The smoke from the burning treeline didn't just sting my eyes; it felt like it was dissolving the very air in my lungs.
I stood paralyzed between the two men, the heat of the fire at my back and a cold, yawning abyss opening up in front of me.
“Why did you buy the contract?” The stranger’s voice was a soft blade, twisting deep into the foundation of everything I thought I knew about the last few months.
I looked at Ryker.
He didn't look like the composed, terrifying billionaire who had dictated the terms of my life in that marble-clad office.
He looked like a man who had walked through hell to reach this clearing, his skin stained with soot, his shirt torn, and his eyes, usually a calculated emerald green…burning with a feral, desperate recognition.
"Ryker?" My voice was a brittle
