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I’d do anything to keep her safe.
She’s the first innocent thing I’ve seen walk into this place, and she might be the last innocent thing I’ll ever see.
Zoey is mine to protect.
* * *
I was right, I did pay for it, but they didn’t touch Zoey. I asked, and now they never can. I stand at the window to my cell, the bars marking it as such. They call it solitary, but we all know it’s as close to a cell as they can get here. My hands wrap around the bars, still covered in my and the man’s blood. The position pulls on the flesh wounds on my back, but I absorb that pain and use it.
I watch her climb into a car with her sister. When the door shuts, she scoots to the window and presses her hand to the glass, searching the house before they land on me. Her big green eyes stay on mine, even as they pull away.
I stay here, watching the window as if I’m waiting for her to come back.
I know what’s coming next will be worse than any horrors I have faced before, but it doesn’t matter because she’s safe.
A rare smile curls my lips.
A hand lands on my shoulder. “It’s time for your next visit, Gray.”
CHAPTER1
Gray
Eleven years later…
It’s been a year and a half since I last saw Zoey in person. At first, I didn’t believe it was her standing in the too normal backyard belonging to Alaric, the man meant to train me, and his wife, Layla—the same sister of the little girl I have thought about every day of my life.
I tried to stop obsessing over her, and for a while, I managed it. I threw myself into my life. I graduated school, and at eighteen, I enlisted. I spent years in the Army, giving them my life over and over. I needed that rush of adrenaline to feel anything.
I am Gray Hart, but they called me heartless over there, and how could they not?
I gave mine away to a green-eyed doe when I was a kid.
It didn’t matter, though, because I was really fucking good at my job. Maybe it’s because I was born into bloodshed and death and I lived in it for so long that I became used to killing. Regardless, nothing could have prepared me for what happened over there.
After all, I am legally dead. KIA, or so they say.
I thought I knew pain as a child, but I was wrong. It was nothing compared to what they did to me when I was captured. It’s a time of my life I like to forget, just like everything before now, before this version of myself. All I know is that it led me here, back to America. I escaped their clutches, and after stumbling onto a base, when they realized who I was, I was airlifted away to another undisclosed location and made into this.
A killer for hire.
It’s a government program that is run by private, rich businessmen recruiting the best killers from every walk of life. I was still scarred and burnt from torture when they welcomed me into their ranks. After all, I couldn’t be a Marine anymore.
But this? This I can do.
I can hunt, track, and kill.
Thanks to them, and Alaric, who signed me off into the full role just two months after training me, I am now a full-fledged member. For just over a year, I have been completing as many contracts as I can, barely sleeping or eating.
I have no friends, no family, no hobbies, and no days off.
All I do is kill.
I have no weaknesses apart from her, and that is something no one will ever know, not even her. I am too messed up to be in her life.
Alaric warned me away, but he didn’t have to. I won’t put Zoey through that. The girl deserves a chance at a good life, one without death and pain, so I’ll stay away. I will be the monster they all made me into and nothing else.
I will keep this world safe for her.
