Chapter 4 #3
Sutton sighed—the resigned sound of a man who’d known exactly what I was going to say but had felt obligated to try anyway.
“Your life is yours to risk, Ms. Massey. But if you want our protection, you need to accept that Kane is in charge of your security. He makes the calls. He decides when and if the situation has become too dangerous to stay in the vicinity. And if he determines you need to leave the city, you leave. Non-negotiable.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Sutton held up a hand.
“Additionally, I believe your concern about police involvement in this situation with Calloway is warranted,” he went on.
“Given the resources Calloway has access to, it would be naive to assume he doesn’t have officers on his payroll.
Kane has intimate knowledge of how the department operates, which makes him uniquely qualified to anticipate those kinds of threats. ”
“Oh, she knows,” Kane muttered under his breath, and just loud enough for me to hear.
I shot him a glare. “Yes, thank you. I’m well aware of your history.”
His gaze met mine, cold and unreadable. “And you made sure the whole city knew it, too, didn’t you?” he said quietly.
The accusatory words hung in the air between us. For a moment, the professional masks slipped, and I saw something raw in Kane’s expression—hurt buried beneath anger, betrayal festering under the cold exterior.
Something twisted in my chest. Something that felt uncomfortably like guilt.
But why should I feel guilty? I’d reported the truth. I’d followed the evidence. If he’d been innocent, surely that would have come out. Surely someone would have—
Angelica made a small noise that might have been amusement poorly disguised as a cough. When I glanced at her, she was practically vibrating in her seat, her expression a mixture of fascination and barely contained curiosity over my situation with Kane.
I frowned at her. Of course she would find this entertaining.
She knew how I had felt about Kane and how devastated I was when I thought that once again, I had been fooled by a manipulator.
But she’d always insisted Kane could be innocent, that my initial gut feeling about him could have been right, that maybe he had been set up.
But, I had done my due diligence. I had followed the evidence trail, interviewed witnesses, and was certain that the story was solid.
Now she looked like she’d been handed front-row seats to the drama of the century.
I was going to kill her later.
“Whatever history exists between the two of you,” Sutton said, his voice cracking through the tension like a whip, “I trust that you will both conduct yourselves professionally.” His gaze swept between us, sharp and uncompromising.
“A woman is dead. More lives may be at stake. Personal grievances have no place here. Am I understood?”
His tone left no room for argument. I found myself straightening instinctively, feeling like a student caught misbehaving by a particularly formidable teacher.
“Of course, sir,” Kane said, and there was genuine contrition in his voice. “I apologize. It won’t happen again.”
“I—yes. I’m sorry.” I swallowed my pride and nodded. “You’re right. This is more important than... whatever else.”
Sutton studied us both for a long moment, then he gave a short nod, apparently satisfied.
“Good. Now, here’s how this will work. As long as you insist on remaining in the city, you will defer to Kane’s judgment on all matters of security.
He will be with you at all times—and I mean all times, Ms. Massey.
You don’t go anywhere without him. You don’t meet with sources without him.
You don’t make decisions about your safety without consulting him first. Can you accept those terms? ”
Every independent bone in my body wanted to argue. I’d built my entire life and career on being self-sufficient, on not needing anyone, on proving that I could handle whatever the world threw at me.
But Ruth’s face flashed through my mind, reminding me what Calloway and his men were truly capable of.
“I can accept those terms,” I said quietly.
“Ms. Massey’s safety is my top priority,” Kane said. “Whatever our personal history, I’m not going to let her get hurt. You have my word.”
He sounded like he meant it. He sounded like the Kane I remembered, earnest and protective, the kind of man who would throw himself between someone and danger without a second thought.
The kind of man I’d thought he was, before everything fell apart.
I swallowed hard against the sudden tightness in my throat.
Sutton gave an approving nod. “I’ll expect regular progress reports. And Ms. Massey—”
He fixed me with a paternal look that would normally have made me bristle. I’d had a father already, a terrible one, and I’d made a good life for myself without any help from him. I didn’t need or want a replacement.
But I didn’t miss the flicker of genuine concern in Sutton’s expression, devoid of condescension, that made me pause instead of push back. This wasn’t a man given to sentimentality. His worry felt legitimate, which somehow made it more frightening than all of Angelica’s protests combined.
“I expect you to listen to Kane’s instructions,” Sutton continued. “He knows what he’s doing. We bring him in specifically for cases that require... discretion. Cases where normal channels can’t be trusted.”
Like the police. I understood.
It made a bitter kind of sense. If Kane had been involved in corruption at the department, he’d know better than anyone how deep those roots could run, how easily a man with money could buy loyalty from people who were supposed to uphold the law.
He’d know the warning signs, the tells, the ways dirty cops covered their tracks.
It left a bad taste in my mouth, trusting my safety to someone who might have committed exactly the kinds of crimes I’d exposed.
But if he was working here, maybe that meant he’d turned over a new leaf.
Maybe he was trying to make amends, to use his knowledge of the system’s failures for something good.
Or maybe I was just making excuses because some pathetic part of me still wanted to believe he wasn’t what the evidence said he was.
Either way, I couldn’t deny he probably knew what he was doing. And with Ruth dead and a target painted on my back, I needed every advantage I could get.
“I understand,” I said politely. “I’ll cooperate fully.”
Sutton’s eyebrow rose slightly, as if he doubted that very much but was too professional to say so. “See that you do. Kane, she’s all yours. I’ll be in touch.”
He left the conference room, and Angelica popped up from her seat.
“I’m going to go to the ladies’ room so the two of you can have…a moment,” she said, as if sensing that Kane and I might need a private word after being thrown together after all this time.
She followed Sutton out of the conference room. The door clicked shut behind them, and suddenly it was just me and Kane, alone in a room that felt far too small.
The silence stretched between us, heavy with everything unsaid.
I looked at him, trying to reconcile the man before me with the one I’d known. He stood rigid, jaw tight, shoulders tense beneath the crisp white fabric of his shirt. Controlled. Contained. Dangerous.
And devastatingly male.
I was suddenly hit with an acute awareness.
I didn’t want to notice the breadth of his chest, the strength in those forearms, the way his commanding presence only made him seem more powerful.
I didn’t want to remember what those hands felt like on my body, how that voice had wrapped around me like velvet, how safe I’d once felt standing exactly where I was now in front of him.
But I was betrayed by memories that didn’t care what I wanted. My pulse kicked hard. Heat slid low in my stomach, immediate, unwanted, infuriating.
He lifted his eyes to mine, and the air in the room seemed to change. The anger was still there, but beneath it was something else. Recognition. Hunger. The same volatile pull that had sparked between us the first night we met.
God. It was still there.
Two years of resentment, scandal, and unanswered questions should have killed it. Instead, it had sharpened into something hotter and far more dangerous.
His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes, and the tiny movement sent a rush of warmth through me so sudden I nearly hated him for it.
“Kane—” I started, not even sure what I was going to say.
“We should discuss logistics,” he cut me off, his voice flat and professional.
“I’ll need access to your apartment to assess the security situation.
I’ll also need a complete list of everyone you’ve spoken to about this investigation, every source, every contact.
And I’ll need to know your schedule for the next two weeks. ”
So that was how it was going to be. Strictly business. No acknowledgment of what we’d been to each other, no space for questions or explanations.
Maybe that was for the best. Maybe it was easier this way.
“Fine,” I said, matching his tone. “I can have that information ready within the hour.”
“Good.” He finally looked at me, and the impact of those dark eyes hit me like a physical blow. “One more thing, Ms. Massey.”
I lifted my chin. “What?”
“I’m doing this job because someone has to keep you alive, and I’m the best person for it. That’s the only reason. Nothing more.”
The words were cold. Final. Reducing me down to nothing more than what I was. A client.
But I’d been a journalist long enough to know when someone was trying too hard to convince themselves of something. And the heat I’d seen flash in his eyes when our hands touched, the way his gaze had lingered on my lips for just a fraction of a second before he’d looked away—that wasn’t nothing.
Whatever Kane Adair felt about me, it wasn’t indifference.
The thought should have been unsettling.
We were supposed to be adversaries now, two people on opposite sides of a betrayal that had destroyed his life and haunted mine.
There was no room for anything else. No space for the attraction that still simmered between us like banked coals waiting for a spark.
But as his gaze held mine, his body all rigid control and barely leashed anger, a spark of defiance flared inside me. A challenge. A refusal to let him reduce me to nothing more than an assignment, a problem to be managed.
If Kane Adair thought he could freeze me out, he had another thing coming.
I’d built my career on getting people to open up, on finding the truth beneath the surface.
And whether he liked it or not, there were truths between us that had never been spoken.
Questions that had festered for two years.
Accusations left hanging in silence. The undeniable, inconvenient fact that whatever had existed between us hadn’t died as neatly as it should have.
I refused to look away and felt a hot, reckless tension stir beneath the animosity between us. Because for all the anger rolling off him, for all the bitterness we both felt for different reasons, the chemistry hadn’t died. It had only changed shape.
Two years ago he’d made me melt.
Now he looked like he might set me on fire.