Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
I’ve met three names in person. The rest are voices, packets, and time stamps.
Twenty-two years of dirty work bought me more than a feared name in the black market. It bought a favor from one of the deadliest criminal groups in the world.
I attach myself to them because they’re the enemy of my enemy. I’ve always known that one day, I would need their reign of terror on my side.
That day is today.
“Yes.” My stomach hardens. “I need your help.”
“Sí, lo necesitas. Reconozco que te lo has ganado, Vigilante. ¿Qué tanto te quemó para venir a mí?”
My fingers freeze, missing the translation. I’m too focused on that cadence, the tiny swallowed consonants, and the way his vowels curl at the end.
Oh, fuck.
There’s a distinct shape to the sound of that rumbling voice, not just a timbre but a posture.
I blink. The room tilts, and the air leaves me like a fist.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’ve watched the cartel for years and listened to hours upon hours of surveillance. I memorized the smoky laugh threaded through static in Buenos Aires, the clipped consonants in the Austin recordings, and the deep intake before each execution is ordered.
It’s not data in a file for me. It’s an obsession with details. That’s what terrifies me now. Hearing the cadence, the unmistakable pattern, the pronounced pauses… I’m not speaking with a decoy.
Matias Restrepo, the most feared cartel capo in Colombia, is the voice on the other end of the line.
Every bargain I made with blood and code folds like a trapdoor. Every drop of humanity I’ve traded away has come due.
My throat chews. My pulse drums in my teeth.
“Respirá, Vigilante. Que los nervios no te delaten.” The mob boss exhales. “You saved mi vida. A debt is owed, and I deliver.”
Mi vida. The endearment he uses for his wife, Camila Dias.
Years ago, I pulled Camila out of a job gone sideways. With some spoofed IDs, forged metadata, and fake time stamps, I made her vanish from all surveillance cameras until she escaped the assassin on her tail.
Camila is no damsel in distress. She runs The Shadow Collection alongside her husband. But I saved her life that night, and the jefe hasn’t forgotten.
“We will talk terms,” he says, his accent silky dark and twice as lethal. “But not on the phone. You come to me.”
“That’s not… I’m…”
“Broke? Homeless? No plane? Out of time? Completely fucked?”
Yeah. All of those. Colombia is a long goddamn way from Alaska. How the hell does he expect me to come to him?
I grit my teeth, sort my voice out of a cluster of wrong ones, and keep it respectful. “Yes.”
“I’ll send for you.” He hangs up before I can reply.
Fuck me.
The cradle clicks down like a cocked gun, and my hands stop being hands. Frozen and shaking, I feel the splint against my wrist, the sweat beneath my forearm, and the struggle for breath that doesn’t come.
Dove’s footage loops before me, replaying her morning walk to work. I watch her breathe on the screen, and the cold, gnawing thing that is fear hardens into something useful.
Purpose.
I wake to the sound of Dove breathing.
Not snoring. Not the labored chuffing of bad dreams. I’m greeted with the delicate, steady tide of air filling her pretty chest and emptying again.
And I’m hard. Harder than any morning wood has the right to be.
For the love of poor decisions, I hope my dream self didn’t grope her through the night. My awake self is hanging by a thread, and the last thing she needs is me crossing another line.
After we passed out, I don’t remember anything. None of my usual restless, twitchy half-sleep. That can only mean one thing. I just had the deepest, heaviest, best-ever sleep of my life.
We both did, judging by the positions of our bodies. Neither of us moved.
Through the blinds, the blue-gray light of early morning filters in stripes across her pillow and cheek, catching on the silver glint of her septum ring, the metal stud above her lip, and the tiny rod threaded through her eyebrow.
I lie on my side and stare like she’s the first real girlfriend I’ve shared a bed with in twenty-four years.
Because she is.
Nothing in my wreck of a life prepared me for how good this feels.
A clean, mineral scent lives in her hair. Skin, salt, rain, and underneath it all, my favorite fragrance. Sun-warm, feather-soft Dove.
I’ve never wanted anything as badly as I want to roll forward, drape an arm over her waist, tuck myself into the curve of her, press my nose to her neck, and pretend I’m a normal man sleeping beside a woman who wants to stay. Pretend I didn’t have a mental breakdown after giving her stepbrother a handy. Pretend I’m not a living nightmare with more scars than a used mattress.
Her lashes twitch. She murmurs something that might be a word and burrows deeper into the pillow. The blanket slips down her shoulder, exposing a pale slope of skin.