Page 84 of Covert Temptation

Every sound made her flinch.

She’d come willingly because she couldn’t imagine what he would do to her if she didn’t. If Dante came back to the safe house and found her…

Her gut clenched. She couldn’t let that happen. The alternative was to come with this man and die some place no one would ever find her. She had no doubt that after he got around to doing the deed, he would throw her body down a well or bury her in the wilderness.

She closed her eyes and immediately saw Dante. His dark eyes, the scar near his temple. The strength in his hands when he’d held her after she said the words she’d never meant to say aloud:I’m falling in love with you.

God, he was going to think she ran.

He won’t come.The voice in her head had grown louder over the past hour.He won’t check the AirTag. Why would he? You’re disposable. You always have been.

A scream rose up her throat, but she refused to let it out. It would only amuse the man across from her. So she swallowed the lump in her throat and shifted her gaze to him.

“You got a name?” Her voice was hoarse, as if she hadn’t used it in a long time.

He looked up, mildly amused. “Wouldn’t matter if I did.”

“You work for him?”

The guy smirked. “I work for money. But yeah. He sent me.”

Cipher.She didn’t need confirmation. The fact that this man hadn’t snapped her neck outright meant this was personal. Psychological.

Cipher wanted her to break before she died.

“How long are we waiting?” she asked.

The man shrugged. “Until I get the text.”

She frowned. “You’ve seen him before?”

“Nope.” He tossed another nail, striking the wall next to her shoulder, and let out a little laugh. “It’s always a text. Drop point, target, instructions.”

“So you’re not the one who…” She stopped herself, couldn’t finish the sentence. Not when her voice threatened to crack.

He glanced at her again, taking a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. Smoke fogged around his head. “Nope. I just deliver the package. And you, sweetheart, are priority mail.”

Her stomach turned.

He stood, cracked his neck and walked toward her in slow, casual steps. She refused to cower. She’d done that enough in her life—in her childhood home, and again that night in college when a guy cornered her outside the dancers’ dressing room. She learned to shove her fear deep—something that Dante’s team didn’t like. Because she didn’t crack, their suspicions about her grew.

The man crouched in front of her, eyes trailing down her face, to her bound wrists…to her body. “You know,” he said slowly, “you don’t look like much.”

“Thanks.”

“But I get it. The guy likes his girls smart. Fragile. Wounded.” His smile turned mean. “Also, he told me what you used to do.”

Kennedy’s blood turned to ice. “What?”

“Stripper. Back in college, right? Little VIP room action.” He snorted and took another drag of his cigarette. Smoke wisped from his flared nostrils and turned her stomach. “That’s what paid for that pretty Wellesley College degree?”

He even knew where she went to college? Her mouth went dry.

Only one person in the world should’ve known about her dancing days—the hacker she’d paid to erase them.

He’d wiped every trace of her questionable employment history from databases and even buried club employment rosters. She’d found him years ago in an anonymous chat room deep in the web while desperately searching for a way to erase the truth.

She hadn’t spoken to him in years.

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