Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 34715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 174(@200wpm)___ 139(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 174(@200wpm)___ 139(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
Not in boardrooms. Not in backroom deals. And definitely not in Halo City—where money talks, secrets kill, and the underbelly has teeth.
But his brothers’ hunt for their missing father drags Banks straight into a blood-slick maze of power players, dirty cops, and men who smile like friends while they sharpen knives behind their backs.
Then she becomes the target.
She’s the one loose end no one saw coming—too brave, too stubborn, and suddenly standing between Banks and the truth. Protecting her should be lock it down, move her somewhere safe, burn anyone who gets close.
Except she doesn’t want saving… and Banks doesn’t know how to want anyone this much.
Halo City wants her silenced. Banks wants her in his arms.
And the moment he claims her, this stops being business.
Because in a city like this, love is leverage— and Banks Hawthorne is about to turn ruthless.
billionaire protector • forced proximity • touch-her-and-die • “who did this to you” • gritty city danger • found family brothers • high-stakes romance • mafia-esque vibes • HEA
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
ONE
BANKS
My brothers Nash and Sin are gone. Not “out of range.” Not “laying low.” Not “radio silent because the mission is hot.” Gone like a door slammed in our faces, like the world reached in and stole two Hawthorne brothers in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
We're all brothers—me, Nash, Sin, Crewe, Colt, Jace, and Mack—bound by blood and a shared history in the shadows of private security. Each of us carved out our own path in the industry after leaving the military: Nash with his expertise in high-risk extractions for corporate clients, Sin handling covert surveillance ops for elite firms, Crewe specializing in VIP protection details, Colt running tactical training for mercenaries, Jace doing close-quarters combat consulting, Mack coordinating logistics for international security contracts, and me, Banks, piecing together digital puzzles as a cyber-intel specialist. We've scattered across the globe over the years, taking jobs that pay well and keep us sharp, but this mission is different. It's personal. Our father was presumed dead years ago. Now it looks like he may still be alive. He was onto something big, something involving powerful players who don't like loose ends. So we came together, pooling our skills and resources, to find him. No contracts, no paychecks—just family hunting for the man who raised us to never back down.
The mountain air still smells like smoke and wet pine, a sharp reminder of the firefight that erupted just hours ago as we closed in on a lead tied to Dad's disappearance. Fog clings to the trees like it’s trying to hide what happened. It won’t. Nothing hides from me for long. Not data. Not patterns. Not the shape of a lie.
But right now, all I have is the aftermath.
A torn strip of black fabric snagged on a low-hanging branch, fluttering like a grim flag. Zip-tie ends scattered in the dirt, their plastic edges frayed from a hasty cut. A boot print that doesn’t match any of ours. A tire track that cuts off abruptly where the ground turns to jagged rock and the road dissolves into wilderness.
I kneel in the mud beside the track, the cold seeping through my knees, and drag my fingers through the groove, as if touch could translate into coordinates, IP addresses, or satellite pings. Like I can pull an answer out of the earth itself. The mud clings to my skin, gritty and unyielding, but it yields nothing.
Crewe stands a few yards away, phone pressed to his ear, his jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle twitch. He's always been the steady one, the brother who plans VIP escorts with the precision of a surgeon, but even he looks rattled. Colt paces like a caged animal, his rifle still gripped in white-knuckled hands, though the targets vanished into the mist long ago. His tactical training gigs have made him a beast in the field, but right now, that energy has nowhere to go. Jace is up on the ridge line, binoculars scanning the tree line with a fury in every controlled breath—he's the close-combat expert, the one who teaches others how to end fights before they start, and I can tell he's itching to charge after them.
Mack’s voice crackles through my headset from his remote setup back at our makeshift base camp, sharp with panic he’s trying to bury under layers of logistical calm. He's the coordinator, the brother who juggles international ops like puzzle pieces, but family hits different. “Say it again. You’re sure they took them.”
Colt answers before I can, his voice gravelly from years of barking orders in training yards. “They took ‘em. Sin and Nash are fucking gone. Someone ambushed us during the recon, dragging them into a vehicle, and disappeared into the fog.”
A silence follows that feels like a punch to the gut. Then Mack swears, low and vicious, the kind of curse that echoes his frustration from coordinating failed extractions in the past. My stomach twists. Not fear. Not helplessness. Anger so cold it feels clean, surgical. This is the part where people make mistakes. This is where emotions get you killed.
Not mine. I've built my career on staying detached, hacking into systems for private security firms to expose vulnerabilities before the bad guys do. Emotions are just noise in the data.
I stand slowly, wiping the mud onto my jeans, the fabric already stained from the trek up here. I pull my tablet out of my pack. My hands are steady. They always are when the world is falling apart. It's how I can trace digital footprints for clients who pay top dollar to stay ahead.
“Banks,” Crewe says, turning toward me, his phone call ended. His VIP protection instincts kick in automatically. “We have to move. They could circle back, set up another ambush.”
“I know,” I reply, my voice even. I’m already working, fingers flying across the screen.