Ruthless Protection

RHYS

I don't do mercy. I don't do soft. Fifteen years in the worst rooms on earth taught me that hesitation gets people killed — and I have never hesitated once in my life. Not until her.

Vivian Cross walks into my company with a folder full of numbers that shouldn't add up and a spine she has no business having, given what I already know is coming for her. She thinks she's uncovered fraud. She has no idea she's uncovered a war.

I could hand her to the people hunting her. It would be cleaner. Safer for everyone, including me. Instead I'm moving her into my building, putting my body between her and every threat circling closer, and breaking every rule I've built my life around to keep her breathing.

She doesn't trust powerful men. She's not wrong not to. But she's mine to protect now, and I don't lose what's mine.

VIVIAN

I learned young that men who own the room own the people in it. My father taught me that lesson by destroying our family for a spreadsheet full of lies. I swore I'd never again be a woman standing in some powerful man's shadow, grateful for his protection.

Then I find evidence someone inside Kestrel Dynamics is selling classified weapons technology to buyers who should never touch it — and the man assigned to keep me alive is the coldest, most controlled predator I've ever met. Rhys Calloway doesn't explain himself. He doesn't apologize. He just decides things, about the case, about the danger, about me, and expects me to fall in line.

I should hate how safe I feel in his hands. I should hate how much I want him anyway.

But the closer we get to the truth, the more I realize Rhys isn't just protecting me from Kestrel's enemies. He's protecting me from something he did — something that could destroy the fragile thing growing between us before the people hunting me ever get the chance.

**Tropes:** Forced Proximity • Morally Grey Hero • Corporate Conspiracy • One Safehouse • Secrets & Hidden Past • Protector Romance • **A Forced Proximity Dark Romantic Suspense**