Chapter 3 The Familiar Stranger
Eli’s POV
I should have seen the punch coming.
The kid I was sparring with telegraphed it a mile away, shoulder twitch, weight shift, eyes going where his fist wanted to land. Still, his glove tapped my jaw and snapped my head just enough to sting.
“Earth to Ward,” he puffed, bouncing back out of range. “You planning on leading with your face today or what?”
I shook it off, reset my stance. The Ward Security gym smelled like sweat and disinfectant, familiar as my own skin. Heavy bags thumped in the background, weights clinked, voices echoed off concrete and steel. This was my territory. I was not supposed to be the one getting tagged.
“Again,” I said.
We circled. My body could have done this in its sleep, which was good, because lately my mind had been elsewhere. Hazel eyes, a black dress I had peeled off slowly, hair spilled over a hotel pillow. A laugh like she did not remember how.
Lena.
I slipped under the next punch, swept the kid’s leg, and put him on his back with his arm pinned before he hit the mat. My muscles knew what to do even when my brain was stuck in that Berlin bar.
He tapped out, grinning up at me. “There he is.”
I let him up, slapped his shoulder. “Hit the showers.”
He trotted off, and I stood there in the ring, heart steady, sweat cooling on my neck, a faint ache along my jaw where he had grazed me. Normally a good round would clear my head. Not today.
Six weeks had not been enough to shake her out.
I did not usually keep souvenirs. A name, maybe, a face for a day or two if the company had been more than forgettable. Hookups were stress relief, not plot lines. Berlin had been supposed to be the same. One night in a city I passed through often enough that the skyline did not impress me anymore. A woman at the bar with eyes like she dared me to see through her lies.
She had told me she was Lena. She had told me she worked in tech, which could mean anything from web design to world domination. She had not told me why her shoulders were so tight until my hands loosened them.
In the morning she was gone. No number. No last name. Just a note on my dog tags. Thank you for the statistically improbable night.
The paper was folded in my wallet now, the edges soft from my thumb. I told myself I kept it because it made me laugh. Not because it was the first time in years I had actually slept next to someone instead of watching the ceiling.
“Eli.”
Lucas’s voice cut across the gym from the doorway. My older brother looked out of place in here in his crisp button down, sleeves rolled, tablet under his arm. He hated sweating unless it was on a golf course.
“You bleeding?” he asked, eyeing the red mark on my jaw as I grabbed my towel.
“Barely.” I wiped my face, climbed out of the ring. “What do you need?”
“Briefing room. Now.” His tone shifted, lighter banter dropping away. “We just landed something big.”
The room upstairs had a wall of screens and a long table, less fancy than any corporate boardroom but wired to within an inch of its life. I dropped into my usual seat, pulled a bottle of water from the cooler, and waited.
Lucas tapped the tablet and a photo appeared on the main monitor.
“New contract,” he said. “Mercer Dynamics.”
The name rang a bell. Hard not to when you worked in security. Mercer was the cybersecurity giant. The woman in the picture was the ice polished face behind it.
“Youngest blah blah, self made billionaire, et cetera,” Lucas went on. “You know the headlines.”
In the photo, Sloane Mercer stood behind a podium, hair yanked into a severe knot, dark suit perfectly tailored. Her expression was cool, bored almost, like she was the only one in the room not impressed.
“She had an attempted abduction in her residential garage last night,” Lucas said, and another screen populated with grainy footage. A car boxed in by a van, two men in masks, a struggle, the flash of emergency lights. “Professional. Someone with resources.”
He outlined the rest. Government contracts in play. Political eyes on her. Press interest. Our job would be to keep her breathing and her reputation intact. Her board wanted the best, and we were it.
I watched the video twice, cataloguing movement, timing, response time. My jaw worked. Garbage building procedures. Complacent staff. There were a dozen ways that could have gone worse.
Lucas flipped to more stills. Sloane at various events. Sloane shaking hands with officials. Sloane in front of a projection of a giant network diagram. Always put together. Always remote.
Then he brought up a clip labeled Berlin Summit. Hotel lobby, camera angle from above. People moving through with lanyards and suitcases.
“There was some weirdness with their CCTV logs,” he said. “Mila thinks some of the intrusion vectors on Mercer’s network started around that time. We are crosschecking faces.”
He tapped the screen and the video froze.
Her.
Not the ice queen from the press photos. Her hair was down, softer around her face. No podium, no armor. A simple black dress I recognized instantly, because I had peeled it off her in a different Berlin hotel six weeks ago.
My mouth went dry.
Lucas did not notice. He was talking about diplomatic guests and access patterns and I was staring at the woman walking through the lobby, bag on her shoulder, eyes skimming the room like she could not wait to escape it.
Lena.
Sloane Mercer.
Dress, hair, that slant of her mouth when she was thinking too hard. The way she had said she was tired of being important all the time in the dark, like it was a confession she had not meant to make.
What were the odds.
My stomach rolled once, hard. Ward code was clear. Do not get personally involved with clients. No blurred lines. No history that could compromise judgment.
Too late.
“Eli?” Lucas’s voice cut back in. “You with me?”
“Yeah.” My own voice sounded wrong in my ears. I cleared my throat. “Kidnapping attempt, political sensitivity, media scrutiny. We are point.”
“More than that. She requested our A team. That means you.” Lucas studied me. “You got a problem with that?”
For a second I let myself picture someone else in my place. Another senior operator living in her penthouse, walking her through garages, standing between her and men like the ones in that video. Another man in the dark outside her bedroom door.
My chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with duty.
“I do not have a problem,” I said.
Professionally, it was true. She was a high threat client and I was the best we had. Personally, it was a mess. She had wanted anonymity in Berlin. I had given it to her. Now the universe had torn the curtain down anyway.
“Berlin never happened unless she says it did,” I said inside my own head. I would not use it. I would not touch it.
I spent the next hour buried in prep. Blueprints for her building. Staff lists. Threat assessments. Every picture of her I pulled up blurred for a second with memory. Her head on my chest. Her body soft for once under my hands.
On the ride over in the armored SUV, I briefed my team, voice flat. Mila on cyber, Diaz on logistics. I emphasized that this was not a milk run. Political heat, unknown adversary, internal weak points. They cracked the usual jokes about babysitting a billionaire. I shut them down sharper than normal.
In the lobby of her building, I saw everything wrong in one sweep. Desk guard more interested in his phone than the doors. Visitor logs barely checked. Cameras at wrong angles. It made my hands itch.
By the time the elevator doors opened on the penthouse floor, my mind had dropped into the focused quiet I trusted. There would be time to worry about Berlin later.
I lifted my hand to knock. The door opened first.
She stood there. Wrist in a brace, blouse and trousers immaculate, hair back in its severe leash. Her eyes hit mine and for a heartbeat the lobby footage and the hotel room overlaid perfectly.
Recognition flared hot and bright in her face before she slammed it down under that cool mask.
“You,” she said, low.
My pulse kicked once, hard.
So much for clean lines.