Chapter 3 - THE PRICE OF EXPOSURE
In the service corridor behind the kitchen, Harper dropped against the tiled wall, her breath coming in jagged, burning gasps.
The adrenaline coursed through her veins like battery acid, setting her fingers to a violent tremor. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until colors burst in the dark behind her eyelids.
Stupid. Reckless. Insane.
For three years, she had buried Harper Sinclair—or rather, the woman who had lived before that name existed. She had shredded her passports, burned her comms cards, erased her fingerprints with chemical peels, and taken the lowest-paying, most invisible job she could find in Manhattan. All to keep a fragile six-year-old girl named Penny alive in an oncology ward on the Upper East Side.
A shadow fell over the harsh fluorescent strip above her.
Harper didn't look up, but her right hand instinctively dropped to her waist, fingers curling into a strike position.
"You're out of practice," a voice murmured. Low. Gravelly. Stripped of warmth.
Harper snapped her head up.
Kian Thorne stood five feet away in the narrow corridor, blocking the only exit to the dish pit. In the stark, buzzing light of the back hallway, stripped of the dim amber atmosphere of the VIP lounge, he looked less like a billionaire logistics tycoon and more like a wolf carved out of granite. His tailored charcoal jacket hung unbuttoned; beneath his silk shirt, the outline of a low-profile shoulder holster was unmistakable to anyone trained to look for it.
"Mr. Thorne," Harper said, forcing her voice into neutral, gravel-free territory. "I apologize for the disturbance in your dining room. I’ll clear my locker and leave before your party finishes."
"Leave?" Kian stepped forward. He moved without sound, the predatory grace of someone whose reflexes had been forged in the same dark rooms as hers. "You think you can dismantle an international smuggling syndicate’s regional director with twenty words of high-caste intelligence Hindi and just clock out?"
Harper straightened, pushing off the wall, refusing to cower. "He spilled wine on me."
"He insulted your dignity," Kian corrected, stopping just two paces away. His gray eyes raked over her—not with the predatory lechery of Rajesh, but with the terrifying, calculating assessment of a commander inspecting a weapon. "And you didn't just hit back. You dropped five classified operational vectors in sixty seconds. The '03 Port Trust theft was buried under RAW redactions. The Swiss routing numbers Vikram uses were flagged by Interpol only forty-eight hours ago."
He leaned in slightly. He smelled of sandalwood, expensive tobacco, and rain.
"Who trained you, Harper? Langley? Fort Meade? Or the farm in North Carolina?"
"I'm a server at The Meridian, Mr. Thorne," she whispered, her chin high. "My hourly wage is twelve dollars plus tips. And right now, I need to get back to my tables."
Kian reached into his inside pocket. Harper’s muscles coiled instantly, ready to deflect a weapon. Instead, he pulled out an embossed black titanium business card and a thick manila envelope, pressing them firmly against her chest.
Harper looked down. Through the unsealed flap of the envelope, she saw stacks of banded hundred-dollar bills. Fifty thousand dollars, at least.
"Rajesh won't leave this city alive if he thinks you’re an asset sent to burn him," Kian said quietly. "He’s already texting his muscle in Queens. By midnight, your apartment will be turned inside out. If you go home, whoever is waiting for you is dead."
The cold returned to Harper’s stomach, sharper than before. Penny.
May you like
"What do you want?" she asked, her voice dropping into the rasp of the operative she had tried so hard to murder.
"I need an interpreter who knows how to spot a lie before it leaves a traitor's teeth," Kian said. "And you need someone who can keep your little sister safe from the wolves you just summoned. Get in the elevator at the end of the hall. My driver is waiting."
