The most important meeting of my life is about to start when I get a text from security downstairs.

Young woman here to see you, Mr. Russell. Doesn’t have an appointment. Says it’s an emergency.

I send a subtle eye-roll toward the screen. Unfortunate timing. Very.

It’s almost like the universe is trying to tell me something. You can burnish the outside Bram, but inside you’re still the same twisted fuck.

For months I’ve been trying my damnedest to turn over a new leaf. No one-night stands, no parties, nothing outside the bounds of utterly normal. I’ve turned my whole life into merger material. I’ve become so ordinary I bore the shit out of myself.

Not that I’m celibate. I’m just more subtle about it these days.

Who’s this girl, an ex? Somebody who saw me on the news? I have to hand it to her. She went for the jugular right away.

It’s amazing what can pass for an emergency these days. You didn’t call me. I wish I hadn’t fucked you on the first date. I can’t stop thinking about your cock.

If I weren’t on my way to finalize the merger between Phantom and Signet Industries, the biggest private military company in the world, I’d have security send her up. It might be a nice little diversion. I’d make her wait in reception for a few minutes, just long enough so she could wallow in the fact that, yes, she really did show up at my office uninvited and wearing a slutty dress.

I’d have my assistant offer her some tea. And when I finally called her in to my office, I’d sit her down and ask about the nature of her crisis. Did it have anything to do with missing me? Needing to know if she meant something to me? Waking up this morning with a wet pussy after dreaming of her one night in my bed?

Because chances are it was only one. I rarely let a woman stay for two.

Once I’d diagnosed her symptoms, I’d temporarily alleviate them by slicing the string of her panties with a letter opener and fucking her blind on my leather sofa. After sending her on her merry way, I’d order in lunch.

The whole scenario should make me hard, or at least smile. Instead, I feel the overwhelming urge to yawn.

I get this feeling every so often, and right now I have it in spades. Like there’s nothing left to do. I’ve traveled everywhere, fucked everybody, bought everything. I’ve been a soldier of fortune, an interrogator for the Polish government, and now, CEO of a global company. I even spent a year as a Master at a school called Black Halo in England. The dark shit that happened there – I keep those memories tucked away in a distant corner of my soul.

The only challenge left is this merger, and after that, life is one gray, boring blur.

I’m not available today, I text back. Tell her to call and make an appointment.

Yes, Sir.

“Gentlemen, Ladies,” I say, walking into the conference room with my assistant at my back. The CEO and CFO of Signet stand up. The founder’s daughter, Miriam Peck, stays seated. Her walker is stashed in the corner.

She gives me a short nod. I nod back. Feels like déjà vu, but it’s not. Getting her here two years ago was easy. This time? It took months of persuasion, charm, and dinners in swanky restaurants to convince her that I was Signet’s future. Nothing – and no one – will fuck this up for me.

“I saw your interview this morning,” she says. “Well done.”

Good. I hate that shit. I’m glad she couldn’t tell. “Thank you.”

As I take a seat at the head of the table, Miriam’s gaze wanders to the display of weapons on the wall. A medieval Italian pistol. A rusted machete from an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. Four clubs from different time periods, one with a wiry black hair still wrapped in the studs.

I’m willing to play the conventional businessman, but I draw the line at boring paintings on my walls.

“Those belong to you?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“You’re a collector?”

“From the age of fifteen.”

“What a strange hobby,” she says, squinting at a 17^th century horseman’s pick.

“I prefer to call it an obsession.”

Tugging on my French cuffs, I smile. If she only knew the sorts of hobbies I used to indulge in. The bacchanalias that lasted for days. The drinking and fucking until I lost count of bottles and bodies. The training of girls to become slaves and submissives.

There’s that urge to yawn again.

It used to be enjoyable, but after a while it felt like breaking horses that wanted to be broken. There was no challenge. No fight. I’ve shattered the minds of traitors in shithole foreign prisons. Now that was a challenge. Girls who want to be fucked and pretend they don’t? Not so much.

An intern comes in with a beverage tray. Everyone asks for coffee but Miriam, who takes Scotch.

I raise my cup in a silent cheers. “Shall we begin?”

Her CFO opens his mouth but Miriam waves him silent. “Let’s get right to it,” she says. “The pros and cons as I see them.”

She details both in blunt terms. Phantom has a great success rate, and in eight years we haven’t had a single civilian casualty. Our training center is state of the art. It’s a dangerous world. Governments need us, and so do their people.

But the company is relatively new, and some of our methods are controversial. One of our snipers just killed a government official’s guard in Jordan.

“But I can forgive those things,” she says, flicking a gnarled hand. “Shit happens in this industry.” Pausing, she stares at me over the rim of her highball glass. “It’s you I’m concerned about.”

I can’t even pretend to be surprised. “Go on.”

“Two years ago we were right here in this room, hammering out a merger. Then that damn trial started and the publicity made a mess of things.”

“I remember,” I say.

I can still hear her voice on the phone the morning she pulled the plug. I can’t have Signet associated with this. Maybe if you win…in the future…

I won. And it’s the future. Nothing will derail me this time.

“As we’ve discussed, no criminal charges were filed,” I say. “The jury ruled in my favor in the civil case.”

She sighs as if I’m putting her to sleep. “I know, Bram. I’ve done my due diligence. But how things look is more important than the truth. I need your personal promise. Until this deal is signed, I don’t want to read about you in the press.”

“Neither do I,” I say, but she’s unamused.

“Not a whiff of controversy. If you’re going to run Phantom after I die, which will be soon if I’m lucky, I want to know it’s in stable hands. My great-grandfather started this company –”

I know, I know. World War I, son of a farmer, started from nothing. I did my due diligence, too.

My phone lights up again. The young lady won’t leave. She insists on seeing you.

Insists?

Yes. She’s getting loud.

My stomach clenches. Who the fuck, and why?

The possibilities are practically endless, and they’re all bad. One of these days, I was bound to knock some girl up. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already. Or maybe I fucked a married woman and her husband threw her out. She needs cash and a place to stay. With her kids, her dog, and her mother.

I tap my phone while pretending to listen. Call Fritz. He’ll take care of it.

I nod at Miriam, though I haven’t heard a word. After countless meetings at the Signet offices upstate, I know she’s got about ten minutes left before she barks at her assistant to bring her walker. Then she’ll shuffle out of here as fast as her eighty-three year-old legs will allow.

The only way to her Town Car is through the lobby. Where some girl is losing her shit over me right now.

“So we’ll draw up the agreement and sign it when the lawyers are done bleeding us dry,” Miriam says. “Three or four weeks. All you boys agree?”

You boys. If my mother had lived this long, she’d probably be a lot like her. I smile, but her CEO and CFO scowl. Poor bastards haven’t figured it out. A woman like Miriam requires a sense of humor.

“Perfect,” I say, getting up.

I shake hands all around, and escort Mrs. Peck and her assistant to the elevator. As soon as the doors slide shut, I call Fritz, head of security and my best friend.

“Is the girl gone?”

“I walked her out two minutes ago.”

“Who was she? What did she want?”

“I dealt with it.”

There’s something in his voice I don’t like. “I asked what she wanted.”

He doesn’t answer.

“Fritz?”

“Come to my office.”

“Why?”

He pauses. “See you when you get here.”

I knock on Fritz’s door. His office is in the bowels of the building, off a concrete hallway filled with pipes and fluorescent lights. I offered to move him to a higher floor into an office with windows, but he likes privacy. He likes the dark.

We’re similar that way. He’s not just my head of security. He’s been my best friend since we were dirt poor townies in high school.

I walk in. He’s sitting at the security station in front of a row of monitors. He’s not even six feet tall but his wide, solid body makes him look like a badass.

“Hey. Take a seat.”

I sit in the creaky desk chair beside him. “What’s up?”

He presses a few buttons and nods at the monitor in front of him. “This.”

I watch the screen as a video starts to play. The time stamp is from an hour ago. A female figure passes through the metal detectors and stops at the security desk. The guard makes a call and hangs up. She argues, throws her arms around, points at the ceiling.

“I don’t recognize her,” I say.

Fritz changes the angle of the camera to show her face. “Yes, you do.”

He stops the video when she’s mid-sentence. Her mouth freezes open.

I cringe and turn my head, but her image is burned into my brain. High cheekbones, full lips, a strange wildness in her expression. My blood races. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Fritz says.

“Today of all days?”

“It wasn’t a coincidence.”

“Did she say what she wanted?”

He snorts. “To blame you for quitting her job this morning.”

I roll my eyes. “What?”

“She’s an event planner. She said something about her company bidding on Phantom projects.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” I say, and I don’t. But something stirs deep inside me at the thought of her working for me. Controlling her every move, giving her orders, watching her scramble to please the man she hates.

“You sure? You used to take an interest in her –”

I cut him short with a look. “Not anymore, Fritz. You know that. Talk to my assistant about this bidding crap.”

I look at her frozen figure again. The cords on her neck stand out. Her face is gaunt and shadowed, her eyes huge in their sockets. On video they look black instead of green. They make me think of tenement windows in the shit neighborhood where I grew up. Dark and shattered.

God. She used to be so fucking beautiful.

She’s even more beautiful now.

She’s raw. Fragile. With a hint of self-destruction that turns my guts inside out. I always sensed it in her. She’d burn before she’d give up. She hasn’t changed at all.

And she hasn’t healed. I can see it. Eighteen months later and she’s still a wreck. So much pretty grief, and all for James Winthrop. He’s the luckiest asshole in the world, even if he is dead.

The traitorous punk doesn’t deserve a bit of it. I wonder if she’s figured that out yet.

Fritz leans back in his chair. “At some point today, she started drinking. I could smell it on her.”

“At one in the afternoon? Where are her parents?”

I already know the answer. She’s Scott and Melinda Garrett’s daughter in name only. She’s always been too much for them. Too pretty, too smart, too headstrong. Suing me for thirteen million was her idea. Her parents and the Winthrops wanted to move on, but Grace wouldn’t let them.

All that anger had to go somewhere.

“There’s one other thing,” Fritz says.

I sigh. With girls like Grace Garrett, there’s always one other thing. “What now?”

“She had a letter. I told her I’d pass it along.”

“Don’t tell me. It starts dear asshole.”

“It wasn’t for you,” Fritz says. “It was for Miriam Peck.”

It takes me a second to process what the fuck that means. Then the rage pours in, and my heart starts hammering. “Fuck. That’s why she was here.”

“Yup. The meeting was all over the news.”

He hands me a sealed envelope. I rip it open and yank out a single sheet of paper. Untrustworthy. Violent. Dishonest. I stop reading after he’ll ruin your company the way he ruined my life and crush the letter in my hand.

Fritz shrugs in that blunt, what-can-I-tell-you way he has. “Destroying it won’t help. She’s sending a copy to Signet headquarters.”

I stare at him. “You’re fucking serious.”

He crosses an ankle over his knee. “Yup. This merger goes through, you’ll be the richest guy in the state. You deprived her of millions, she wants to do the same to you.”

I bark out a bitter laugh. “I didn’t deprive her of anything. I saved her.”

“We know you saved her, but no one else does. Maybe it’s time to change that.”

For a second I’m almost tempted. Two can escalate this bullshit. If the bitch wants to go to war, I’m game.

I can start with a restraining order to keep her drunk ass six-hundred feet from this building. But talk about controversy. The press would be all-fucking-over it. It isn’t exactly merger-friendly to go to court and fan the flames.

And there’s still that crazy part of me I can’t kill off. That gives a shit, whether I want to or not.

“No,” I say. “I need to keep this quiet.”

Fritz swivels his chair toward me. “You mean, keep her quiet.”

“How? Pay her off?”

“She’s got too much pride for that. And so do you. You’ve done nothing fucking wrong.”

“So just let her slander me and send bullshit letters? I can’t let this deal fail.”

“No.” It’s just one word, but it says everything. Fritz knows this merger means more than money. It’s legitimacy. A huge American company backing me up. It’s a broke, fatherless kid saying fuck you to everybody who called me a loser, back when a loser was all I ever thought I’d be.

“You’ll figure it out,” he says. “You always do.”

“Jesus,” I say. “How did Grace Garrett get so much power?”

He turns off the monitor and her face vanishes. “She walked into your life. Some girls, the smart ones? That’s all they’ve got to do.”

I take the elevator down to the parking garage and get in my car. I’m not sure where I’m going. I just need to get out the office, and out of my head.

I drive into the rain and flip on my wipers. Traffic is snarled. The sky is so dark it looks like twilight.

I’m staring at the SUV in front of me, but all I can see is Grace’s haunted face.

Haunted, and so fucking accusing.

Defenses flaring, I clench my jaw. She can accuse me all she wants. It’s not my fault her fiancé was an entitled fuck-up. Granted, I could have –

I clench my fingers around the steering wheel. No. I’m not going back there.

I’ve had my dark nights of the soul, the spirit-crushing realization that I shot a man. I sailed through the trial on cockiness and adrenaline, but the second I won, the doubts hit hard.

Did I have to fucking kill him? Why did I protect Grace? Why am I protecting her now?

Because I’ve got a soft spot for wounded birds. It’s that simple. I have a lot of flaws, but that one’s fatal.

The first day in the courtroom, I could see how shattered she was. It fit the history my lawyers had dug up about her – the drug-addict birth parents, the foster family that didn’t want her, the religious couple that adopted her when she was three and changed her name from Lea to Grace.

Her parents were there with her in body, but they had no fucking clue who she was. I could see the chasm between them. She’d come to them fully formed, already scarred.

I’d never spoken to her and I knew her better than they did.

Because I know what broken looks like. I’ve been there. And I couldn’t bear to crush what little of her was left.

I’ve heard all the platitudes. It’s not up to me to shield someone I don’t even know from her bad choices. No one is responsible for anyone else’s life. It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you respond. Yeah, yeah.

I can tell myself all the bullshit I want. In the end, I’m to blame for her pain. Every second of that beautiful girl’s misery is on me.

I stop at a red light. It’s pouring now. Lightning flashes through the trees.

The light’s just turned green when I see her. She’s coming out of the park three blocks from my office. She’s drenched to the bone.

Her long auburn hair is stuck to her neck and jaw. She’s weaving a little in her heels.

The wind gusts, flipping up the hem of her short wrap dress. Flushing, she pushes it down. I’m a cruel fuck for staring at her slender white thighs, and getting hard at the sight.

The second we first saw each other, there was friction between us, some sick attraction that feels like hate all mixed up with hunger. It’s never gone away. I can’t look at her without wanting to throttle her, and fuck her until she doesn’t know her name.

She doesn’t see me. She holds her purse over her head and runs across the street against the light. A truck blasts its horn at her.

“Relax, man!” I shout at the inside of my windshield.

Keeping my car maybe fifty feet back, I pretend I’m looking for a parking spot and follow her. She stumbles along the street. At some point she gives up on using her purse as an umbrella and lets the rain soak her. She should look pathetic, but she doesn’t. Her spine is ramrod straight and she walks with purpose, even if she is a little wobbly. I’ve never seen a girl look so tormented, and so fucking pretty.

She turns into the parking lot of a convenience store. I idle at the curb, watching her. When she gets under the awning, she shakes her head like a soaked puppy. Then she goes inside.

I park in the lot and watch her through the window. She walks gingerly between aisles with a shopping basket over her wrist. She’s lucky she doesn’t fall in those wet stilettoes.

She looks so sweet as she compares two tubes of toothpaste. So fucking reasonable.

We’ve never said a word to each other that wasn’t relayed through lawyers or the press. I apologized for her loss through a judge and a bunch of journalists.

If I could just talk to her, she’d understand. She’d see that I don’t want to hurt her. That I never meant to –

Except that I did. Every night before I fall asleep, I remind myself why I made that decision. The lives I might have saved, along with my own.

Her basket’s almost full. In two minutes she’ll be gone.

Fuck it. I need paper towels anyway.

I get out of my car and go inside. A guy buying cigarettes pockets them and leaves. I can see Grace in the security mirror. We’re the only ones here besides the cashier, a gangly, pockmarked kid in his twenties.

“Hey, how’re you doing?” I say to him, keeping my voice quiet. “I’m looking for paper towels.”

“Sure. Aisle four.”

“Thanks.”

I walk past the soda machine and head toward the back of the store. I hear the freezer case open. Bottles rattle as Grace pulls out a six-pack of beer.

The security mirror shows her heading toward check-out. At the last second, she pivots and walks down my aisle.

I turn and look at her.

She gasps. My heart stops before punching me hard in the ribs.

I don’t speak. Neither does she.

Her chest rises and falls as if she’s out of breath. Wet strings of hair stick to her cleavage.

“You wanted to see me?” I say.

Her mouth drops open. Those green-black eyes radiate so much hatred, my skin burns and my cock gets hard.

Her eyes flicker down to the long, thick bulge and back up to my face. She shakes her head just once, her face tight with disbelief.

Jesus. What kind of man wants to fuck the woman he almost destroyed? That’s what she’s wondering, and the answer is right in front of her.

The paper towel wrapping crinkles in my hand. I’m buying kitchen products, she’s buying a six-pack. Quite the gender role reversal. I’d laugh if the situation were any less tragic.

She sways on her heels. Reaching out, she grabs a shelf to steady herself and knocks a box of dish cubes to the floor.

We both look at it, and then back at each other. She tosses her wet curtain of hair back over her shoulder. Her eyes shift from one side of the aisle to the other.

As long as I’m standing here, she can’t get by me. I’m that big. But she’s not about to reverse course. Fritz is right. She’s got too much pride.

She walks toward me. Her breathing is jumpy and nervous. Basket in one hand, six-pack in the other, she turns sideways to squeeze by.

I hear the squeak of her shoe as she slips. The basket clatters to the floor. Dropping the paper towels, I yank her against me. I brace for the crash of bottles but she’s got the six-pack hooked in her fingers. The sharp edge of it bangs into my thigh. I like the way it hurts. I hope it breaks the skin.

Her whole weight is in my arms. I grip her tight and breathe in everything she is. Wet, flowery hair. Quivering limbs. A broken, soft, strong girl.

“You okay?”

“Get your hands off me,” she hisses.

I tighten them instead. “You wanted to talk,” I say against her ear. “Let’s do it.”

The cashier comes around the corner. “Everything all right over here?”

“She dropped her basket,” I say.

“That’s okay,” he says, kneeling to grab a sponge off the floor. “I got it.”

Grace spins to face me. Her face and neck are blotchy red.

“Instead of talking to you,” she says, “I’ll be talking to the Larchmont Gazette tomorrow.”

I stare at her. Crazy, half-drunk bitch. Whatever she’s blabbing makes no sense.

But then it does. Larchmont. Where Miriam Peck lives. Letters aren’t enough. She’s going to fucking slander me to the press.

“Call them and cancel,” I say. “Now.”

The cashier glances warily up at Grace as he grabs toothpaste from between her feet. She glares at me. The look on her face is disgust spliced with morbid joy.

“And miss the chance to tell them how you hired pricey lawyers to stiff the Winthrops?” she says. “After murdering their son? Did you know Mr. Winthrop’s business failed because he was too depressed to work?”

Her words scorch me like acid. They hurt like fucking hell.

And I want to thank her for it.

Maybe now I can turn and walk away. For the first time in two years I’ll feel no guilt. No responsibility. Nothing but hatred, and the sick fucking lust I wish I could cut out of my heart.

Maybe I’ll finally be free of it. Now that I know how black her soul is. Black and broken beyond repair.

But I’m not free of it. As I inhale her flowered skin, it only gets worse.

I want to push over every shelf in the store. I want to hurl her over my shoulder and settle this fucked-up score in a remote shed somewhere. With my hand around her throat and my cock in her ass. With her pleas for mercy echoing like thrash metal in my ears.

My hands twitch to grab her. What the fuck. Once I had total control and discipline, but now my temper is an unstable grenade.

She takes a step back. She’s scared. She should be. I’m scared of myself.

I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.

The cashier is on his knees staring up at me, a ruptured packet of peanuts in his hand. I pull a hundred from my pocket and hand it to him.

“For your trouble,” I say.

Without another glance at Grace, I turn and walk out.