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Present Day…
"I need you to go undercover."
That was the last thing I expected my Ops Commander, Gabe Webb to say when he summoned me into his office. I was a junior agent. Still too green for a solo undercover mission. "Something tells me there's a reason I'm here all by my lonesome."
He nodded. "We have intel that number one on our most-wanted list, Antonio Igno, is having a meeting with someone you know."
Before he said the words, I could feel it in my bones. I knew who it was.
The man who had stripped me of everything. My life, my inheritance, my name… my love.
I started shaking my head before he could even finish. "No, I'm not doing it. I'm not going back there. You and I had a deal. You said I never had to go back."
"I know. And if it wasn't Igno, I wouldn't ask you to. But rumor is they had a meeting at the Winston Gala the other night. Our sources tell us that Montgomery took something from Igno. A ledger and the cipher that goes with it."
I blinked rapidly. "Wait, Igno's ledger? That thing is legendary. Supposedly, there's a physical copy and a digital copy. That digital copy is all over the dark web with hackers trying to access it. No one knows where the cipher is. No one’s ever seen it. That ledger is more secure than the NSA."
Not that the NSA was that secure because I had hacked it once. Only for a few seconds, and I had to get out before they caught me. But I had done it.
"That's the one. He has a physical version of it and a cipher that only comes out for his meetings. The cipher, it seems, has gone missing. We think Julian Montgomery stole it from him."
I shook my head again. "There's no way. Montgomery is greedy and ambitious, but he's not a fool. He knows Igno would kill him."
"In which case, we're down one cockroach. But the point is, we want the cipher, and we think you can get it."
I swallowed hard and squared my shoulders. "You think I can get it, or Oversight thinks I can get it?"
The Rogues Division was a secret if I tell you, I'll have to kill you type of organization that was an arm of the British government. King, Queen, and country and all that. We went after the worst of the worst. The ones that the government couldn't touch and keep their hands clean. We still had a code; we just had less red tape.
Gabe Webb was the Rogues ops command. He reported to Oversight. Oversight was basically the pencil pushers who made the big game decisions, the master chess players. The problem was each of them had their own agenda. Agendas we weren't privy to. Hell, even Gabe wasn't privy to them. And now he was about to send me back to dance with the devil, so I had to know if it was his call or theirs.
"I know I gave you my word. If there was any other way to do this, I would."
I listened to what he wasn't saying. This hadn't been his choice. Oversight had commanded him, and regardless of what Gabe said or did, or what I said or did, I was getting sent back. Julian Montgomery was technically my godfather. He'd been best mates with my dad, and when my parents died, he'd taken me in. I’d thought I at least had someone who loved me left in the world.
That was my mistake. Julian was harsh and exacting. He made me live with his housekeeper on the edge of the property. At best, I was a beloved servant of sorts. It was all very Great Expectations. But Mrs. Pembry was delightful. She and her husband looked after me until he died when I was sixteen, and then I was all she had left. She treated me like her son. And in so many ways, I finally had that love that I'd been missing. Love that Julian would not have been able to give me simply because he was a narcissist and uncapable of it.
When I turned eighteen, instead of going off to uni, Julien forced me into his business. And for a kid with no prospects, nowhere to go, and no access to his trust fund, I had no other choice. The choices I made when I was with him were ones I couldn't take back. The things I had been asked to do still haunted me to this day.
Once I broke free, I’d been hell bent and determined to live the life I should have. Cambridge, a real life, all of it. So I’d created Westin Rourke. And that was where the Rogues found me.
"How do you expect me to pull this off?"
"Obviously, he's been looking for you since you disappeared. You know that."
"I do know that. And I told you I wasn't ever going back."
"I know. But if Igno's involved, that means Montgomery's daughter is also in danger."
That was when my stomach went into freefall. Nissa Montgomery had been the only bright spot in my childhood. “There’s no way Montgomery would allow her to be hurt.”
“From what you’ve told me about Montgomery, he would risk her for his own ambition without a second thought.”
I clenched my jaw. “Fuck.”
“I need your yes.”
“And if I say no?”
