CHAPTER ONE • Silent Assets
The bedroom was thick with the heavy, stifling heat of a dream that refused to let me go.
I woke with my skin flushed hot, my lungs straining for air, and my heart hammering against my ribs in a wild, frantic rhythm. My sheets were tangled around my legs, the phantom sensation of Jason’s hands pressing me down—heavy, unyielding, and intoxicating—still thrumming through my veins.
For a breathless second, I stayed frozen in the dark, clinging desperately to the fading haze. Jason’s features bled together, leaving me with only vivid fragments to cling onto. His rough, calloused fingers, his golden-flecked hazel eyes looking down at me in the dim light, the overwhelming, addicting heat of his body against mine. I needed him so badly it was a deep, physical ache in my chest—a hollow void that six long months of agonizing silence had done nothing to heal.
Knock, knock... Knock.
Clark’s coded knock.
The sharp, heavy raps against the front door shattered the vision, tearing me back into the cold reality of the quiet house.
My eyes snapped open. I gasped, sitting up so fast my head swam. Panic instantly spiked through my veins, clashing violently with the lingering, undone heat coiled in my gut. I checked the bedside clock—the glowing numbers blurred before my eyes—before throwing off the covers.
Savannah was asleep down the hall. I couldn’t let him wake her. Today had been an extraordinarily rough day for six-year-old Savannah; she had just spent an hour sobbing in my arms over missing Jason before finally crying herself to sleep.
My heart twisted at the thought of her. Savannah wasn’t mine by blood, nor was she Jason’s biological child. I knew Jason had legally adopted her when she was just a year old, taking full responsibility for her, but he had always been fiercely protective and tight-lipped about the exact circumstances surrounding her adoption. All I knew was that he loved her like his own—and so did I.
And now, everything was unraveling.
Ever since we recovered that encrypted flash drive—the one with my full legal name terrifyingly carved straight into the metal casing—our world had turned into a living nightmare. The top file on that drive confirmed what we feared most: a formal termination mandate had been approved.
Jason. Savannah. Me.
We were all on a hit list, marked for death by a shadow force that was hunting us down.
Right now, that metal drive sat heavy and silent in the top drawer of my nightstand, hidden deep in the back where Savannah couldn’t reach it. I hadn’t touched it, picked it up, or even looked at it since we arrived at this house under our new fake names—identities Jason had quietly set up years ago as an emergency contingency plan, long before I even knew the depth of the danger we were in.
I was terrified to even open the drawer.
Every time my eyes drifted toward the nightstand, my senses were flooded by the sensory horror of the night it all fell apart. I could still smell the acrid, metallic tang of gunpowder hanging heavy in the air, the burning stench of blown drywall, cordite, and shattered glass ground into the carpet. I could still see Savannah looking completely wrecked—small, pale, and screaming in terror as the world rained down around us.
And Clark... God, Clark had looked entirely undone. Before that night, Clark had been insufferably cocky—a smooth-talking operative who used to openly flirt with me right in front of Jason, completely unfazed when Jason’s jaw would lock and his golden-flecked eyes would burn with murderous, possessive fury. But in those frantic minutes after the ambush, all of Clark’s playful defiance had vanished. His face had been pale, streaked with soot, his hair disheveled, his hands trembling as he frantically shoved us into the back of the SUV, barking orders into his radio, desperate to get us out before the kill team closed in.
And through the middle of that hell, there was only a vast, hollow emptiness where Jason should have been.
He was just... gone. No final words, no bloody trail to follow. Just a terrifying void. Was he miles away in the dark, bleeding out alone in some ditch? Was he bound and gagged in a black site, being tortured for information? Or was he already dead, his body hidden somewhere I would never find? I didn’t know. The agonizing uncertainty ate at my sanity every single second of the day.
Barefoot and trembling, I hurried down the stairs, smoothing down my rumpled clothes with frantic hands, my chest heaving as I tried to force my racing pulse to slow down. My skin felt burning hot, my cheeks flushed bright red from the lingering heat of Jason in my dream, my dark hair a tangled mess from tossing in bed.
I reached the front door and unlocked it, pulling it open just a crack.
He stood on the porch under the dim yellow light, framed by the dark night—tall, broad-shouldered, and formidable. A steady guard posted in the shadows. The moment the door swung wider, his dark green eyes locked onto me, taking in my disheveled state, the heavy rise and fall of my chest, and the sheer heat radiating off my skin.
A subtle, unmistakable shift occurred in his gaze. His eyes darkened, a flash of raw, unexpected intensity crossing his features as he misread my undone, breathless posture.
Before I could process it, Clark stepped across the threshold, reaching an arm out toward me.
In an instant, the world tilted.
The dark doorway dissolved. Clark’s looming frame morphed into Carl—the terrifying memory of Jason’s former operative cornering me, forcing his mouth onto mine, his hands grabbing greedily at my body, the suffocating terror of being trapped right before Jason had caught them. Along with Carl’s ghost came the suffocating weight of a far darker past—scarred memories I had never spoken aloud, clawing their way up from the depths of my broken heart. A past not even Jason knew about.
A sharp, visceral gasp tore from my throat as I recoiled violently. My back slammed hard against the entryway wall, my eyes wide with pure, unadulterated horror as my hands flew up to shield my chest.
Clark froze instantly.
He caught the sudden, wild panic in my eyes—the way I was looking at him not as the steady protector who had carried this responsibility for six agonizing months, but as a predator. As the living embodiment of a dark past that clawed relentlessly at my aching chest.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. The intensity in his face vanished, replaced by immediate regret and caution.
He stopped mid-reach, slowly backing up two full steps onto the porch and holding his hands up in front of him, palms flat and open, assuring me he was not there to harm me.
“Oh... no, Natalie,” Clark said softly, his deep voice thick with careful, steadying calm. “Hey. Look at me. I’m not here to hurt you. I wouldn’t."
My mind was screaming, my heart hammering so hard I thought my ribs would crack. I tried to pull myself together—tried to tell myself that Carl was gone, that my haunting past was just that, the past, and that this was Clark, the man Jason had trusted to keep us safe. But the phantom hands of my past lingering over my skin mixed sickeningly with the sweet dream I had just woken from. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t look at him.
“Please,” I choked out, my voice breaking into a terrified, breathless sob as I pressed myself flatter against the wall. “Please... I’m sorry. Just go, Clark. Please.”
I couldn’t bear to hear his bad news right now. The inevitable confirmation that Jason hadn’t been found. That he remained nothing but a ghost in my mind while target marks remained painted squarely on our backs for yet another dreadfully lonely day.
Clark looked at me for a long, heavy moment, his dark green eyes filled with a mixture of quiet remorse and deep concern. He didn’t argue. He didn’t try to step closer to explain himself.
“Okay,” he whispered, his voice steady and respectful as he lowered his hands slightly, taking another step back into the dark night. “I’m stepping back. Lock the door, Natalie. I’ll be right outside.”
He pulled the door shut softly behind him. The moment the latch clicked, I turned the lock with shaking fingers, sank down onto the cold hardwood floor, and hid my face in my hands, weeping in the quiet hallway.
My body shook with violent, ragged sobs that I couldn’t suppress, no matter how hard I pressed my hands over my face.
Over the past six agonizing months, I had watched myself completely unravel under the suffocating weight of hiding from an agency that wanted us dead. Before Jason disappeared, I had been grounded, steady, a rock. But now, my emotions were completely out of whack, swinging wildly between numb despair and suffocating panic. I was a raw wire, snapping at the slightest breeze, constantly reeling from the overwhelming weight of grief, terror, and the target on our heads.
The guilt of it ate me alive.
