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Her life.
Only it wasn’t just hers anymore.
She was pregnant and hopelessly in love with the baby’s father. A man who had callously used her for sex and then tossed her aside when he got bored. A man who wouldn’t be beside her as she raised this baby.
Curling her arms protectively over her stomach, Lila realized she was already falling for this child, already starting to love it. “Don’t worry, little one, it might be just the two of us, but somehow we’ll make it work.”
Chapter Two
November 9th
3:02 P.M.
The street looked clear.
How many times was he going to do this before he finally accepted it was over and walked away?
Surf shook his head and lifted his hands to massage his temples.
He knew the answer to that question, and it was never.
Even though it had been almost four weeks since he ended things with Lila, he couldn’t stop thinking about the woman. Time hadn’t helped, if anything it was making it worse. The more time that passed without being able to talk, touch, kiss, and make love to her, the bigger the chasm between them seemed to grow.
While he was every bit as into her as he had been when he’d ended things, Lila was no doubt starting to move on. Since she had no idea why he’d broken up with her or that he had been falling in love with her, she had no reason to think about him at all. And if she was, he doubted they were nice thoughts.
It physically hurt to know that she likely hated him and that the chances of him being able to fix this once the threat to him and his team was eliminated were so slim they were virtually non-existent.
Damn Kristoff Mikhailov and his mysterious and as yet unidentified Dark Beauty.
If the head of the Russian Mafia family hadn’t concocted this crazy plot to overthrow the government, then none of this would be happening. Although he had to admit if it wasn’t for the man’s plans, none of the guys on his team might have ended up with their partners.
Luca “Bear” Jackson had met his now wife Mackenzie when they’d raided the island compound on Lake Victoria in Uganda of a man named Storm Gallagher. Storm was a survivalist with a grudge against the government and plans to destroy it and usher in his version of a utopia. Mackenzie was Storm’s half-sister and had been abused by him all her life. In his delusional mind, she was to be the mother of the man who would bring in this utopia.
Asher “Mouse” Whitman and his wife Phoebe met when she saved his daughter Lolly from being abducted. When it became clear Phoebe was terrified, and on the run, they ended up learning her abusive ex was mixed up in a law firm that helped finance the plot that went deeper than Storm and his vision, by extorting money from wealthy clients.
Antonio “Arrow” Eden already knew his now fiancée Piper Hamilton because she was Prey’s on-staff psychiatrist. Things changed between the two of them when Alpha Team was captured in Somalia and tortured. Determined to go after the woman who had caught his attention, things became complicated when Piper was being stalked by a former Prey employee turned weapons dealer.
This led Dominick “Domino” Tanner to meet his now fiancée Julia Garamond when they went back to Somalia to try to track a couple of the weapons dealers who had escaped the raid on Pete Petrowski’s compound to rescue Piper. Julia was a reporter who had been caught in one of the explosions and decided to investigate.
When they learned that Domino was in fact a Mikhailov, firstborn son and heir to the Bratva family empire, all of them were completely shocked. Domino had kept his true identity from them for fear that they’d see him as evil like his family, but in reality, the most shocking thing about the whole mess was the way the hard, emotionless man had softened under the love of the woman he’d fallen for.
Domino and Julia deserved to be spending this special time at the beginning of their relationship enjoying getting to know one another and basking in their new love. Instead, they were living in an apartment in Prey’s Manhattan building under constant fear that Domino’s brother Kristoff’s, who had been killed almost a month ago by Domino himself, Dark Beauty would come after them.
The woman had vowed vengeance for Kristoff and to continue his plan.
Which was why he’d had to break up with Lila.
How could he ask her to give up her life and have around-the-clock security when things between them were so new?
With a last scan of her street, when he saw nothing that looked suspicious, Surf turned the engine back on and pulled out into the busy Manhattan traffic.
Over the last four weeks, he had spent way more time than he should sitting outside Lila’s building watching over her. Just because he had ended things with her as soon as they knew about Dark Beauty, it didn’t mean someone from the Mikhailov Bratva hadn’t already tagged Lila as being connected to him.
If they had, his ending things with her would have been for nothing.
But so far things had been quiet. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. There was no one he could detect watching Lila or her building.
The small glimpses he’d gotten of her when he’d timed his near-daily check-ins of her building to coincide with when he knew she would be leaving for work weren’t enough. How had he ever thought he could do this?
