Page 1 of The Wrecked One

PROLOGUE

OLIVER

BUSHKILL FALLS, PENNSYLVANIA - NOVEMBER 2024

“Holy shit, Mya. This is . . .” I did a three-sixty in the small space at our headquarters where Mya had been holed up for three days. No wonder you didn’t want anyone to come in here. “You’ve, uh, redecorated, I see. Interesting choice in wallpaper.” Barely a square inch of empty space on the walls. Photos, notes, and newspaper articles were taped up everywhere, connected by different colors of string. “Feels a little serial killer-y, but I guess I dig it.”

She greeted my sarcasm with a hard thwack of the back of her hand to my chest. Typical. “More like an FBI agent chasing one of the world’s most wanted fugitives.”

I reached out to hold her, my hands going to her waist.

“I know this looks like a lot, but I’m preparing for the op. We need to be as informed as possible before I go under.” Damn that shoulder shrug. It was anything but innocent or casual.

“You used both ‘we’ and ‘I’ in that statement. There’s no ‘I’ when it comes to this next mission. I’m going with you. We both volunteered.” Don’t do this to me.

When she closed her eyes, my chills got chills. I swore Mya really did have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. I was terrified that devil, even if it may have looked like a sexy vixen, would get her killed one day.

“No,” was all I could muster.

“I thought long and hard about this, and as you can tell by my research serving as wallpaper, I’m?—”

“No.” There it was again, that word Mya wasn’t so great at hearing, especially when it came to her doing something that’d place her in danger for the sake of a mission. The word also had her pulling free from my embrace and turning away.

She raked both hands through her brown hair. She’d dyed it back to its natural color the other day, claiming she didn’t have time to wait for it to grow out on its own before the mission started.

“We volunteered to go deep under to chase down this new lead on The Collective,” I reminded her.

After stopping The Collective from deploying an electromagnetic pulse weapon earlier this month on election day, we’d decided the best way to prevent the apparent puppet masters of the world from attempting a repeat performance was to take them out. Completely and irrevocably. But so far we’d barely scratched the surface at identifying who was sitting at this round, rectangular—fucking octagonal for all we knew—table.

Our team leader, Carter Dominick, had recently discovered new information after he’d interrogated a corrupt senator—the same man who’d been having an affair with his wife before she’d died years ago. I had no clue how Carter left that man alive. I mean, the guy couldn’t exactly talk anymore, and he’d lost his ability to walk without crutches, so at least there was that.

I waited for Mya to face me, knowing she’d chosen to lay this shit on me now because the rest of our team wasn’t there to have my back and talk her down from this madness. More specifically, Carter couldn’t shut her down since he was on a plane to visit his wife in Dubai.

“I sound like a tool saying this,” I began when I lost patience waiting for her to grant me both her voice and eyes, “but there really is no ‘I’ in team.”

Finally facing me, I grunted at her signature cute side-smirk that, frustratingly, always turned me on.

It was tough to go up against her in arguments, particularly in the last few weeks since we’d finally given in to desire. But it was the way she ended our arguments lately that always did me in. She’d come to my hotel room at night, quietly remove her clothes, and crawl into my bed naked.

I always followed her. No words needed to pass between us. I’d forget why we’d been arguing in the first place. I needed to be more like a protective Doberman and not the roll-over golden retriever I often became around her. I had to stop her from doing something that’d jeopardize her life.

“Why in God’s name would you want to go undercover alone?” If I was going to reason with her, I had to identify the root problem and start there.

She patted the sides of her jeaned legs, then worked her hands up over her bare arms, rubbing along her biceps as if she were cold. But I’d become an expert at seeing through her tells, recognizing when her nerves were about to slide into defensive territory.

Besides, if she really was freezing, her nipples would be poking through that ribbed tank top she had on. The one that made it painfully obvious she was braless. The heat was blasting in the room, which was why her hoodie—correction, my Army one she’d stolen from my hotel room the other night—was on the desk chair instead of on her.

Chills slipped down my back as I worried she was planning to do something reckless.

“Our target is the Soren family.”

“Yeah, that senator gave Carter the name during the interrogation.” Locking my arms over my chest, I waited for her to continue, to tell me something I didn’t know. “Billionaire family. The father, Stef, is Swiss. Mother’s American, but she passed away a few years ago. Most of their wealth comes from investments in the telecommunications industry.”

Mya lasered in on a collection of images on the wall. She’d circled one of the photos in red marker, an image of the three Soren men in suits at a wildlife fundraiser. “Stef’s in his mid-eighties, and given his age, we think he’s trying to decide which of his two sons he should pass the throne of his empire over to. You’d think the elder brother, Hugo, would win by default, but that may not be the case this time.” She pointed to one brother, slightly taller than the other. “Although Sylvester is the younger one, he’s married with kids. Has a home in Scottsdale. Stable.”

“Making him the safer choice for their old man?”

She nodded. “Hugo’s the loner billionaire type. Forty-six and, from what I could find, never in a long-term relationship. Always traveling. His favorite activities are skydiving, fast cars, and fighting. He’s personally trained with some of the best boxers in the world.”

---