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CHAPTER1
NATALIE
As I reach over to grab my glass of red wine, I bump the bottle instead, and watch as it falls in slow motion to upend itself all over my living room carpet.
Great.
The metaphor is a little too on the nose right now.
I grab the bottle, take it to back to my tiny, grimy-no-matter-how-hard-I-clean kitchen, and try not to burst into tears. The night is pressing up against the windows of my apartment, a silent witness to the turmoil within. After I throw some towels down on the stain—I guess I'll have to move the coffee table over to cover it, once it's dry—I slump back on the couch, surrounded by the disarray of my current life: unpacked boxes, scattered papers, and now a sinister dark red stain that portends nothing good.
I should turn on the overhead light, but I prefer the shadows right now as I keep sifting through the mess, grasping for some semblance of order, some way to make sense of everything that's happened.
But it's no use. Nothing is the same.
Not since Alessa found out who I really was. Not Natalie Moreau, wealthy heiress. But plain old Natalie Miller.
Or rather, Special Agent Natalie Miller, working undercover with the FBI to destroy her.
My fingers brush against a surveillance photo buried among the paper files I took with me from the Park Avenue penthouse where Natalie Moreau was living the high life during my undercover stint. Taken of me from across a ballroom, I'm wearing an elegant gown, and my face is frozen in a blank expression. I barely recognize myself. I look…like the person I was supposed to be, a bored, wealthy socialite.
But it's the woman beside me who draws my eye, even now. Alessa de Luca.
The Mafia princess who turned my world upside down from the moment I met her—and that moment is captured here in this shot.
I stare into her emerald eyes, vivid even in the distant photo. She looks like a queen holding court, elegant and untouchable. Yet I know the warmth that lurks beneath that cool facade, the heat that simmers just below the surface. I felt that fire…
And it left me scorched.
A tremor passes through me and I quickly set the photo down. I can't go there, can't let my mind linger on thoughts of her lush mouth, her provocative laugh, the way she looked at me as though she could see all the way inside.
The way she touched me…
I shake my head to get rid of that thought in particular, and rub my temples, trying to ease the headache coiling just behind my eyes. The lines used to be so clear for me—right versus wrong, justice versus crime. I was so certain about who I was, devoted to truth and integrity.
Now…now everything is a chaotic jumble of gray, and all I can do is try not to think too much about Alessa's freezer-burn eyes when she saw me there on the other side of the street as she was hauled away in handcuffs.
My phone buzzes, jolting me from my thoughts, but it's just a reminder to call Dr. Kristen Hays tomorrow, set up a meeting. Kris Hays, a profiler who worked with us on the operation, is also the psychologist who's been assigned to give me my first evaluation post-operation.
To see if I'm ready to come back to work.
To see if I'm losing it. Well, I already know the answer to that.
I scowl down at the phone. I know these sessions are standard procedure following an intense undercover op, but that won't make it any easier to bare my soul to her. How can I explain thoughts that I barely understand myself? The doubts that have wormed their way under my skin, eroding the rock-solid foundations of my convictions?
I know Hays will want me to talk about Alessa. She'll call my conflicted feelings some kind of transference, or trauma bonding, or something else that will sound rational and reasonable, and help me pretend that what I'm feeling right now will pass.
Maybe it will. But there are some things that logic and training can't explain away. The magnetic pull I felt—still feel—toward Alessa. The undeniable chemistry between us that refused to be constrained by ethics or reason. I broke rules for her that I never imagined I would and I don't know how to make sense of any of it.
And I don't think laying my psyche out on the autopsy table will make any difference.
Sighing, I begin gathering up the scattered papers again. When I packed to come back home again, I swept up a bunch of things without thinking, including these notes and photos that I really should return to the office. But I'm on enforced leave right now, and honestly? The last thing I feel like doing right now is facing my colleagues, who will be celebrating Alessa's arrest.
My team leader Stephen Bell insisted on my leave time after my cover was blown, irritated with me. I let him down. He needed me to be the perfect agent, emotionless and relentless in her pursuit of justice.
I'm so far from perfect. The lines have blurred too much.
A wave of exhaustion sweeps over me. My limbs feel heavy, my mind sluggish and slow. Dragging myself to the bedroom, I peel off my rumpled clothes and crawl beneath the cool sheets. But sleep remains elusive, dreams taunting me from just beyond reach.
