naval Vice Admiral.
She wasn’t the young girl who’d looked at me like I was the missing link when we’d first met as kids.
She was the woman who’d buried her father and brother when she was still a teenager, put herself through college, and forgave me for being an asshole on the worst day of her life.
I owed this woman my best.
Holding her gaze when all I wanted was my hands on her, I turned my laptop around. “Your brother didn’t die on that mission ten years ago.”
She looked at the screen. Then her guarded expression turned carefully blank.
I gave her intel I’d never shared. “There was never any DNA confirmation after his death.”
Her gaze didn’t meet mine. “I know.”
“You looked into it.”
She glanced up. “So did you.”
“Several times.” It’s what I did. Alpha Elite Security wasn’t the best defense contractor in the business because I let shit go.
I followed through. Especially when it was family.
Hers. Mine. Petty Officer Second Class William “Bravo” Nilsen wasn’t my blood brother, but he’d been my best friend, my brother-in-arms, and the only reason I was standing where I was.
She looked back at the computer screen. “You’ve had November’s program searching for him.”
I didn’t deny it. “Bravo’s was the first image I entered after November loaded his proprietary software onto the servers. I didn’t get a hit until ten minutes ago.”
“So you’ve been searching for him for years.”
It wasn’t a question, and she wasn’t looking at me. “Yes.”
Reaching out with a slender hand that’d been wrapped around my cock in the shower this morning, she shut the laptop. “My brother is dead.” Pivoting, she aimed for the door.
“Maila.” Short, forceful, I barked her name, shamelessly using my dominance on her.
Pausing, she glanced over her shoulder.
“The explosion was almost a decade ago. Your brother’s stayed off the grid this long. Getting caught now on a security camera was deliberate. You don’t want to know why?” Because I sure as fuck did.
“Whoever that is, it’s not my brother.”
I knew what she was implying. If it was Bravo, he wouldn’t be the same person.
My instincts, though, were telling me otherwise.
Tier One operators didn’t fundamentally change.
SEALs didn’t fucking change. This was a tactical move.
I was sure of it. Except if that was all I had, a gut feeling, I’d never put Maila through this.
But this wasn’t about conjecture. November wasn’t only a cunning hacker with a preternatural skill set.
He’d also been the Air Force’s best Cyberspace Operations Officer.
Now, he was my secret weapon. The programs he developed for AES were unmatched, and his facial rec software was no different.
The eighty nodal points of facial recognition and a ninety-nine-point-eighty-eight percent accuracy rate was a statistical probability I’d bet my life on more than once.
“I can’t let this go unchecked.” Because the Bravo I knew, the SEAL I’d served with, the man who’d been raised by a Vice Admiral, he’d just left a goddamn calling card.
“And I can’t stop you.” My wife walked out of my office.