Page 14 of Entwined With You

He grins. “No.”

I lean forward more and put my hands on his knees. “Then help me, Brax. You say it wasn’t you? Help me prove it. Maybe you don’t care what I believe, but if you’re not bullshitting me, then you do care about Sabrina. You want justice for her, right? Then help me find out what really happened.”

“Steal the Sisters.”

“They’re going to be on display at a Performing Arts Center. I mean, come on. From what I know, that would be a cakewalk for the original team. Help me,” I repeat, taking his hand and ignoring the frisson of electricity that shoots through me from nothing more than the brush of skin against skin.

He pulls his hand back, and I exhale a breath in relief. Then he stands and starts pacing. “That’s not what I do anymore.”

“I believe you,” I say, even though I’m sure he’s lying. This isn’t a man who’s gone straight; considering everything I know about him, I wouldn’t have expected him to.

He’s too good at what he does. And definitely too cold-hearted.

Once upon a time, I never would have believed that. As far as I was concerned, he was warmth and humor, and I truly believed that he loved me. But that was before he got some text that “delayed” him.

Delayed, my ass.

Delayed is what saved his life. And as for me … well, I’d be nothing more than ash now if I hadn’t been forewarned and pulled out by agents from Group Ultra—a deep cover arm of the Sensitive Operations Command—a covert government intelligence organization that saved me and then recruited me.

They told me the truth about the man who’d supposedly loved me. They backed it up with evidence, and they gave me time to mourn. Both my “death” as I transformed into “Samantha,” the twin sister who’d never really existed but who now magically has a birth certificate, and the loss of Brent, the man I’d loved, now living his life as Braxton Reed, using the next name on our list of aliases, just as I’d known he would.

Still, despite what my saviors told me, I never wanted to believe that the man who now calls himself Brax would kill the woman he loved. And that leaves one of three options:

Maybe I was just wrong, and he’s always been a cold-hearted killer.

Maybe he had nothing to do with rigging the van, and it was only a coincidence that he didn’t return in time for the explosion.

Or maybe he really is innocent, and there’s someone else pulling the strings.

I wish I could believe the last. But when you grow up the way I did, you don’t believe in fairy tales or happily ever afters. I’m going to prove what he did. And once I do, Brax will be the one in the ground. And I’ll be Sabrina again. The last gal standing.

Chapter Five

Cami Green leaned back in the Fifties retro chair, then lifted her morning coffee from the blue Formica dining table. “So I guess that means I don’t get to say it any more.”

Brax kept his lips from twitching by taking a sip of his own coffee. “What’s that?”

“That you’re not the boss of me.”

They shared a grin, and she raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow, her skin glowing from the habitual morning workout he’d interrupted by coming over unannounced. “Seriously,” she continued. “Congrats on leading Omega team. We’ve got a good thing going at Stark Security.”

“No regrets?”

She shook her head, tossing her long blond ponytail. She’d just finished a three-week long undercover assignment and had taken some time for herself in Palm Springs, which had meant skipping the party at Damien Stark’s house. He knew she was probably exhausted—and he knew that this could wait until Monday. Except it couldn’t.

With anyone else, he would have simply waited until the next to brief her, when she officially returned from her post-operation leave. But this was Cami, and it wasn’t just about briefing her on a new op.

He needed someone to talk to. About this new assignment. About Samantha’s unexpected entrance into his life. And about the overlap between those two events. And she was the only person in the world he could share all of that with.

“Why are you really here?” She asked, reading his mind as usual. She stretched one legging-clad leg out onto the other chair. “It’s not just about you leading up Omega.”

“Sabrina.”

The fact that her eyes barely widened was testament to how good Cami was at her job. She had the kind of face that was almost entirely unreadable. But she did shift her position, putting both feet on the ground and leaning forward, her hands cupping her mug, her brown eyes laser-focused on him.

“I’m listening.”

“Her sister showed up. Her identical twin.”