Chapter 1 - The Locked Study
For four years, Damian Romano had arranged his life so no woman could accidentally touch him.
Everyone in his fortified Illinois estate knew the rule.
Do not approach him unless summoned.
Do not enter his private rooms while he’s there.
And above all, do not touch him.
Hazel Brooks had obeyed perfectly for three months.
She needed this job too badly not to.
Her ex-boyfriend had vanished six months earlier, leaving her with unpaid bills—and a $60,000 debt owed to a dangerous man named Frankie Sullivan.
Friday was the deadline.
So Hazel worked days at a diner and nights cleaning Damian Romano’s estate, surviving on almost no sleep.
That Tuesday, Damian was supposed to be in New York.
Hazel entered his third-floor study shortly after midnight, exhausted enough that she allowed herself five seconds on the leather sofa.
Then the doors slammed open.
Hazel shot upright.
A tall man stood in the doorway, drenched from the freezing rain.
Damian Romano.
His white shirt was covered in blood.
He staggered toward the desk, one hand pressed against his ribs.
Before Hazel could escape, someone knocked.
“Boss. Sullivan crew triggered the outer sensors. We’ve got armed men near the tree line.”
Sullivan.
A tiny gasp escaped Hazel.
Damian heard it.
His eyes snapped toward her.
Then machinery hummed inside the walls.
Steel shutters descended across every window.
The entire third floor was being sealed until dawn.
Hazel stared at Damian’s bloody shirt.
Then at the locked doors.
She was trapped for the next six hours with the one man every woman in the house had been warned never to touch.
And Damian was staring at her like he’d just realized she was hiding something.
He pressed harder against his bleeding side.
“There’s a first-aid kit in my desk.”
May you like
Hazel swallowed.
“Bring it.”
