There was only so long Ada’s stomach would allow her to stay tucked away in her room before she was forced to go upstairs.

More so, this wasn’t something they had covered during their brief talk when they’d first arrived.

Was she free to do as she pleased so long as she remained in this house? Did she need his permission to eat? Was there some sort of protocol she was meant to follow? This was unfamiliar territory, but the thought of asking him for anything made her want to vomit. Or she would have if her stomach hadn’t chosen that moment to growl a little too loudly and forced her off the bed and heading upstairs.

She hesitated once she reached the landing, expecting to find him hovering, anticipating the moment she came out of hiding, but to her surprise, he was nowhere to be found.

Huh. Good for her.

As she entered the kitchen, she wondered what she would find. In her experience, most men didn’t keep a very diverse fridge, and considering they’d both flown down here together, he wouldn’t have had time to buy groceries, but she blinked in surprise when she found it full. With enough food to feed an army.

That had to mean—

“Same person that brought my truck watches over my place.”

Ada jumped nearly a foot in the air at the voice behind her, her hand slapping over her chest to try and quell the frantic racing of her heart. “It’s rude to sneak up on people.”

For a man as large as he was, Skorpion hardly made a sound, just like in the airport. She hadn’t even heard a door open though she was sure while coming up she hadn’t noticed one open either.

He tilted his head to one side. “If that’s your biggest complaint of the day—”

“You don’t have to finish whatever you’re about to say. I’m sure it’s not complimentary.”

His smirked. “Can’t say that it was.”

The smile that curled his lips only managed to annoy her further. He was bloody annoying. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware I’d done something to offend you. Care to enlighten me?”

He stepped so close to her, she could practically feel the heat emanating from his body. His face hovered inches from hers, so close that she could see the golden flecks in his eyes, but just as she was sure he was about to tell her off, or kiss her, he reached around her and pulled a bottle of coconut water from a shelf and stepped back again.

“Not really.”

Day one and she was already sure this wasn’t going to work.

Not only was he the most condescending man she had ever met, but he also seemed intent on making her life miserable.

Avoidance would be key, and once she fulfilled her half of the agreement with the Kingmaker, she would take her money and leave, and she would never have to see him or any of the others ever again.

“How exactly is this … arrangement meant to work? Is this my prison and you’re the warden? Are my meals to be regulated as much as my time is?”

“Help yourself to anything in here. I don’t have the time or patience to monitor that kinda shit.”

“Fine, and is there a computer?” she asked, looking around hoping to spot one.

“Not for you to use.”

“What d’you expect me to do the entire time I’m here?”

He twisted the cap off his drink and tipped it to his lips before answering her question. “You read?”

“I doubt you’d have anything I’d like,” she mumbled, thinking of the surfboards he was clearly building and … well, the rest of him.

Her remark managed to wipe the smile from his face. “That so, princess?”

“Stop calling me that.”

“You act like you’re better than me, yet you’re here needing my help because you were stupid enough to think you could do what you wanted without consequences. Pretty, yeah, but there’s not too much else to you, is there?”

Blood rushed to her face, her hands balling into fists. “You don’t know anything about me or what I did. Don’t pretend like you do.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “What was it that you needed so badly? That BMW? Jewelry?” he asked with a nod of his head at her ears and the dangling earrings there. “Even if you didn’t give a shit about your own life, you should have thought about the lives of the people closest to you. They’re usually the ones that pay the price for your fuck ups. Who the hell did you think you were getting involved with?”

She was trembling so badly, even she was amazed she could still stand there staring at him, wishing for the first time in her life that she was capable of murder.

If she were, he would be dead.

How easy it would have been to tell him why she’d taken the money, to watch surprise or understanding cross his face, but she didn’t owe him an explanation for what she had done. She didn’t owe him anything and that was exactly what he was going to get from her. Nothing.

“As if you have any right to judge me from your ivory tower. Remind me who you work for again? I don’t even know you and I can wager that the things you’ve done in his name are a lot worse than anything I’ve done over the last year. So please, climb off your moral horse.”

“Yet here I am and there you stand,” he fired back, his eyes narrowed on her.

“Please. I was thinking about my family when I took that money. You kill people for a paycheck. Which one of us is really the morally wrong one?”

It felt good walking away from him, to assert some sort of control over a situation where she had very little, but before she made her way downstairs, she didn’t grab one piece of fruit from the bowl on the counter—she took the entire thing.

She refused to go hungry on account of him.

Back in her room, she closed and locked the door once more and felt the momentary satisfaction of it all. Until she remembered she was still alone and missing her family.

She should have never taken the money, if only so she wouldn’t have to put up with a man like Skorpion.

* * *

Over the span of his life, Keanu could count on one hand the number of times he’d ever pissed off an attractive woman—two of which involved the one who’d disappeared a few minutes ago with a frown on her face and murder in her eyes.

He’d been a dick, more so than he should have been considering it wasn’t his place to be. He didn’t know the full story behind what she had done and why, but it was too late to rectify that now. The likelihood of her sharing the story now was slim.

She’d wanted to cry, tears brimming in those brown eyes, but she’d refused to let them fall—whether because she didn’t want to appear weak in front of him, or because she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing he got to her, he didn’t know.

Either way, he doubted she wanted to be around him any longer than she absolutely had to.

Dragging his hand down his face, Keanu left the kitchen, heading into his own bedroom, his mind drifting back to the last time he was here and how that time hadn’t been so different from now.

Years had passed since the last time he’d been here—back when Soleil was only a toddler and he hadn’t the slightest idea what the hell he was getting himself into when he’d taken her home from France. The only thing he’d been sure of was that here, he could regroup and figure it all out before attempting to return to Los Angeles and it all became real again.

He’d made a promise to Charlotte that he wouldn’t let anything happen to Soleil, long before the morning when he’d ventured to her flat and found her murdered, her daughter screaming in her crib.

It was Charlotte he’d been thinking about earlier while Ada stood in front of him, and for the life of him, he didn’t understand why one conjured thoughts of the other.

They looked nothing alike.

Charlotte had been French with tumbling blonde hair and a body as slender as she was petite. She’d had eyes the color of emeralds with a smile just as bright and a thirst for adventure and intrigue.

Ada had dark hair and dark eyes with a body he was having a hard time ignoring. From the moment he’d put the trackers on her legs, his fingers brushing over soft skin, he was having a hard time ignoring the attraction to her, but he was nothing if not a professional.

There was also that little fact that, like Charlotte, she was knee-deep in trouble of her own making that he was having to put his life on hold to fix. But unlike her, Ada didn’t seem to have the same thirst for danger as Charlotte had from what he could see.

He’d thought she did, considering the sheer amount of money she’d stolen, but at the end of that brief conversation, it was clear she regretted it.

He understood the allure it presented for women like them—the kind that grew up in small towns and wanted more.

Hell, even he had fallen for the glamor of it all at one point which was how he’d ended up working for Uilleam in the first place.

He’d chased the thrill until the road got too rocky for him to navigate.

Until the day she died though, Charlotte had never quite gotten everything she’d wanted. Nothing—no matter the drug or vice—had ever given her the fix she craved. And no matter what he did, he hadn’t been able to convince her none of it was worth pursuing.

She hadn’t cared about the risks or the marks the things he saw and did left on the soul—she wanted to feel her heart racing with fear and excitement. She’d wanted the high to last as long as it could.

He hadn’t known the extent of her obsession when he first met her, only thought that she had wanted to get out of her tiny flat outside of Paris with a baby she loved but had never expected to have, but even once he had, he was too caught up in her to see that he’d never be able to give her what she wanted.

Even the first night they’d met, when he’d still been new to Uilleam’s team—and before he’d taken on the role of mercenary—she’d just been a pretty face in a sea of strangers. A face that made him curious enough to want to know more about her.

An hour after the meeting was done and after he’d accepted her invitation back to her place, they’d fucked until neither one of them could move. Their relationship, if he could even call it that, bloomed from there.

If he was in the city, he was hers, and sometimes, even when he wasn’t, he flew out to be with her and spent some time.

It had never been love—neither one of them were ready for that—but he had cared enough about Soleil to stick around longer than he ever intended to.

Soleil had been their beginning and end.

He hadn’t been able to save her, no matter how he might have wanted to, but he had been able to give Soleil the life Charlotte would have wanted for her.

And that was what he needed to remember. Everything he did, he did for his daughter. The last thing he needed to do was get too involved in shit that wasn’t his business. He would keep her safe, get Uilleam the information he wanted, and he would walk away at the end of this and not look back.

The rest didn’t matter.