“Son?” My father looked at me from the head of the table in the conference room. He’d yet to give up his throne of our empire, and I was hoping he never did so I didn’t have to take over for him.

“Why don’t you tell us what you think first?” I asked him, hoping he’d understand that I needed help.

It wasn’t like me to lose focus at work, especially while closing a hundred-million-dollar deal I’d worked on for months. But there I was, doing it anyway, thinking about a woman instead of the business at hand.

My father adjusted the knot of his purple tie and did me a solid by addressing the room, buying me time.

I stopped listening, the opposite of what I was supposed to do, and returned to thoughts of that delinquent’s mother. A mother I wanted to . . .

Fucccck, I have to stop.

I got my wallet back, Bianca’s note was still inside, and now it was time to move on. Write the whole thing off as a case of unfortunate luck that could’ve ended much differently. Only, it ended how it ended. It ended with me meeting this woman who made me feel things. Things I didn’t fully understand.

She’s a single mom—unattached, but not really unattached. She has a sixteen-year-old son to worry about—a thief, no less. According to his juvenile record, he’d been arrested for assault prior to moving to New York, so, there was that, too. Plus, maybe she was dating someone, and I was fantasizing about a taken woman. That was a hard limit for me.

My hands slipped to the underside of the table, and I pushed my fingertips against it, trying to ground myself. Find my way back to the room and the meeting taking place, away from thoughts of the goddess in teddy-bear blue scrubs.

After a few failed attempts to focus, I let my mind wander back to her.

My life was messy and complicated. The last thing Juliette needed was someone like me going anywhere near her.

I had too many meetings during the day, ensuring my family’s company thrived so that thousands of jobs would be protected. Then, at night, I hunted criminals.

Alessandro called it our volunteer work. I called it my path to redemption (if that was even possible). But after all the shit we’d been forced to do back in the day for Uncle Sam, serving as mercenaries for the U.S., I needed an outlet along with some hope I could be saved if I righted a few wrongs.

All I can offer her is drinks and sex. And danger. I’d convinced myself of that, which was why I hadn’t already run a background check on her. I could’ve quickly learned everything about her with a few keystrokes. Dating history. Food allergies. Childhood address. Mother’s maiden name. Horoscope.