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Chapter One
Duncan
“Are you going to sit at that monitor all day and keep watching?” His tone is salty as shit, and I’m at my limit. Harris may not think what we’re doing is important, but little does he know. There’s one person and one person only on my team who knows about Willow’s true identity, and that person is me. It’s classified information. Maybe privileged more than classified.
It’s been months since I’ve been in Melbourne, and tracking down Willow was one of the easiest things I’ve ever had to do in my career. Her social media trail is awful; I could ping her location just based on the scone she posted on Instagram. It tags her damn location whenever she posts. That’s the thing about the Internet, there is always an online footprint. Willow basically led me right to her front doorstep by leaving a breadcrumb trail.
Although, her father was very pleased when I told him how quickly I found her. She owns this little bakery in the middle of Melbourne. Lucky for me, the space next door was available for rent, and Kristof made arrangements for us to acquire it on short notice. He wanted us close. I’m doing everything that I can to make sure I’m so close that she can feel my breath on the back of her neck.
It’s been a few months, and I’ve somewhat developed a routine. She’s beginning to trust me, seeing that I’m one of her regular clientele. At first, she was leery. I can see in those chocolate brown eyes of hers that she’s not accepting of strangers. I can’t help but wonder why that is, but I heard things back in England. Some of the older employees remember when she was a teenager...I thought I’d heard it all, but I was wrong.
“It’s my job, isn’t it?” I snap back. I truly don’t give a fuck if I piss him off. He works for me, and the bastard knows it.
Harris gets up from his chair and approaches me, placing his palms on my desk. “Seems to me like your job is staring at that chink’s nice ass.”
I take a slow, deep breath before I pull my arm back, clenching my hand into a fist, and slam it straight into his jaw. Harris shoots his hand up against his cheek, and I hear his jaw crack as he moves his mouth. “What in the bloody hell!” he shouts, glaring at me.
“I will say this one time and one time only. You will never disrespect her. Do you understand?” This isn’t about Harris calling her a chink, which isn’t even right since she’s Korean and not Chinese. It’s about the lack of respect that he has for her. He doesn’t know who she is, and the moment he is made aware, he will lose his damn mind and feel like such an idiot. He’ll know that I might have told Kristof everything he’s ever said about his daughter, and he’ll wonder what punishment is headed in his direction. That is the punishment he’ll receive from me, wondering if I’ve told Kristof, constantly waiting for the metaphorical guillotine to come down and cut off his head.
You don’t fuck with mafia families, and most certainly not Kristof’s.
All of his children have been killed except Willow. She’s the only remaining descendant of his bloodline, and it’s her duty to carry on in the Clans. I very well may just be a hired hand, and an arrogant one at that, but I’m not stupid. I know how important this job is to him, how important she is to him. Kristof told me that his relationship with Willow is anything but normal. I just have an idea that he’s dramatically downplayed it. In the few months that I’ve known her she’s only ever spoken about her mother, and all that I know is that she died. Kristof gave me all the information I needed to know about his daughter before he sent me here, and in the packet was every aspect of Willow’s life in England. What it didn’t have was her life in Australia.
It didn’t take me long to piece together the puzzle. Plain as day, she ran from him, from her life there. It just happened to occur after her mother died and her boyfriend was killed.
What Willow doesn’t realize is that you can’t ever run from being who you are.
