Chapter 2The Billion-Dollar Bodyguard I Found in the Rain

The inside of the car smelled like motor oil and tobacco — rough, but not unpleasant.

I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. The pain in my stomach was getting worse.

I curled in on myself and pressed hard against my abdomen, trying to hold it together.

"Where to?" he asked, out of nowhere.

"Doesn't matter." I said it through clenched teeth.

The car jerked to a hard stop at the side of the road.

He got out. A few minutes later he came back, damp from the rain, and tossed a plastic bag into my lap.

"Eat."

I opened it. Inside was a container of hot noodle soup, still steaming, and a box of antacids.

I just stared at it.

How did he know my stomach was hurting?

"You've been holding your stomach the whole time. You're white as a ghost." His tone hadn't warmed at all. "I don't want a body in my car. Bad enough already."

I looked down at the soup in my hands, and my eyes started to sting.

Three years together, and my fiancé never once knew I had a serious stomach condition. A complete stranger figured it out in ten minutes.

I didn't say anything. I just ate — fast, barely stopping to breathe.

Cheap noodles and hot broth. Better than anything on the table at that party tonight.

By the time I finished and took the antacids, I finally felt like a human being again.

I turned and looked at him properly.

He was young — twenty-two, twenty-three at most — but his eyes were deep and still, like the bottom of a dry well. No light in them at all.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Luca Hale." He kept his eyes on the road ahead.

"Luca Hale." I turned the name over in my mouth. "Good name. Has an edge to it."

I pulled out a napkin and wiped my lips.

"One million. Three months of your time. You in?"

He finally turned to look at me, eyes sharp with suspicion.

"For what?"

"My driver. Security consultant. And someone to put down a few dogs that don't know their place."

The Lynn family and Carter family alliance had fallen apart. My father wasn't going to let that slide.

Sophia and Evan would be working against me from the shadows, too.

I needed someone outside that world — someone who could protect me.

This Luca Hale had something about him. A recklessness. Like he had nothing left to lose.

He was quiet for a long moment.

"I don't need a million. Five hundred thousand. Half upfront, the rest when the three months are up."

That surprised me.

"Deal."

"So." He glanced over. "Where to?"

I gave him an address.

"East side. Polaris Tech."

It was a subsidiary under the Lynn family — barely staying afloat, bleeding out. My father had arranged it in advance, his way of punishing me for blowing up the engagement party. His idea of exile.

He thought throwing me into that wreck of a company would break me. Make me crawl back.

He was wrong.

Polaris Tech was exactly where I was going to tear off the mask and start burning everything down.

The car pulled back onto the road.

The rain was easing up.

I watched the city blur past the window, a cold smile pulling at the corner of my mouth.

Evan Carter. Sophia Lynn.

Everything you took from me — I'm coming to collect. With interest.