Chapter 1 - Twenty-Three Minutes Late
The woman who appeared in Declan Maher’s doorway was nothing like the composed structural engineer who had sat across from him two weeks earlier.
Cersa Van was soaked from the rain. Her clothes were stained, her strength was fading, and yet she had come carrying the one thing Declan had been waiting for: a thumb drive containing the completed structural calculations. Even while barely able to stand, her first concern was not herself.
It was the deal.
She wanted Declan to confirm that Petra was free.
Then her knees gave way.
Declan caught her before she hit the floor.
Until that second, he had treated Cersa as part of a transaction—an exceptionally intelligent woman who possessed information he needed. But holding her unconscious body while realizing what she had endured to bring him that information changed something inside him.
He ordered the building locked down and summoned his doctor.
And when he saw the wound on her leg, he understood something even more disturbing: whoever had attacked Cersa apparently wanted to frighten her, not simply stop her.
When Cersa regained consciousness, panic took over. She fought his hands until Declan forced her attention onto him.
“Look at me.”
She did.
And slowly, she stopped fighting.
Declan promised only what he could guarantee: the doctor was coming, and she needed to stay still. He refused to give her an empty promise that everything would be fine.
But as he watched her lying on his sofa, one question became impossible to ignore.
Why had she come herself?
She could have sent the report by courier.
She could have disappeared.
Instead, she had crossed the city alone and injured because she needed to know Petra was safe.
And Declan suddenly realized that the arrangement he had considered nothing more than business might have been the greatest miscalculation of his life.
What he did not know was that Cersa had brought him something else.
May you like
Something that wasn't on the thumb drive.
And when she woke again, the first words out of her mouth would make every man in the room go silent.
