His hair was a mess and I felt a sting looking at it because it always was a mess, even back in the day. He rarely got it cut, it hung well past his collar and was always flopping in his eyes. That was no different now, except it wasn’t flopping in his eyes. Though I knew, if he bent his neck forward even a fraction of an inch, it would.

Although he wore the years that passed from top to toe, his eyes had not changed. Sky blue, bright, the color so stark in his tan, rugged face that it seemed to glimmer.

Eyes I saw in my dreams, even now, if I admitted it to myself.

Eyes I saw in my head on the rare occasion I let my mind wander and it went there, to the glory days tarnished with betrayal.

Eyes that I remembered trusting as he looked down at me and moved inside me. The first man I took and when I did I was sure he’d be the last.

He was not.

Not by a long shot.

“Were they going for the eye?” I asked, dipping my head toward his, my eyes on the scar on his cheekbone and I noted his entire body gave a weird jolt.

Then he answered, “Brain but their path was through the eye.”

My gaze moved from his scar to his. “You jerked.”

“I like my brain as it is.”

“Good call,” I noted.

He began to push from the wall. “Sylvie –”

Oh no. I didn’t know why he was here. What I did know was that we were not going to do this.

The time to do this was sixteen years ago.

The time we would never fucking do this was now.

I began to move around the bed. “Got a cat to feed, a shower to take and shit to do. What I don’t got is time to talk.”

Especially not with you, I finished but only in my head.

“Sebring’s meeting is at two and before that, we gotta talk.”

Fuck.

Fuck!

I stopped dead and looked at him. “What?”

I asked the question even though I knew the answer.

Last night, Knight had told Rhash and me he’d heard rumblings of trouble. A takeover.

The work I did for Knight was rarely trouble. It was legwork, checks on clients and girls. Providing security, presence, escorting girls to and from appointments. Sometimes stuff went down in his club and he needed a team to take care of. Shit happened and did, if someone was stupid enough to try it or thought they could pay or bully the girls into keeping their mouths shut after they’d misused them. But usually work for Knight was a mundane payday.

The meeting that included the boys had mostly been Knight wanting to know how the shit with Serena got so fucked. Live had reported he’d done the routine and didn’t cut corners. Knight had interrogated the rest of the team about all new clients and their background checks.

After that, he’d dismissed everyone but Rhash and me and shared that he had a gut feeling Serena was the beginning. He’d had someone come to him on the hush-hush saying they were hearing something was brewing. An old nemesis was back in town, Knight had fucked him over years ago and he was setting up to fuck back. Knight’s brother was also back in town and although he seemed to be towing the family line, they’d had issues and Nick, Knight’s brother, used to work for Knight. He knew the operation and Knight wouldn’t put it past him to sell information.

Knight was also concerned about a mole.

That meant, he’d told us, he’d brought in outside talent. Someone objective. Someone not on the team.

Someone Knight wanted me to partner with to investigate Knight’s operation and assess the danger, inside and out, and neutralize it if we found something while Rhash kept an eye on business.

The outside talent Knight brought in was Tucker Creed.

“Talked with Sebring after your meeting earlier,” he stated, confirming what I knew. “He told me he told you. After that, I shared with him we had history and I was gonna have a word with you ‘cause if we’re gonna work together, we need to talk about that history.”

I stared at him, my brain moving fast.

I did what I did for Knight Sebring because I knew how it felt, to spread your legs for someone because you were forced to take him for whatever reason forcing you to do it. I had no Knight Sebring to protect me from his bullshit, his demands, his temper. I had no Rhash or Live or Tiny to swoop in and teach him a lesson on one of the numerous occasions he did something I did not like.

There was no denying Knight and his boys operated outside the bounds of law.

In my mind, there was also no denying what they did was providing a needed service.

Until I learned the hard way how to protect myself, I would have done anything for the kind of protection they provided the girls.

Now I provided that protection. I got paid for it. I broke the law to do it. I conspired to break the law, making it safe for them to do it. And I did not give one fuck.

This meant, if there was some asshole out there that wanted to take over Knight’s operation, I had to do what I had to do to stop it.

Even take a partner.

I was down with that.

Until now.

“We’re not working together,” I told him, moving out of the room and feeling him following me.

“He considered assigning this to you but you’re tight with his team, might not be able to be objective but more, Sebring doesn’t want you out there on your own,” Creed said to my back.

“He’s protective. He’ll get over it,” I said to the bathroom as I walked into it.

I went right to my toothbrush.

Creed stopped in the doorway and leaned a shoulder against the jamb.

“Sebring strikes me as a man who likes things to go the way he wants ‘em to go,” Creed noted and he was not wrong.

“I’ll have a chat with him,” I muttered to the basin as I grabbed my toothbrush and turned on the faucet.

His voice changed, it was deep, there was roughness to it with an edge of smooth and that was also a change. It had been deep and smooth back in the day. Now that hint of rough said he smoked. It said he drank. It said he lived as jagged as his voice.

But when it came at me just then, there was a vein of soft that brought back the raw.

“Sylvie, we need to –”

I turned my head to him, toothpaste in hand and cut him off to declare, “I don’t do partners.”

“You did,” he returned immediately, his eyes watching me closely. “But he died.”

That sent raw through me again for two reasons.

One, because he was right. My partner died and he did it leaving a wife, a kid and one on the way. Stupid fuck enlisted. Enlisted when we were at fucking war. “Gonna do my bit,” he said. Fucking fucker got out of the Marines, set up a life where there was a possibility, not a probability, that people would shoot at him and then he went back to the probability, re-enlisting and got himself shot dead.

The other reason was because I knew Creed had checked me out and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like him knowing anything about me. I figured, Knight hired him, he was good at what he did.

So he knew.

Everything.

I turned back to the mirror and loaded up my toothbrush. “Yeah, I did. He died. Learned that lesson. Now I don’t do partners.”

“This shit is what Knight thinks it is, the ride’s gonna be bumpy. You need someone at your back,” he replied.

Maybe but it sure as hell would not be him.

Before shoving the toothbrush in my mouth, my eyes went to the mirror and I returned, “Need it, I got Knight or Rhash,” then I started brushing.

Creed appeared in the mirror behind me and my eyes went up to his in the mirror.

“He might have a mole. As far as his team’s concerned, it’s business as usual for both of them,” he told me something Knight explained last night. “Banks nor Sebring are available to you.”

I shrugged.

“Sylvie, I’ve already been workin’ this job a month. I know that team better than you do.”

That pissed me off enough to pull the brush out, spit out foam then catch his eyes in the mirror again. “No fucking way. You may think you do and they may have secrets they haven’t shared but no amount of digging you could do in a month tells you more than what I know working side by side with those guys for years. You’ve lived the life, Creed, it’s written all over you. You know that. You had something on one of them, Knight would already have that intel. So you don’t have shit.” After delivering that, I shoved the brush back in and kept at my teeth.

“You’re right,” he confirmed. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t something to get.”

I shrugged again.

“You know what hangs in the balance,” he stated and I held his eyes.

I knew but he told me anyway.

“Scenario one, Knight keeps business open and another girl gets it worse than Serena last night. He keeps it open, that shit escalates and girls get hurt. Scenario two, he shuts it down. Okay for him but if he can’t neutralize the threat in a timely manner that means, first, he’s gotta let boys go. He doesn’t need a team that big when there’s no girls to look after. Second, the girls are fucked. They got no jobs, they got no money then they look for alternate ways to get paid without a man or a five foot two powerhouse at their back. You know Sebring. He won’t put them in danger. He’ll shut down. That club turns over a mint, he’ll survive. Those girls won’t.”

I stopped brushing, spit, rinsed and looked back to his eyes in the mirror as I shoved my brush in the holder. “So I’ll find the mole, if there is one, and I’ll track down the trouble and put it out of commission. You’ve been looking into me, Creed. You know what I’m capable of. This assignment is not outside my skill level.”