Chapter 1
There was a popular saying about a person bringing a knife to a gunfight. Usually, I was the guy with the bigger gun, but I’d found myself in the fight of my life with someone attacking my company, my reputation, and my livelihood, and I was the idiot standing there with a freaking butter knife. I never saw this attack coming.
the last eighteen hours, so much had happened it was hard for me to keep up. I was dog-tired, man. It had been a long time since I’d last slept. A few hours after shit went sideways in Peru, I’d flown back to Seattle at the urgent request of my mother and Paul, my PR guy.
I rubbed the wound on the upper half of my left arm and tried to wrap my mind around all that had happened in such a short time. I was surrounded by my mother, Paul, Jace Shepard—my best friend—and one of the company’s field agents and medical expert, Citra Smith. They were all encouraging me to sheath my knife and charge forward with the big guns.
Which was stupid. Did they not know me? Of course, I was going to strike back and strike hard. But I had to first get a sense of the land mines. And there was this little thing called strategy.
My opponent was wily, cunning, and heavily armed with smart lawyers, and he’d come out swinging, hitting where it hurt the most—my brand and reputation. For a securities expert, trust was of the upmost importance. Clients had to believe we knew what we were doing, that our guidance was solid, and that was never a problem when my company, Optium, only focused on two roles—providing executive protection and training and educating schools on threat assessments.
Up until that moment, all my clients had cared about was me keeping them and their families alive. Even if I had to die to do it. Which was a main reason why I didn’t have a personal life. And that had never mattered until eighteen hours earlier, when all of my personal information had been trotted out and showcased to prove Optium had no business launching its new division.
A new division that we’d kept top secret for over a year.
A new division that wasn’t supposed to launch for another six months. A new division with a secret project that focused on personal safety—at home, in dating, and in internet use—and what to do if you found yourself in a scary situation. There was even a dating app in the works.
All this started because Citra’s sister once had a bad experience, and she’d felt helpless. No one should feel helpless. Enter Project ProtectedLove. That was a working title.
Yeah, it was not our area of proficiency, which was why we were taking the time to get it right and have experts test and give input. We were learning to make it our area of expertise.
But none of that mattered. Because when our secret project was leaked, our biggest competitor, Hitchens and Sons, sprang into action, swiping at our jugular by launching a smear campaign to discredit Optium—and me—in order to own the consumer narrative. Also, I was sure they were pissed because in all of our research, we used them as an example of what not to do.
“Have you figured out how Hitchens and Sons got our intellectual property? Was the leak hired by them? Where are we with that?”
PR Paul leaned against the wall. “Took Spoon just under four hours to find the leak.”
Benjamin Spoon was Optium’s best IT guy. I trusted him with my life. Which was why only Paul, Citra, and I felt comfortable with asking Ben Spoon to find the mole. Because, of course, there had to be an internal mole. How else would Hitchens and Sons have gotten our intellectual property?
“It took Citra less than fifteen minutes to break him,” Paul continued.
Citra smiled. “The little weasel. Once Spoon confirmed it, I caught up with him in the break room. He had no idea we were onto him. Nearly pissed his pants when I told him he was caught red-handed, and he almost fainted when I introduced him to our lawyers. He’s been holed up since then.”
“Fuck,” I mumbled, anger welling up and threatening to spill over.
Apparently, someone didn’t know the rules of Optium’s fight club.
“You ready to hear the worst part?” Paul asked.
“Christ, it gets worse?”
“Guess who turned our employee—found out our mole was having trouble with one of his kids and wanted to send him to a military school. That’s all it took.”
I knew the answer before Paul said it.
“Your dad. He was also the one to give Hitchens the intellectual property.” Paul held up a manila envelope about half an inch thick. “I’ve got the paper trail right here. That and the mole’s confession when Citra cornered him. He was paid handsomely by your father, which is good because he will use it all on lawyers for breaking his NDA. And also, your dad is funding Hitchens’s updates on their app.”
“Of course he is,” my mom mumbled.
I rolled my thumb around my right temple, hoping to ease the tension. Hitchens and Sons already had a foothold in the market. They had customer reviews and had built brand knowledge. With our intellectual property, they could improve their crappy dating app to include better safety systems. If we wanted to do this division and the project, we were seriously behind in the race. Like, several laps behind. This was not good.
“I’m not sure if your dad knows we caught him. We’ve kept our mole locked up tight,” Citra said.
I shook my head. “Dalton isn’t going to care if we find out he’s behind this. He wants me to know.” I rubbed the bandage on my arm again.
Paul cleared his throat. “We have to decide where we go from here. Do we cut our losses or stay in the game?”
PR Paul, as I liked to think of him, was a tall, lean guy with wire-rimmed glasses. He looked average and unremarkable. Neither of those words would describe Paul’s personality. He was savvy and cutthroat—just what I and Optium Security needed. In the short six hours since the media had turned on me specifically and on Optium as a side note, Paul had not only worked out the mole and confirmed they looked to be coming from Hitchens and Sons Security but had also learned that these attacks were funded by my dear old dad. And in pure Paul fashion, he’d already devised a solid plan.
Cutting our losses would be a huge financial suck. Losing the edge on our project meant losing a lot of money as well as market share and the first-mover advantage, investment returns, partnership and integration, brand reputation, talent retention, legal and intellectual property issues and lawsuits, positive media attention, data advantages, pricing power, and worst of all… customer trust.
Hands down, had we been able to launch this project on schedule, there was no doubt Optium would have done it with ethics and safety, front and center. All Hitchens and Sons cared about was getting personal data to leverage money. Most people didn’t realize Hitchens and Sons also had their hands in the insurance industry, which meant if you tried to get insurance through their company, they could use all the data they collected to charge you higher prices or to reject you altogether. And that was just tip of the iceberg with them.
“You can’t just let this go, Cal. You need to fight back!” my mother said.
Morgan Baker-Beckett, my mother, had been gunning for me to take down her estranged husband. And when the attack was launched, she’d jumped on a plane and rushed to my side—only I was in Peru, and she’d gone to our office in Seattle. She’d “thought it best” if she waited here for me.
“Your father will not make this an easy or quick battle. In the thirty-two years of our marriage, I have never seen the man give up or give in.”
“Didn’t I say I was going to strike back?”
Yes, enemy number one, current and past, was my good old pops. Isn’t family great? If I’d had a sense of humor, I would have laughed about the fact that she saw this as a battle, like I did. But I’d lost my sense of humor many years before. My funny bone was a shriveled-up prune of emotion, rotting away deep in the dark recesses of my soul. I lived comfortably with cynicism and snark.
Paul, leaning against the wall, crossed one ankle over the other. “He’s done a great job planning this out. We have to give him credit for that. He found your weakness and is using it against you.” Paul used his middle finger to push up his glasses. Like me, he had a few choice words for Dalton Beckett.
Jace Shepard scoffed. His nostrils flared in anger.
Tell me about it, buddy. I was just as angry.
Jace had never really liked my dad. When you had a great father like Jace’s, dads like mine seemed like fictional villains rather than real-life assholes. Dalton—he didn’t deserve to be called dad—had slammed me in the media, saying that a guy who wasn’t married and hadn’t dated in a decade had no business talking about dating and relationships. He’d said a guy whose house had been broken into the other day couldn’t know much about personal security.
Yeah, my apartment had been broken into five days earlier. When Paul told me it looked like all they took was the TV, I’d said, “I don’t have a TV.”
I hadn’t been home yet to check what was missing, but I would have bet a year’s salary nothing had been stolen, because I literally had only the essentials—a few clothing items, some cookware, a bed, and a couch. I was never home. I carried my laptop with me.
The day before, I’d taken a bullet for a client when all this bullshit here was going down. And besides that, someone had entered my mom’s ranch, broken into my sister’s glass-blowing workshop—her livelihood, by the way—and destroyed over a hundred grand in equipment and finished pieces. That had been in the media too. Here I was, supposedly one of the best in that field, yet neither residence had security. It made for a good story. Coincidence? I thought not.
“We’re not going to cut our losses. I’m not giving up on this division or this project.” I scratched the wound on my upper arm and winced as my fingers tugged on the stitches.
Citra jumped up. “Let me look at this.” She gestured for me to take off my shirt, then eased off the slightly stained bandage. As well as being one of my first employees, Citra was an excellent field agent with medical experience, which came in handy if one got shot.
I was that one in this case, by the way. Getting shot sucked. But at least the asset was alive and his stalker was headed to prison.
I wiped a hand down my face, and when I came to my chin, I rubbed at the stubble. I glanced at my watch. Twenty hours of no sleep. Or a proper shave and shower. Did I mention how dog-tired I was?
“Merely a flesh wound,” she mumbled in her best Monty Python voice. “I’ll give you some antibacterial ointment that should help with the itch. But as you know, itchy is good. However, the stitches the field quack put in are not great.” She snorted, letting me know that was an understatement. “They’ll give you a gnarly scar.”
“I’m told chicks dig scars.” I observed the poorly done, uneven stitches. The wound didn’t look like a gunshot but more like I’d snagged my arm on a fence or something equally lame.
“Like you care. I’d love to know if you ever showed a chick your scars.”
Jace raised one brow. He was like the subconscious part of my brain that I tried to ignore, only I couldn’t because his expression always reflected my thoughts. Yeah, yeah—once upon a time there had been a chick. I knew it. He knew it. No one else knew it. Things hadn’t ended so well, and that was the end of chicks and showing scars for me.
Citra slapped a clean bandage onto my arm.
“Ow, go easy,” I said, partly joking. My arm was a little sore but nothing a pain reliever couldn’t ease.
“Next time, don’t get shot, and we won’t have to do this.”
“Well, it was me or the asset, so I picked me. Can you imagine what the papers would be saying had it gone the other way?”
“Calvin,” my mother said, drawing my attention back to her. “Why are you so calm? How can you sit there and joke with Citra?” She sat on the couch across from my desk, looking ready to kill. And she had a target— Dalton Beckett, who’d always been the target for all of her feelings. She slapped the leather couch. “I can’t believe Dalton is doing this. And I can’t believe I’m surprised.” She crossed her arms.
“I’m in the business of being proactive, not reactive, so I need time to think and process.” I looked at her from under my brow. “But I’m not calm. I’m pissed off as hell.”
“As far as the news articles about you on social media go,” Paul said, “we’ve been trying to get the name of the journalist writing all these articles and doing all this posting, but Spoon says he’s hidden behind a VPN.”
I shifted my focus back to Paul then to Jace, who was sitting quietly by my mom, his expression thunderous.
Paul continued. “Okay, you don’t want to lose the project. Good. But this negative press is gonna make the launch of ProtectedLove even harder. I don’t think we can afford to wait. We need to launch now.” Paul held out his phone. “You know how much social media influences people’s beliefs. Well, here’s a trending post talking about how you have no family. Who knew being dedicated to your job would be your Achilles heel?”
I pointed to my mother. “I do have family. I have her and my sister.”
Paul quirked his brow in disbelief. “I apologize. You want me to correct the post? If we point out your mom and sister, what do you think the first questions will be? When was the last time you were at the ranch? A month, a year? How often do you see your mom and sister?”
Answer: I hadn’t been to the ranch in a decade, and in that same span of time, I’d seen Mom and Brynna three times. All those times, they’d sought me out while I was overseas, and the time together had been counted in hours, not days.
I saw his point.
My mother gave me her sad eyes. “Ten years is a long time, Cal.”
I had a good reason for that. Just not one most people would care about.
“I have a question,” Jace said, holding up a hand. “Why does Cal need to be the face of this project? Can’t Optium launch it but have someone else spearhead it?”
Paul shook his head. “Spoon is married, so that’s not gonna work for the dating app. Citra is already doing the LGBTQ portion because—”
“I’m LGBTQ” Citra said proudly.
Jace tossed up his hands in frustration. “Why does his record not count for anything? He’s saved dignitaries and high profiles around the world by making sure their security was top-notch. He’s a freaking hero for what he does. He’s getting an award from the Global Safety Initiative for all his work globally. Why isn’t this having the impact it should?”
Hero was a bit much, but I appreciated my friend’s defense. “Besides, how does one have a family when one works all the time?” Again, I was the one in this scenario.
Paul looked between Jace and me. “That’s called being a workaholic, Cal, and that’s just one more flaw to use against you. I’ve seen smear campaigns work that have made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Dalton and Hitchens are feeding off the fear of others, and once that’s on a roll, and confirmation bias kicks in, what’s being said becomes the new truth. We have to get ahead of this, more to save the project than anything else. Are you sure you want to save this venture? Because it’s not going to be easy.”
All eyes swung to me. We’d all worked so hard on this concept, and there was an emotional attachment to it as well. It was the right kind of project. The good kind. The kind that helped and made a difference. The kind that could keep my single sister safe should she ever consider online dating sites as a way to find partners.
Goddamn my father.
“Of course I’m sure. And I heard what you said. You think we need to launch now even though we aren’t as ready as we want to be. I worry that launching early will make more problems than solve them.”
Paul continued to look cool and calm. “Time is of the essence here. We have a narrow window for taking control, and it’s slipping away quickly.”
“Your father is a terrible person,” muttered Mom.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” I splayed my hands wide in question. “What I can’t figure out is why now.”
“Oh, honey, it’s not ‘why now.’ You know he’s been gunning for you since you walked away. He’s just going all out now because”—she held up one finger—“I just so happen to know he’s been having some health issues lately, and I think the fear of passing the family business to someone who is not family spurred him into action.”
Since my mother left my father, they’d rarely talked, and when they did, it was through mediators whom I doubted were sharing that kind of info.
“How do you know this?” I asked.
She shrugged one shoulder and looked at her long maroon-painted nails. “Instead of going after you, he should have hired you to teach him some security, for Pete’s sake. The man hasn’t changed his password in years.” She met my gaze. “When you walked away ten years ago, it gave me the courage to do the same. Since then, everything has slowly been eroding around him, and he can see it. He has to go big now. Time’s not his friend.”
I arched a brow. “How sick is he?” I didn’t care, but I didn’t not care either. That was the plight of unwanted children.
She waved a dismissive hand. “He’s not dying or anything—the man will never die, because Satan is afraid of him. He just needs to eat better and exercise, or his heart will explode.”
“Jeez, Ma. That doesn’t sound good.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, it won’t be for him, because he can’t do either of those things consistently. For the humans who know they are mortal, it’s all completely reversible and manageable.”
Paul cleared his throat, drawing the attention back to him. “Let’s talk about the plan. It’s sexy and personable. And it will steal the show.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair. “Would you be offended if I said it was a stupid plan?”
Paul chuckled. “No, I’ve heard that before. And usually, it’s the stupid plans that tend to be the most successful. Just one more reason to use it.” His brow went up as if he were ready for a challenge.
I pulled myself to the desk and leaned forward on my elbows, my bandage pulling tight, meeting the man’s eye. “You really think we need to bring a love consultant on board? Do those even exist? Am I supposed to date or get myself an arranged marriage or something? No offense, Jace.”
He smiled. “None taken.”
Jace’s loving father had put him in a quandary at one time too. A workaholic like me, Jace had been given an ultimatum by his dad, who said he wouldn’t leave Jace the family ranch unless he had a better work-life balance. Enter arranged marriage. That was Jace’s idea, and it was supposed to last until… well, I wasn’t sure when, but it didn’t matter because Jace was madly in love with his mail-order bride, Meredith. They were a perfect match.
Paul put his hand on Jace’s shoulder. “This is kinda where the idea came from. We bring in a love expert to help you test the app in real time. You know nothing about dating, so no one is gonna buy it if it was just you. But pair you, the security expert, with the love expert, and we have a social media reality show told through reels and posts that people will love to watch. This also builds consumer trust, so even if Hitchens relaunches his revamped product, we have the home-field advantage.”
“And maybe you’ll get lucky like Jace,” Mom said.
“Hard pass, Ma.” Yeah, marriage wasn’t in the stars for me. There was no way we could do this plan. I would never subject a woman to my company. How awful for them. “Won’t anyone I show attention to be caught up in this mess too? That doesn’t seem fair. And am I supposed to date with no real intention of it going anywhere? With a love expert over my shoulder? Too weird. See? Stupid plan.”
“Do you not want to settle down, Cal?” my mother asked quietly.
I pressed my fingers to my closed eyes. We’d had this discussion so many times. Then I looked back at Paul. I shook my head.
He pushed off the wall with a jerk. “I see where you’re coming from. The expert won’t be over your shoulder. She or he will be behind the scenes, guiding you on how to navigate the dating landscape. But it has to be you navigating the landscape. It’s a true test that way.”
“Do love experts really exist? How do you find one of those?” I really thought I had the win here with this one. It’s not like these were easy to find.
“We use a matchmaker,” he said.
I snapped to attention, my hands slapping down on my desk involuntarily. My gaze jerked toward Jace. He straightened and, with a tiny shake of his head, told me this was the first he’d heard of Paul’s plan to use a matchmaker.
“
A matchmaker, huh?” Jace asked.
Mom leaned toward Jace. “I gathered a list. Meredith said you two used a friend. We were hoping maybe we could use her too. I like the idea of bringing in someone who has already been vetted.”
I shook my head, silently pleading with him to keep his mouth shut. Yeah, Jace had used a matchmaker to find Meredith. But it wasn’t matchmakers that were the problem—it was a specific matchmaker I had an issue with. She was a secret and needed to stay that way.
Jace cleared his throat. “Uh, I happen to know the one we used isn’t available. I’m not even sure she’s in the country.” He was talking to my mom but looked at me the entire time.
Paul looked between us, probably trying to listen in on our silent conversation.
I needed to quash this fast. “Can’t we use a psychologist or something?”
Paul smiled. “I thought of that, but typically, they’re there to deal with dysfunction. A matchmaker is perfect. We need to lean into what’s been said. You admit you’re a workaholic. You know nothing about dating—that’s our expert’s job—but the core value of ProtectedLove is the safety of dating in this current age. People are meeting online and getting catfished. How safe is an app? You can’t help but wonder about the risks. So you’ll be killing two birds with one stone—ensuring dating safety and building your knowledge in this—making you and Optium a good fit for this project and app.”
I shook my head. “Why does this feel like it’ll go over like a turd in a punch bowl?”
“Because you’re a pessimist.” This from Jace.
“If you’re determined to use a matchmaker, let me see your list. I want a say in the pick.”
Paul nodded. “But we need to pick soon.”
“I’ll text you my list,” Mom said.
“I’ll get on it ASAP. I know we are battling a ticking clock. I’m still skeptical about this plan working.”
Paul’s smile was smug. He was very sure of his plan. “We lean into the fact that you can’t just stifle the need to protect people. It’s who you are. And maybe if Citra’s sister is willing, we share her story, which showcases the fact that women are the most vulnerable. How could you not look to find ways to protect them and anyone else who is most at risk of being taken advantage of?”
I stood. I needed to go home and get some sleep. “With all this leaning, it’s a wonder I don’t fall over flat on my face and all this blows up around me.”
“Crisis averted,” Jace said.
My mother and Paul clearly thought Jace was talking about the plan, but I knew he wasn’t. Jace was talking about them wanting to bring Sabrina in to help. An impossible option. I’m sure deep down Jace would like to see his two closest buds be friendly again, but I’d destroyed any chance of that when I walked away. It didn’t matter that I’d done it to protect her. Jace knew Sabrina needed to stay as far away from me as possible.
The trouble was, she was the only girl I’d ever wanted.The one girl I’d thought I would be spending forever with. In my desk drawer, under several files, was a worn-out picture of her, taken the day before we were supposed to get married. She was getting a piggyback ride from me and smiling over my shoulder, looking like all was good in the world. Jace was in the picture too.
Had I known that a few hours later it would all come crashing down… Well, I still wasn’t sure what else I could have done. And she hated me now. There was that.
“I get a final say on who the love expert is,” I said firmly.
Jace was the only one who knew my father was behind what had happened that day. Bringing Sabrina in would be like pouring fuel on this fire my father had started.
I returned my attention to Paul. “Are we in agreement?” If I could control who the love expert was, maybe this stupid plan was doable.
Paul pushed off the wall. “It’s closing in on tomorrow. To stay ahead of this, we need to have some press releases out by six a.m.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll give you five hours to sleep and get me the name of your pick, and then we have to put this all in motion. It’s one thing to make a statement that you’re gonna be testing the app, including dating, and tools of the project for flaws. But we need to start showing that before Dalton or anyone else can respond. We need to capture everyone’s attention.”
I nodded. I could see the merit of Paul’s plan. For a second, I considered the advantages of having Sabrina do the job.
Shit, did I really just think that? I must be loopy from lack of sleep. No. Sabrina was a definite no.
I swiped my keys off my desk as I stood, then walked toward the door. I stopped when I got close to Jace and poked a finger in his chest. “I’m counting on you to watch my back here.” He would know that meant I wanted him to make sure they didn’t catch wind of Sabrina.
Jace gave one sharp nod. “You need me to drive you home?”
I shook my head and started to move away, but Jace jumped up, reached out, and grabbed me by the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re okay. And I’m glad Peru is over. All things aside, you can’t keep living like you have nine lives. As I see it, you’ll be getting some much-needed downtime.”
He gave me a wry smile.
Jace and I had never guided each other wrong, and at the moment, he looked like he’d had more sleep than me, having flown in when he heard I’d been shot. I knew I could count on him.
I headed toward the door. When I got to Paul, I paused and patted the center of his chest with an open hand. “Okay, Paul. Five hours, and we’ll pick a love expert.”
“You won’t regret it,” Paul said.
“He doesn’t do regret,” Jace said. “That’s not his hang-up.”
I only had one regret, and it ate at me every day. I’d sworn to never have another one. And I wouldn’t have any regrets about destroying my father. The man deserved it.
