Chapter One
Kayden
“You’ve got to do this,” Jack says, pacing up and down in front of my desk.
My old Marine pal is in one of his no-bullshit moods, I can tell. He only paces like this when he’s on a mission. He’s tall and wide, his hair clipped short, his face hard and his nose crooked from where he broke it a few years back in a charity boxing match.
“Do I?”
He stops pacing and glares at me. “Yes, you do. Because otherwise, the press is going to have a field day. You assaulted a reporter.”
I grit my teeth, shaking my head. “I didn’t assault him. And he wasn’t a reporter.”
“Okay, you threw a paparazzi vulture’s camera at the wall. It doesn’t make any difference.”
Running a hand through my hair, I sigh. “I see your point. But he was basically stuffing that camera down my throat. The whole thing was a setup. He had one of his buddies hiding in a goddamn bush to record it. They knew what was going to happen.”
Jack lays his hands on the desk. “I’m not saying you did it for no reason, but the facts are the facts. The world has seen that video. It’s already affecting the stock price. You need to do something to rectify it.”
“I don’t see how going on some lame game show is going to help anything.”
I stand and walk over to the floor to ceiling windows, looking down on the city. It’s a cool autumn day and the sun glistens over the ocean, all the way to the horizon. It makes me want to get out there, beyond the horizon, forget about all of this and simply disappear.
“Things were easier when all we had to think about was fighting,” I mutter.
“You’re romanticizing the service, Kay.” Jack walks up next to me. “We had to deal with plenty of bullshit back then too.”
“I know, but at least we didn’t have to deal with bloodsucking journalists trying to ram cameras down our goddamn throats. Seriously, Jack, I’d smash that bastard’s camera again. I’d hardly even stepped from the car before he was on me. I swear the prick turned the flash up to its highest setting.”
“This comes with the territory,” Jack says. “Nobody forced you to start one of the most successful security agencies in the country, did they? And no one forced you to expand beyond that, to media and sales. Nobody forced you to build an empire.”
I glance at my old friend. He’s the one who always gives it to me straight, telling me if I’m being an ass. It’s one of the reasons he suits his position as my right-hand man so well, along with a dozen other good qualities, like his loyalty and the fact I know he’s always got the best interests of the company at heart.