CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Alessandra
At two hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, nobody gave a damn who her father was.
That was precisely why Alessandra Devereux loved it.
The engine screamed beneath her as she shifted, the vibration traveling through the steering wheel and into her palms. Manhattan existed somewhere behind her in a civilized arrangement of glass towers, private clubs, boardrooms, and people who used her surname before they’d even bothered learning her first name.
Out here, she was Laurent.
Just Laurent.
The black Porsche surged forward.
“Come on, baby.”
The speedometer climbed.
Her pulse followed.
The silver McLaren beside her gained half a car length.
Alessandra smiled.
Cute.
She shifted again.
The Porsche responded viciously.
Streetlights became streaks of white against the windshield. Her dark hair had been twisted into a careless knot before she’d put on her helmet, but several strands had escaped and were sticking to the back of her neck.
Her heart hammered.
Not from fear.
Never fear.
This was the part she loved.
That razor-thin place where every sense sharpened, every irrelevant thought disappeared, and there was nothing left except machine, instinct and the next three seconds.
She saw the opening before the McLaren did.
Her foot went down.
The Porsche shot through.
“Fuck yes.”
She crossed first.
The crowd ahead erupted.
Alessandra eased off the accelerator, laughter already bubbling out of her as she brought the car around.
God, she loved being alive.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, she climbed from the Porsche into humid night air.
“Laurent!”
Someone grabbed her around the waist from behind.
Alessandra laughed as Theo Harrington spun her once before setting her down.
“You lunatic.”
“You’re just bitter because you put five thousand on Adrian.”
“I put five thousand on Adrian because unlike you, I possess a functioning survival instinct.”
“Your mistake.”
Theo looked at the Porsche.
“My mistake was believing you when you said you weren’t modifying it again.”
Alessandra removed her helmet.
Her hair fell from its loose knot in a heavy dark wave over her shoulders.
A few conversations nearby noticeably stalled.
She didn’t notice.
Or rather, she noticed and didn’t care.
She’d been noticing men notice her since she was fifteen.
At twenty-three, male attention had become background noise.
She was petite compared to most of the models and socialites she spent time around, but there was nothing fragile about her figure. A narrow waist curved into full hips, long hours at the gym keeping her body tight without stealing the softness from it. Tonight, black leather trousers hugged her legs and hips, paired with a fitted white top that made absolutely no attempt to disguise her curves.
Her face caused more confusion than her body.
Large hazel-green eyes. Dark lashes. High cheekbones softened by full lips. Delicate features that had prompted her father to call her Angel since before she could remember.
An angel’s face, according to Sebastian.
Unfortunately for him, God had apparently forgotten to provide the matching temperament.
Theo handed her a bottle of water.
“You’re insane.”
Alessandra drank.
“You’ve mentioned.”
“You nearly clipped the barrier.”
“I had room.”
“You had approximately the width of my dick.”
She lowered the bottle and considered him.
“So plenty of room, then.”
Theo stared at her.
Then Arabella, standing beside him, choked on her drink.
“Jesus Christ, Alessa.”
Theo pressed a hand to his chest.
“You wound me.”
“You’ll recover.”
A man Alessandra vaguely recognized approached them.
Tall. Blond. Expensive watch.
What was his name?
Oliver?
Oscar?
Something beginning with O and ending with his father owning half of Connecticut.
“You were incredible,” he said.
His eyes moved over her.
Not subtly.
Alessandra’s mouth curved.
“Thank you.”
“Let me buy you a drink.”
“I already have one.”
His smile widened. “A real one.”
Theo leaned toward Arabella.
“Twenty dollars she doesn’t remember his name.”
“Forty.”
Alessandra ignored them.
The blond man moved closer.
“There’s a party downtown.”
“There is always a party downtown.”
“You should come with me.”
She tilted her head.
Pretty.
Confident.
Probably perfectly pleasant.
And she felt absolutely nothing.
“Maybe another night.”
His expression told her he wasn’t accustomed to no.
Neither was she.
Perhaps that was why she enjoyed giving it.
Before he could try again, her phone vibrated.
Dad.
Alessandra looked at the time.
12:47 a.m.
Oops.
She answered in French.
“Bonsoir, Papa.”
There was silence.
That was never promising.
“Do you know what time it is?”
English.
Definitely not promising.
Alessandra walked away from the others.
“Time is a social construct.”
“Alessandra.”
She winced.
Full name.
Very not promising.
“Yes?”
“Where are you?”
She looked around at several million dollars’ worth of illegally enthusiastic machinery.
“At dinner.”
Theo overheard and nearly folded in half laughing.
Alessandra gave him the finger.
Her father’s voice became frighteningly calm.
“What kind of restaurant has engines revving in the background?”
“A modern one?”
“Home. Now.”
“Papa—”
“Now, Angel.”
The line disconnected.
Alessandra stared at her phone.
Arabella lifted an eyebrow.
“Busted?”
“My father has developed unreasonable expectations regarding honesty.”
“You told him you were at dinner.”
“I had fries.”
Theo nodded solemnly.
“Your defense is airtight.”
Alessandra sighed.
“Apparently I’m going home.”
* * *
She knew something was wrong the moment she walked into the penthouse.
Her father was awake.
Sebastian Devereux did not wait up for his twenty-three-year-old daughter.
He had learned years ago that attempting to enforce a curfew on Alessandra only encouraged creativity.
Tonight, however, he stood beside the floor-to-ceiling windows of his study wearing dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms.
No jacket.
No tie.
A glass of untouched cognac sat on the desk.
And two unfamiliar men were standing near the door.
Alessandra stopped.
The adrenaline from the race vanished.
Not completely.
It changed.
She looked at her father.
“What’s happened?”
Sebastian turned.
At fifty-three, he remained a striking man. Tall, silver beginning to touch his dark hair at the temples, elegant in the effortless way of someone who had been raised around money rather than introduced to it.
His eyes settled on her.
For one strange second, his expression softened painfully.
Alessandra knew that look.
She hated that look.
It meant he’d seen her mother again.
Élodie Laurent had been dead for seven years, and sometimes Alessandra still caught her father staring at her as though time had played a cruel trick on him.
Same eyes.
Same mouth.
Same dark hair.
Her mother’s face resurrected twenty-three years younger.
Alessandra walked toward him.
“Papa?”
Sebastian blinked and returned to the present.
“Sit.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“Of course you would.”
Normally she would have smiled.
Tonight she didn’t.
One of the unfamiliar men handed Sebastian a folder.
He placed it on the desk.
Alessandra looked down.
Photographs.
Of her.
Leaving Devereux headquarters.
Walking into a restaurant.
Climbing from her car.
Entering her gym.
One taken through the window of a café.
Another outside her apartment building.
Her stomach tightened.
She picked one up.
A red circle had been drawn around her head.
“Well,” she murmured. “That’s dramatic.”
“Don’t.”
She looked at her father.
Something in his face made her humor disappear.
“How long?”
“Three weeks.”
Her head snapped up.
“You’ve known about this for three weeks?”
“We weren’t certain you were the target.”
“And now?”
Sebastian pushed another photograph toward her.
Her Porsche.
Tonight.
Her fingers went still.
The photograph had been taken before the race.
On the back, three words had been written.
SHE’S NOT UNTOUCHABLE.
For several seconds, Alessandra said nothing.
Then she placed it down.
“Who?”
“We’re working on that.”
“Competitor?”
“Possibly.”
“Varenne?”
“Possibly.”
“Papa.”
“I said we’re working on it.”
She crossed her arms.
“I’m involved in Devereux Group. If this concerns the company, I have a right to know.”
“And when I know, you will.”
“I could help.”
“I know.”
That stopped her.
Sebastian stepped closer.
His voice softened.
“You think I’m trying to exclude you because I don’t trust your judgment.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No.”
His eyes moved briefly toward the photographs.
“I’m excluding you because someone is photographing my daughter through windows.”
Alessandra swallowed.
There it was.
Not Sebastian Devereux, chairman of a multinational conglomerate.
Her father.
The man who had already buried his wife.
She reached for his hand.
“Papa.”
His fingers closed around hers.
“I’m not losing you too.”
The words were quiet.
They landed harder than shouting would have.
Alessandra squeezed his hand.
“You won’t.”
“You cannot promise me that.”
“Neither can you.”
His jaw tightened.
She knew immediately she’d said the wrong thing.
“Sorry.”
Sebastian exhaled.
Then his expression changed.
Businesslike.
Decided.
Alessandra recognized it immediately and became suspicious.
“What did you do?”
“I increased your security.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I—”
“No.”
“Alessandra.”
“I already have security at the building and drivers available when I need them.”
“This isn’t building security.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“What is it?”
“Personal protection.”
“No.”
“It’s done.”
“Undo it.”
“Not happening.”
“Papa—”
“A close-protection specialist will remain with you until this is resolved.”
Alessandra stared at him.
“Remain with me how?”
“Exactly how that sentence sounds.”
“At work?”
“Yes.”
“Events?”
“Yes.”
“My apartment?”
“Nearby.”
Her mouth fell open.
“Absolutely fucking not.”
“Language.”
“You’re assigning me a human parasite and you’re concerned about my language?”
One of the security men coughed suspiciously.
Sebastian looked at him.
The man immediately discovered the ceiling.
Alessandra planted both hands on the desk.
“I am twenty-three.”
“I’m aware. I attended the birth.”
“I run an entire division of your company.”
“And very well.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Good. Because I’m not hiring a babysitter.”
“Then what exactly are you hiring?”
“A man capable of keeping you alive despite your apparently enthusiastic participation in activities designed to prevent that.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You know about the racing.”
Sebastian simply looked at her.
“Oh.”
“Did you genuinely believe using your mother’s maiden name meant I wouldn’t find out?”
Alessandra considered this.
“Kind of?”
“Alessandra Laurent.”
He said it with such exhausted disbelief that she almost smiled.
Almost.
“I wasn’t hiding it from you.”
“You were literally using another surname.”
“I was hiding it from everyone else.”
“Wonderful distinction.”
She walked around the desk.
“Papa, I understand you’re worried. I’ll be more careful.”
“No.”
“I’ll take a driver.”
“No.”
“I’ll stop racing temporarily.”
That made Sebastian pause.
She hated how much that concession cost her.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
“Then—”
“No.”
Alessandra stared at him.
He kissed her forehead.
“Your new protection officer starts tomorrow morning.”
She pulled back.
“I will make his life unbearable.”
“I’ve warned him.”
“You’re joking.”
“For once, I don’t.”
She glared.
Sebastian smiled for the first time that night.
It made him look younger.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
“You’re a terrible father.”
“So you’ve informed me repeatedly since you were thirteen.”
She started toward the door.
“Eight.”
“Excuse me?”
“I started telling you at eight.”
“Ah. My mistake.”
She reached the doorway.
“What’s his name?”
Sebastian picked up his cognac.
“Blackwood.”
She waited.
“Does Blackwood have a first name?”
“Damon.”
Alessandra leaned against the doorway.
Damon Blackwood.
The name sounded unnecessarily dramatic.
“Former military?”
“Special Forces.”
She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.
“Of course he is.”
“Two years in executive protection since leaving.”
“Why did he leave?”
Sebastian’s gaze sharpened slightly.
“That’s his business.”
Which meant her father knew.
Interesting.
“How old?”
“Twenty-eight.”
Alessandra looked back.
“Twenty-eight?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I was expecting some fifty-year-old refrigerator with an earpiece.”
Sebastian’s expression became suspicious.
“He is not being hired for your entertainment.”
“Everything can be entertaining with the right attitude.”
“Angel.”
She smiled sweetly.
There was nothing angelic about it.
“Good night, Papa.”
* * *
Across the city, Damon Blackwood stared at the file on his kitchen table.
ALESSANDRA ÉLODIE DEVEREUX
Twenty-three.
Executive Director, Strategic Development, Devereux Group.
Columbia graduate.
Fluent English and French.
Competitive equestrian training.
Advanced driving courses.
Multiple speeding citations mysteriously reduced or dismissed.
He turned the page.
Society photographs.
Galas.
Charity events.
Fashion shows.
A yacht in Monaco.
A photograph from Cannes.
Another from some Manhattan opening, Alessandra standing between two men Damon recognized from families worth billions.
Beautiful didn’t quite cover it.
Damon had protected beautiful women before.
Actresses.
Models.
An ambassador’s daughter who’d spent three weeks attempting to get him into her bed because she’d apparently interpreted professional indifference as a personal challenge.
Alessandra Devereux was different.
Not because she was prettier.
Though she was.
Fuck.
He turned another page.
There was something almost absurdly innocent about her face.
Huge light eyes. Full mouth. Dark hair. Fine-boned features.
Then he reached the surveillance photographs.
The innocence disappeared.
One showed her climbing from a Porsche dressed head to toe in black, helmet tucked beneath one arm, expression alive with something Damon recognized immediately.
Adrenaline.
He knew that look.
He’d worn it himself once.
Before adrenaline stopped meaning excitement.
Before it meant blood and radio chatter and figuring out which man beside you had just stopped breathing.
Damon leaned back.
“This is going to be a fucking nightmare.”
“What’s going to be a nightmare?”
He looked toward the doorway.
Elias stood there in plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt, dark hair sticking in approximately six directions, laptop beneath one arm.
“You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Congratulations.”
“I don’t have a bedtime.”
“You live in my apartment.”
“Our apartment.”
“Who pays for it?”
Elias considered.
“Capitalism is such an ugly system.”
Damon stared at him.
Elias walked to the refrigerator.
“So who’s she?”
“Client.”
Elias looked over his shoulder.
“She’s hot.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t.”
“I made an objective observation.”
“You’re seventeen.”
“I have eyes at seventeen.”
Damon closed the file.
Elias grinned.
That grin had been getting him out of trouble since he had teeth.
It worked on everyone except Damon.
Mostly.
“You’re doing the billionaire-daughter job?”
“Apparently.”
“How billionaire?”
“Go to bed.”
“That billionaire.”
Damon rubbed his jaw.
Elias drank orange juice directly from the carton.
Damon’s eyes narrowed.
Elias slowly lowered it.
“Glass.”
“You’ve killed people and this is where you draw your moral boundaries?”
“Glass.”
Elias sighed theatrically and reached for one.
Damon watched him.
Seventeen.
Nearly eighteen.
Sometimes Damon still saw the newborn his mother had placed in his eleven-year-old arms the week after they buried their father.
You’re his big brother now, Damon.
As if he hadn’t already known.
Fifteen years later, when their mother became too sick to care for Elias, Damon had known again.
He’d come home.
There had never really been a decision.
Uniform or brother.
Career or brother.
Deployment or letting a fifteen-year-old kid wonder whether he’d have a family left when their mother died.
Damon chose Elias.
Every time.
He’d choose him again.
Elias poured the juice.
“When do you start?”
“Seven.”
“Ouch.”
“I’ll be gone before you wake up.”
“I wake up at six-thirty.”
“You wake up at six-thirty after I yell at you four times.”
“Still counts.”
Damon picked up Alessandra’s file.
A photograph slipped free.
Elias bent and retrieved it before Damon could.
It was Alessandra at some gala.
Emerald silk.
Dark hair swept over one shoulder.
Laughing at something outside the frame.
Elias looked from the photograph to his brother.
“Oh, you’re screwed.”
Damon took it from him.
“Go to bed.”
“I’m serious.”
“Elias.”
“You have that face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you’re pretending you don’t have a face.”
Damon pointed toward the hallway.
“Bed.”
Elias walked backward, grinning.
“Good luck with the princess.”
“She’s a principal. Not a princess.”
“Sure.”
“And Elias?”
“Yeah?”
“Stay out of my work computer.”
Elias looked offended.
“I would never.”
Damon stared.
Elias lasted approximately two seconds.
“Fine. I won’t do it again.”
“Again?”
“Good night.”
“Elias.”
His bedroom door slammed.
Damon closed his eyes.
Teenagers.
He’d faced men carrying assault rifles with less apprehension.
He looked down at Alessandra Devereux again.
Tomorrow he would establish protocols.
Transportation.
Routes.
Schedules.
Threat exposure.
Rules.
Professional boundaries.
Simple.
Then he noticed a handwritten note Sebastian Devereux’s security director had added to the bottom of the file.
SUBJECT ALSO USES: ALESSANDRA LAURENT.
Below it:
Unregistered racing events. Frequent.
Damon stared at the words.
Then at the photograph of the angel-faced woman smiling in emerald silk.
His jaw flexed.
“Fuck me.”
From down the hallway came Elias’s voice.
“I TOLD YOU.”
Damon threw the file onto the table.
Tomorrow was going to be a very long day.
