Page 9 of King

Obviously, you’ve met my daughter, Stella, since she is the only one who would have delivered this note.

She is the most important person in this world to me. Above all, I’m begging you to protect her.

I’ve spent years giving her the tools to handle any blowback that she might encounter from my job, but I can’t stomach the idea of her alone and putting herself at risk. She’s brave, strong, loyal, and stubborn as fuck. She’ll run straight at the danger if she thinks she can save me, and no amount of pleading in a letter will sway her.

So I’m asking for a pretty big favor, Connor. Keeping Stella safe won’t be easy, but I know you’re the only one who is strong enough, and that I trust, to accomplish the task.

She is your priority, so when I give you the rest of the information, please don’t forget that.

The official details of the op are on the key, along with everything I’ve “unofficially” gathered. Someone is betraying operatives, and I fear it’s from deep within The Company. I haven’t been able to get to the initial source, but my suspicions have led me to one conclusion that I know will test your resolve to do the first thing I’ve asked of you.

When we took out Trailblazer, we were wrong in thinking that it ended there.

I nearly dropped the letter when I read those words. We’d been wrong? Every day since I walked away from the CIA, I’d felt closure because we’d found and destroyed the man responsible for my failure. Now, Joseph was telling me that the motherfucker was only one branch on a tree made of corruption?

Everything is on the encrypted key. The password is the nickname we gave the safehouse built on desecrated ground.

You’ve put your trust in me more times than I can count, and now, I’m putting my faith in you.

Wayfarer

I reread the letter twice while clutching the key in my fist. It was practically burning a hole through my hand.

The need to know the information contained on it was almost consuming me. But the second Joseph had asked me for help, I’d made a silent vow to do whatever it was. That meant securing Stella first.

Then I’d give the key to Wizard, along with the password. One corner of my mouth lifted as I remembered that moment with my friend.

The safehouse in Hungary had been built on a former cemetery. We stumbled upon the history of the land by accident one night when we overheard a conversation while having adrink at a nearby bar. The whole thing was complete hearsay, but it amused us to believe it was true.

The graves had been robbed so often that the clergy finally dug everyone up and moved them to another, more secure resting place. Technically, they’d moved the bodies without the families’ permission, which made the land “desecrated” ground.

Hungarian is a hard as fuck language to learn, but Joseph and I had both become fluent, so I had come up with the ridiculous idea to name the safehouse with arguably the longest word in Hungarian—Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. Roughly translated, it meant “For your unholy deeds.”

I’d been young and new to my career, not yet jaded by the darkness I would become familiar with in my job. It had seemed hilarious at the time, and years later, it was a moment I often recalled when I needed to think about something other than the shit that happened in a world most people didn’t even know was all around them. Considering what was on that key, it was the perfect choice for a password.

3

STELLA

With what my dad had written about Connor, I assumed the man would also be in his fifties. The last thing I expected was to find a guy who was in his late thirties and sexy as all get-out. At six-foot-two, with tanned skin, black ink peeking out of the collar of the T-shirt stretched over his muscular chest, dark hair, a close-cropped beard, and piercing green eyes, he could easily grace the cover of any biker magazine. Their circulation would go up because women would clear the shelves every day.

His deep, raspy voice only added to the allure. Even when I thought he’d been throwing me out of his office the moment I arrived, the sound had sent a sensual shiver down my spine.

He oozed confidence and commanded a room, which made sense considering the president patch on his leather vest. I didn’t know much about motorcycle clubs, but it was easy to see why he was the man who led this one.

My dad had nailed how unwelcoming Connor would be when I got here. But what nobody could have ever guessed—even me—was my reaction to him. Dad was in enough trouble to send me across three states to find this man, and instead of asking him about the contents of the letter Dad had written him, I sat herewondering what Connor would look like naked. And how his lips would feel pressed against mine. Especially if both of us had stripped off our clothes. “Kibaszottul koncentrálj.”

Connor’s head jerked up. “You speak Hungarian?”

Nodding, I snorted. “And French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Farsi, and a touch of Mandarin.” I called myself ten types of idiot when I wanted to preen at the impressed expression on his face. “I learned Spanish first and picked it up so quickly that it became a game between my dad and me to see how many I could master. Which came in handy when I got to college because it made it easy to pick linguistics as my major.” My face heated a little when I admitted, “But I’ve found that Hungarian is the safest if I’m going to swear, especially the f-word because it’s rare to run across someone else who speaks it.”

He studied me for a moment, then tilted his head and asked, “Why do you need to focus?”

Although he’d recognized the language, I hadn’t expected him to understand exactly what I’d said. I most definitely wasn’t going to explain that I was distracted by his hotness and the fact that I'd never been so attracted to a man before…or any man. So I went with, “Because my dad is in danger. Or at least I assume he is. We need to figure out what to do to help him.”

“Wearen’t going to do anything.” He tapped his finger against the letter my dad had written him. “I’m going to handle this.”

Narrowing my eyes, I opened my mouth to argue with him, but I already knew it wouldn’t do me any good. Gritting my teeth, I glared at him as I got to my feet. It figured that the first guy to bring my dormant libido to life was a giant jerk. “Fine, then I guess I’ll be going.”

---