The Ghost In The Glass
The Ghost in the Glass
Kevin’s POV
The memory hits me sometimes when the New York humidity mimics the heavy, salt-crusted air of the Mediterranean. It’s a sensory trap—the phantom scent of blooming jasmine and aged Rioja.
Three years ago. Spain. The Spectre villa in Marbella was a fortress of white stone and glass perched precariously over the sea. I had been her shadow for eighteen months, living by a code that was my religion: The principal is the mission. The mission is not human. But that night, the code didn't just break; it incinerated.
"You’re staring, Kevin," Alexandra had said. She was standing on the balcony, the moonlight turning the sea behind her into a sheet of hammered silver. She wore a silk slip dress the color of midnight, the straps barely clinging to her shoulders.
"I’m scanning the perimeter, Ma'am," I replied, my voice sounding tight.
"The perimeter is secure. My father is in Madrid." She walked toward me until the heat radiating from her body forced me to look down. "Forget the mission. Just for tonight... be a man."
My hand, usually steady enough to hit a target at five hundred yards, shook as she reached out and unclipped the tactical holster from my side. The heavy weapon thudded onto the rug.
"I can't," I whispered, even as my pulse thundered. "I took an oath."
"Then break it," she breathed. "I’m tired of being a queen, Kevin. I just want to feel something that isn't cold."
"I don't mix business with pleasure, Lex. You know it. If I do, we will be compromised."
"Please, Kevin... please."
I broke. I reached out, my hands tangling in the silk of her dress, pulling her flush against me. The contact was electric—the contrast of my rough, scarred palms against her flawless skin. When I kissed her, it wasn't the touch of a guard; it was the desperate claim of a man who had been dying of thirst.
We fell onto the massive bed, the sheets cool against the fever of our skin. There was no "Ice Queen" there—only a woman who moved with a feral, uninhibited grace. Every touch was an admission. I mapped her body like it was the only terrain that mattered, my mouth tracing the line of her throat and the trembling curve of her hip.
The night was a blur of sweat and the sound of waves crashing below. For those few hours, the lies of the Board vanished.
"If they find out," she whispered later, draped in white linens, "they'll kill you for touching me."
"Let them try," I said.
"Dustin can't know. He will do anything to get you out of the way. He will get you fired."
"I will never leave you alone."
Present Day
"Look, Blackwood, you’re a liability. We’re done."
The words from my a client, Mr. Cornell, snap me back to the gray reality of a New York morning. I’m sitting in my battered SUV, the Spanish sun replaced by the grime of the city.
"Liability?" I growl. "My record is the only clean thing I own, Cornell."
"The word came from someone high up, Kevin. Someone with enough power to erase you with a single keystroke. Take the severance and vanish."
I hang up. Someone high up. That only meant one person. The woman who thought I was a predator, when in reality, I had been the only thing standing between her and a shallow grave.
Alexandra Spectre.
"How the hell did she find me?" I whisper, pulling into my driveway.
I move through my small home with a soldier's caution. Henry, our family butler who stayed even after our fall from grace, meets me at the door.
"Master Kevin, your brother is waiting. He’s... agitated."
"Thanks, Henry. And drop the 'Master' talk. We aren't in a mansion anymore."
I barely have my jacket off before Kyle tackles me. He’s my world, the reason I take the bruises. Over a plate of pasta, he drops the bomb.
"I met someone, Kev. It’s early, but he’s... different. He makes me feel like I don't have to hide the Blackwood name."
I feel a protective spike.
"
A guy? Do I need to run a background check? Kyle, we're in the shadows for a reason."
"No! No tactical assessments. I’ll tell you when you’re allowed to meet him."
I go to bed, but sleep is a battlefield. I’m back in the Spectre hallways, the air smelling of vanilla perfume.
"I’d never let anything happen to you," I whisper in the dream.
Alexandra turns, her mask slipping. "Kiss me, Kevin. Just once more."
BEEP! BEEP!
I slam the alarm, drenched in sweat. My body still remembers the moonlight in Marbella.
Later that morning, at a red light on 4th Street, a black Mercedes pulls up beside me. The window cracks an inch. A plume of smoke drifts out, and I catch a flash of a pale hand wearing a signature silver ring. My heart does a backflip. The sedan glides away.
"Get it together," I hiss. Was I seeing ghosts, or was the Ice Queen coming to finish the job?
As I pull into the lot of my new security gig, I see a white envelope under my wiper. I pull it out, and my breath hitches. It’s a photo of me and Kyle at dinner last night. A jagged, bleeding red 'X' has been drawn over my face.
On the back, in her elegant script:
The Board wants payment.
