“Nice to see you’ve arrived safely, Mr. Wright.” the pretty twenty-something blonde behind the massive oval- shaped desk greeted him, using his alias. He’d never met her but he was clearly expected by her and, no doubt, Ms. Tiffany Snow.  The woman waved him to his left. “Straight down the hallway. It leads directly to Mr. Mendez’s private offices.”

The fictional character he’d carefully crafted as Blake Wright, down to a birth certificate, and a name close enough to his own to make any slip-up seem an accident, was arrogant, an egomaniac who would expect to be escorted to his destination.

Appropriate to that character, Blake shot her an annoyed look and headed the direction she’d indicated. No doubt Mendez was trying to downplay Blake’s importance, to shoot down his confidence despite a fictional track record of being good enough at neutralized threats of a lawful affiliation to those who lived unlawfully, to make him worth pursuing. What Mendez didn’t know, but soon would, was that the only thing Blake planned to neutralize was him and his Kingpin boss, and no one, not even pretty little Tiffany Snow, was going to get in the way of making that happen.

***

He was tall, dark, and deadly if she’d ever seen a man who fit the description. Impossible to forget. Impossible to avoid apparently, too, since he was here in San Francisco where she was, and not in Denver where he was supposed to be.

Kara Tatum (AKA Tiffany Snow and Kara Michaels) watched Blake Wright saunter towards her desk in a loose-legged swagger, his jeans and a leather jacket and all that thick raven hair tied at his nape, giving him a rough, tough, edgy look that was sinfully hot. And somehow, some way, she managed to remain cool and composed on the outside when she was a volcanic eruption of fire and ice on the inside. It didn’t seem to matter that she’d found out about his arrival an hour before and had time to strategize his impending visit; she was far from ready for another dose of this man.

This man. No. This monster. He was one of them, part of the cartel, and yet a week before, he’d managed to stir something inside her he shouldn’t have. Made her want him when she should do nothing but hate him. Made her hesitate to drug him when she should want to kill him. And that was far more dangerous than the knowledge he possessed that could destroy her and people she loved, because it made him a weakness she couldn’t afford.

Kara pushed to her feet to greet him, putting the persona of a cold-hearted woman that she wished she could be into place. Then maybe the torment she’d seen in this man’s eyes when they’d been stripped naked wouldn’t have made him feel human.