Chapter 5
Kane
T he silence in the car was suffocating—thick with tension, old history, and a heated awareness that neither of us was willing to acknowledge.
Charlotte sat in the passenger seat, her body angled away from me, her gaze fixed on the Vegas streets sliding past her window like she’d rather be anywhere else. Which made two of us.
Angelica had driven her to Noble and Associates, which meant Charlotte was stuck riding with me. Close quarters. No escape. Just the two of us for an undetermined amount of time and an ocean of unspoken words filling every inch of space between us.
After swinging by my place to pick up my go bag, which I always kept packed and ready for situations like this, I kept my eyes on the road, my hands steady on the wheel, my expression locked down tight. Professional. Controlled. Exactly what this situation required.
But beneath that carefully maintained exterior, I was anything but composed.
I was aware of Charlotte in ways I had no right to be. The subtle scent of her perfume—floral with that hint of vanilla I remembered far too well—drifted across the console and triggered memories I’d spent two years trying to bury.
My grip tightened on the steering wheel.
The anger was there, simmering just beneath the surface where it always lived now.
But it wasn’t alone. Tangled up with the suppressed bitterness was an awareness that hummed through my body every time she shifted in her seat, every time the sunlight caught the auburn fire of her hair, every time I caught a glimpse of her profile from the corner of my eye.
I still wanted her. Even after everything, after the betrayal and the destruction and two years of carefully constructed hatred, some traitorous part of me still fucking wanted her.
And I hated that she had that much power over me.
Hated that my body remembered what my mind was desperate to forget.
Hated that even now, with all the reasons I had to despise her, I couldn’t stop myself from noticing the curve of her neck, the fullness of her lips, the way her fingers fidgeted in her lap like she was just as affected by this close proximity as I was.
She’d helped destroy everything I’d built. My career. My reputation. My relationships. My sense of who I was and what my life was supposed to look like. One story with her byline attached, and it had all come crashing down.
I knew on some level that it wasn’t entirely her fault.
Whoever had chosen me as the patsy was the real architect of my destruction.
Someone inside the department with enough power to forge my handwriting, to get other officers to testify against me, to build a case so convincing that even the people who knew me best had started to doubt my integrity.
Some other reporter would have found the story eventually.
The corruption had been real, even if my involvement in it wasn’t.
But she could have dug deeper. She could have questioned the evidence, looked for inconsistencies, trusted what she’d seen of me at the club and realized the man who’d treated her with such care couldn’t possibly be the thief and liar her story made me out to be.
Instead, she’d written the article. Published my name alongside words like “corruption” and “criminal conspiracy.” Let the world believe I was guilty without ever once reaching out to ask for my side of the story.
Just like everyone else, she’d been instantly ready to believe the worst of me.
My brother Kohen had coughed awkwardly when the story broke, shifting his weight like he couldn’t quite meet my eyes. Well, you know how careful women have to be around men these days , he’d said, as if that explained everything. She barely knew you, bro. I don’t really blame her.
Right. Easy for him to say. He was too busy protecting his own position on the force to stand up for his brother while I was being run out on a rail.
Family dinners had been strained for months after that—not that we had many of them anymore.
Eventually, Mom and Dad had given up trying to broker peace between us.
And after I’d been pushed out of the force, I hadn’t felt much like seeing my parents at all because I couldn’t stand the disappointment in their eyes.
They believed I was innocent. They were among the few people who did. But their faith in me was tangled up with confusion and frustration. They didn’t understand why I hadn’t hired a lawyer, hadn’t fought back, hadn’t done something to clear my name.
How could I explain that the person who’d framed me had enough pull to turn my own colleagues into witnesses against me?
That fighting back would only paint a bigger target on my back?
That whoever had orchestrated my downfall had the power to do far worse than destroy my career if I pushed too hard?
My parents saw my silence as giving up. And maybe they were right.
Maybe I should have fought harder, risked more, refused to go quietly into the night.
But I’d seen what happened to cops who crossed the wrong people.
I’d investigated enough “accidents” and “suicides” to know that some battles weren’t worth fighting if you wanted to keep breathing.
So congratulations to whoever had framed me. They’d cost me my reputation, my job, my family, and my... whatever Charlotte had been. My entire life lay in ruins, and it was never going to come back together again the way it had been before the scandal.
Not that Charlotte had ever really been mine. But she could have been. Would have been, if things had been different.
And now here she was, sitting two feet away from me, needing my help. Wrapped up in another dangerous story with a powerful enemy, in a situation that could get her killed if she wasn’t careful.
I was tempted to ask her if she was sure Calloway was her man. To throw her own rush to judgment back in her face. Are you certain this time, Charlotte? Or are you just as eager to destroy another innocent person’s life?
That was the petty, resentful side of me because before we’d left the office I’d read her files.
Everything she’d gathered, every piece of evidence, every connection she’d traced.
And I had to admit, grudgingly, that what she’d compiled was compelling.
Damning, even. This wasn’t a case of jumping to conclusions.
This was methodical, careful investigative work that painted a picture of a monster hiding behind a philanthropist’s smile.
Which meant putting my personal feelings aside and doing the job I’d agreed to do.
Keeping her safe. I was going to do this assignment right, just like I’d done every other assignment since Sutton had thrown me a lifeline.
I was going to keep Charlotte Massey alive, and when this was over I was going to walk away.
And this time, I was going to make damn sure she stayed out of my life for good.
A short while later we arrived at Charlotte’s place. Her apartment was in a modest complex on the east side of town, clean and well-maintained, but a far cry from the high-rise luxury I’d somehow always pictured her in based on the sophisticated woman I’d met at the club.
“I assumed exposing people for a living paid better than this,” I said in a sarcastic tone as I followed her through the door and set my bag on the couch.
She shot me a withering look over her shoulder, her long auburn hair swinging with the movement, but didn’t respond to my snarky comment. “I already did a sweep for bugs.”
I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t help but check out her spectacular ass in the black jeans she was wearing as she walked away. “That’s cute.”
“I’m serious.” She dropped her keys on a small table by the entrance and turned to face me, arms folded across her chest, and yeah, my traitorous gaze went there, too. “I know what I’m doing, Kane. This isn’t my first dangerous story.”
I arched a brow, knowing I was being antagonistic but unable to help myself. “And yet you came to us for protection. So maybe acknowledge that you don’t know everything.”
Her glare could have melted steel. I held it without flinching, a petty satisfaction warming my chest at having gotten under her skin.
I had to admit that despite the apartment being small, it was thoughtfully decorated.
Black-and-white photographs of architectural landmarks hung on the walls in sleek frames.
A Persian-style rug anchored the living area, adding warmth to the neutral furniture.
One wall had been painted a deep burgundy—an accent that elevated the whole space in a way that surprised me.
Under different circumstances, I might have complimented her taste or asked about the buildings in the photographs, whether she’d visited them herself or just admired them from afar.
Might have imagined myself here with her, sharing takeout on that comfortable-looking couch, learning all the little details about her life that I’d been so eager to discover.
But these weren’t different circumstances. And I wasn’t here to get to know her.
I swept the apartment methodically, checking the obvious places first—light fixtures, smoke detectors, the backs of picture frames—then moving on to more subtle locations. Behind outlet covers. Inside the cable box. Underneath furniture.
She was right. No hidden listening devices. Which meant either Calloway’s men hadn’t gotten around to surveillance yet, or they’d already gathered everything they needed to target her directly.
The second option sent a chill down my spine.
When you ran an operation like sex trafficking, you had two types of problems. The first were the immediate threats—the drunk customer who saw something he shouldn’t have, the local cop who got too curious, the girl who thought she could run.
Those you eliminated quickly, brutally, before they could cause any real damage.