“Goddamn it!” Charlotte Roth slammed the landline phone down and stood from behind her desk laden with paperwork and folders. Sifting through three stacks of files, she found the one she needed. Grabbing her cell phone, purse, and car keys, she headed for the reception area of the Florida Department of Corrections, Tampa Probation and Parole office. Her holstered weapon and her DOC shield were attached to the belt of her pants. “I’m heading to booking. I’ll be back later.”

The department’s receptionist, Julie Baxter, glanced up from her computer screen. “Which one got arrested?”

“Hector de la Cruz. Got caught up in a stolen property sting, the rat-bastard.”

“You called it,” Julie replied as she referenced her desk calendar. “And with three months to spare.”

Over the years, Charlotte had gotten pretty good at guessing which of her ex-convicts would end up back in prison for violating the terms of their parole. De la Cruz had been an easy one, and even though she’d estimated he’d be screwing up within six months of his release, she was still a little surprised he’d done it so soon. His arrest just made her Monday morning even crappier. She’d already been irritated when she woke up and remembered today was her thirty-fifth birthday—she hated birthdays. To top it off, a bunch of women she knew were throwing her a party tonight. She didn’t mind the festivities as long as they were for someone else. But her friends had insisted on taking her out for food and drinks tonight, and in the end, it had been less of a hassle to accept than deal with their constant badgering. She’d even tried to thwart their plans by playing the Domme card, but it hadn’t done much good outside of the club they all played in. She must be getting soft in her old age. Then again, she preferred dominating men, not women.

By the time she reached the Tampa PD’s booking department, on the other side of the city, she had a pounding headache. After parking in the monitored lot, she found the bottle of Tylenol she kept in the center console between the front seats and popped two in her mouth. She washed them down with water from a small bottle she kept in her purse. Grabbing the file, she climbed out of her Chevy Tahoe and strode across the lot. The summer heat was returning, and by the time she reached the door, she was covered in a fine sheen of perspiration. Thankfully, they’d gotten the air conditioning fixed since the last time she’d been here, because a cold blast cooled her down immediately as the door closed behind her, causing goose bumps to pebble over her skin.

The older police officer sitting at the desk behind bulletproof glass waved to her. “Hey, Charlotte, long time no see. How’s my favorite parole officer?”

“I’m in a pissy mood and on my witch’s broom today, Dan.”

The man snorted, then grinned. “When aren’t you? At least you didn’t bring the flying monkeys with you. Who’re you here for?”

“Hector de la Cruz. Detective Webb called me about a stolen property sting.”

“Yeah, they brought in a bunch of them.” He checked a piece of paper in front of him. “Let’s see. Here he is—still in holding cell four, waiting to go for his arraignment.” A buzzer sounded as he unlocked the door leading to the containment area for her. “Go on back.”

“Thanks, Dan.”

Having been there numerous times, she knew exactly where she was going. She found Isaac Webb and several other detectives in the area where they processed the paperwork for their arrests. Between them chatting with each other, radios squawking, prisoners complaining their rights had been violated—yeah, sure—and phones ringing, it wasn’t surprising Webb didn’t notice her until she dropped the file on the desk he was sitting at. His head snapped up. “Oh, hey, Charlotte. Thanks for coming so quickly. We’re getting ready to run de la Cruz and a few others up to court. I’ll put him at the top of the list, so we can get you out of there as soon as possible.”

She shook her head. “Thanks, Isaac, but that’ll be impossible. Judge Hard-ass is on the bench today for arraignments.” The man’s name was Phil Hardacre, but due to his courtroom demeanor, everyone called him by the moniker he’d earned, yet only when he wasn’t within hearing distance. The bastard had no trouble throwing around the words “contempt of court” no matter which side of the law you were on.

The handsome black man groaned and rolled his soft brown eyes. “Fuck.” He glanced over his shoulder to where the other detectives were finishing their own paperwork. “Hey, Duggan, next time check the damn court rotation before you schedule a sting, man. We’ll be in court all afternoon with Hard-ass.”

More groans and curses filled the room. One of the men crumpled up a piece of paper and wailed it at Duggan’s head. He batted it away before it made contact. “Don’t blame me. The lieutenant picked the date. I had nothing to do with it.”

There were more groans and wads of paper thrown across the room. Ignoring everyone else, she turned back to Webb. “So, how’d you get roped into this detail?” The man was a homicide detective, so having him take part in a property-crimes sting was a little out of the ordinary, but not unheard of.

“Took it for an overtime shift. Marian’s birthday is coming up in two months, and I want to surprise her with a trip to Hawaii. She’s always wanted to go.”

Charlotte grinned at the mention of his girlfriend of three years. “Any chance you’re planning on making an honest woman out of her?”

Webb chuckled. “As a matter of fact, I already picked out the ring.”

Her eyebrows shot up—she’d only been busting his chops. “Seriously?”

“Yup . . . with a kid on the way, the time’s right.”

“That’s great, Isaac! Congratulations!”

A sappy grin spread across his face. “I love her two kids like they were my own, but they’re both girls. I’m hoping this will be a boy. But either way, it’s gonna be awesome. I didn’t have the whole infant bonding thing going on with the girls. They were five and six when Marian and I met. And let me tell you, they’re over the moon that a new baby is on the way.”

Pulling out his wallet, he showed her a recent picture of him, Marian, and the girls. “That’s Crystal on the left, and Reba on the right.”

“They’re adorable.” A flash of something she couldn’t quite identify swirled in her gut. She loved kids, but didn’t think she’d ever have one of her own. First off, she hadn’t met anyone she was willing to have a long-term relationship with—it had to be someone willing to be topped—and even then, she was scared of bringing a child into this cruel world. It was impossible to watch a kid twenty-four hours a day and cushion them in bubble wrap so they never got hurt. Charlotte knew firsthand no one was ever really safe, even in their own home.

Handing him back the photo, she pushed the wayward thoughts from her mind. She steeled herself to spend the rest of the day in court, then put on a fake smile for her party later on. If the women who were taking her out weren’t looking forward to a girl’s night out without their significant others, she would’ve found a way to cancel. But the Domme in her couldn’t disappoint them. Besides, after dealing with mostly dirtbags all day, she needed a distraction—an entertaining one at that.

* * *

“You really don’t mind?”

Mike Donovan grinned at his employee, Jennifer Mullins. “Not at all, Baby-girl,” he assured her, using the nickname her surrogate uncles had given her when she’d been an infant. The six men who made up the original team at Trident Security had all served with Jenn’s father on SEAL Team Four. When her parents had been murdered a few years ago, she’d come to live with her godfather, Ian Sawyer, one of the two brothers who owned the private security company. “In this business, employees come and go. I always knew you’d be moving on to bigger and better things someday. In fact, I never quite understood why you came to work here in the first place. It’s not like Ian’s hurting for money.”

Jenn was finishing up her third year of college, majoring in Social Work. She had the smarts and personality for a career helping others. “Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Marie always made sure their kids knew how to earn a living, and my parents had the same philosophy.” Chuck and Marie Sawyer were Mike’s brother Jake’s future in-laws, as he was engaged to their youngest son, Nick. Jake also worked for Nick’s brothers, Ian and Devon, after serving in the Navy SEALs with them. Chuck was a self-made, real estate billionaire, while his wife was a skilled plastic surgeon who often traveled to foreign countries with the organization Operation Smile. The couple considered Jenn their granddaughter. “Nothing worth having is handed to you on a silver platter, as Grandpa Chuck always says. I have a trust fund with the money from my parents’ life insurance policies and the sale of the house in Virginia, but that’s for my college tuition and maybe a house someday. And it wouldn’t have felt right sponging off Uncle Ian—he’s already done so much for me. Working here also took my mind off my parents’ deaths when I first moved to Tampa. I love everyone that works at Donovan’s, and it’s going to be hard to say goodbye, but I can’t pass up the social work internship. I’ll actually be in Kayla’s office, so it’ll be fun.”

Kayla London and her wife, Roxy, were friends of the Sawyers and members of The Covenant, a BDSM club the brothers also owned. Jake was a member of the club too, something Mike never quite understood. His younger sibling had gotten into the lifestyle in his teens. At first, Mike had thought it was a gay thing, but now he knew better. However, he still didn’t get it. Gone were his thoughts that it harbored abusive behavior, but he couldn’t figure out why Jake and the others were—wired, he supposed the word was—differently. As long as no one was harmed, he guessed, then to each their own.

Mike leaned back in the desk chair in his small office at the back of the pub and smiled at Jenn as she stood in the doorway. “Well, we loved having you work here and everyone will miss you too, but you better stop in as often as possible. Are you staying for Charlotte’s birthday party after your shift?”

Jenn shook her head. “No, I’ve got a term paper due on Wednesday and another on Friday. Thanks again for everything, Mike. I’ll help train whoever you get to replace me.” She had given him three weeks’ notice, so that was plenty of time to hire and train someone new.

A ding sounded in the kitchen, signaling an order up, and Jenn glanced over her shoulder. “That’s probably mine.”

“Go—I’ve got someone coming in to interview for Mario’s position. Let me know when he gets here.”

“Okay.”

As she hurried toward the kitchen, Mike turned back to the resume in front of him. The night-time sous chef had up and quit without warning, so Mike was scrambling to fill the position before the weekend rolled around again. His daytime sous chef was covering both shifts for the overtime, but he wasn’t going to be able to do that for long. The applicant coming in for the interview had been on a list of ex-felons who’d done their time and were looking for jobs. It was a local program to help them integrate back into society, and Mike had hired two other reformed felons to work in the kitchen in the past. One was still there after three years, while the other hadn’t worked out, but, after batting .500, Mike was willing to give someone else a shot. Jose Perez had apparently been assigned to the prison kitchen and learned a lot about food preparation during his two-year sentence for auto theft. From what the career organizer had told Mike, the guy had a fiancée and kid and had gotten involved with a chop-shop to provide for them. It was an all too common scenario for high school dropouts with no skills for work that was legal—they turned to a life of crime just to have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. It could be a risk hiring an ex-con, but Mike was a firm believer that most people deserved a second chance after they’d screwed up big time. He was a prime example.

Back when he was attending the local community college, his younger brother Jake had been the big man on campus at their high school. The starting quarterback for the football team and straight-A student, Jake had colleges throwing all sorts of incentives at him to get him to sign with them. Meanwhile, Mike had been a B-student with no outstanding skills, who didn’t excel in any sport, so he ended up being second best in his father’s eyes. His destiny had been to eventually take over Donovan’s Pub, the business his father and grandfather before him had owned. But a huge part of him had been extremely jealous of his younger brother back then. A shelf above the bar had been filled with sport trophies Jake had won throughout his junior and senior high school years, in more than just football, and Mike had hated every single one of them. So when he’d accidentally found out seventeen-year-old Jake was gay, he did the worst thing he’d ever done in his life—he told their bigoted father. At first, Sean Donovan had called his eldest son a liar, but then he’d stormed out of the house and headed for the adult video and toy store where Mike had seen Jake kissing another guy before going inside. What Mike hadn’t known at the time was in the basement of the store was an underground BDSM club. When Jake and his boyfriend, Max, had come back out two hours later, Sean followed Max home where he’d beaten the living shit out of the guy, putting him in the hospital. The elder Donovan then returned home and tried to beat the gay out of his son. That night had altered Jake’s future in a way Mike had never expected, and he’d regretted telling the old man from the moment the words had come out of his mouth. After recovering from the assault, Jake graduated two months later, threw his full-ride to Rutgers University in his father’s face, and joined the Navy, all on the same afternoon. The next day, all those trophies disappeared from the shelf in Donovan’s. Mike had found them in a box in the back of the pub’s overcrowded store room years later, after his father had died and he’d taken over the business.

Despite not knowing Mike had been responsible for their father finding out Jake was gay, the younger Donovan had distanced himself from his brother. Occasionally, he’d come home for the holidays, but mainly to see their mother. If he’d spoken more than a dozen words to their father for the rest of the old man’s life, that would be a stretch. When Jake moved back to Tampa with his teammates a few years ago, he and Mike began to see each other almost every week, but there was still a huge gap between them. Mike had finally come clean to his brother when he realized what had happened all those years ago was negatively affecting Jake’s relationship with Nick, thinking Jake would never want to speak to him again after his confession. As it turned out, instead of driving them further apart, it had brought them closer together, a fact Mike would always be grateful for. Shortly after, he pulled out the box of trophies and added them to a display case he’d put near the hostess stand, which was filled with the ones the pub’s softball team had won over the past six years since he’d sponsored them.

A knock on the door had him glancing up to see Jenn standing there again. “Your interview is here. I told him to have a seat in the party room. He seems like a nice guy, just a little nervous.”

Mike stood and grinned. “Thanks, Ms. Social Worker.”

She chuckled. “I like the sound of that.”