1. Carolina

Chapter 1

Carolina

There’s a painting in the national gallery by Caravaggio, and whenever I visit it draws me in, rendering me unable to look away for the longest time. It’s a mix of beauty and threat.

The artist uses a technique called tenebrism, the mixing of light and dark. The contrast can be violent between the two, and often the darkness becomes the most dominant feature of the painting.

The painting is also dark in the themes it touches on. It’s beautiful, though. The darkness of it is seductive in a way it shouldn’t be.

The man sitting in front of me right now reminds me viscerally of that painting.

Dark and light.

Beauty and threat.

His eyes are bright and intelligent, and he has a warm smile on his face, but there’s a sense of genuine danger cloaking him somehow. A feeling that the polite warmth he is displaying is nothing but a veneer. A slash of light on the dark canvas of his true soul.

He’s big, which adds to the threat. Huge, in fact. Intimidating. He might be wearing a smart suit, but the ink crawling up his neck and the scarred knuckles attest to him not being an ordinary office worker.

I swallow hard and glance down at my hands folded in my lap.

Daddy called this meeting and thrust this surprise on me, and I’m not sure how to take it.

This man, this beast, is to be my new bodyguard.

I don’t want close protection. I argued with my father until I was blue in the face, but on this, he won’t back down.

“So, you served your country?” Daddy asks the man, in his rich, plummy voice. Daddy is so old school that he still rolls his Rs on some words.

“Yes, sir,” the man says.

“So, Samuel. It says here, you’ve trained and worked with American Special Forces, carried out work for NATO and various governments both in a military and private capacity?” Daddy flicks through some of the pages on his lap.

Great, I think, a mercenary.

“Correct.”

“And your skill set is?” Father raises his brows.

I almost laugh. That curriculum vitae and his whole countenance tells you this man’s skill set quite clearly. Violence. Danger. Death.

“I can neutralize any threat to your daughter with a high degree of accuracy.” Samuel smiles, then adds, “Sir.”

My father clears his throat, and his left foot starts to tap. A distinct sign he’s uncomfortable. So Father feels the danger crackling around this stranger too. Yet he expects me to be guarded by him. Like a sheep being sent off with a wolf.