Chapter 1 - The Red Coat
The elevator doors opened fifty-three minutes late.
Declan Morrow was already angry enough to frighten every man on the forty-second floor.
Then he heard something dripping onto the marble.
It was not rain.
Gemma Croft stood inside the elevator with one hand locked around the steel doorframe.
Her fingers were white from the effort of keeping herself upright.
Her tan coat was soaked through, one side dark with blood.
Her red hair clung to her face in wet strands.
One eye was swollen nearly shut.
And her right leg was bent at an angle no human leg was supposed to make.
Declan forgot how to breathe.
Gemma lifted her good eye toward him and actually tried to smile.
She rasped a weak apology for being late.
Then her bloody hand slipped from the heavy steel door.
Declan Morrow had built his terrifying reputation on never running toward anything.
But he ran toward her.
He crossed the polished floor before her knees struck it and caught her against his chest.
Gemma made a broken sound through clenched teeth as the movement jarred her leg.
Declan held her tight and commanded her to stop talking.
The six massive guards in the room stood frozen in absolute shock.
They had seen Declan dismantle partnerships with a sentence and destroy careers with a phone call.
None of them had ever seen genuine panic on their boss's face.
Declan barked a single order to clear the room, and the men instantly vanished.
He carried her to the long leather sofa beside the windows overlooking the dark Chicago River.
He laid her down gently, ignoring the blood staining his expensive suit.
His hand rose almost without permission to touch the uninjured side of her cheek.
He demanded to know exactly who had done this to her.
Gemma caught his wrist with trembling fingers.
She whispered that the encrypted phone was gone.
A much colder kind of fear replaced the rage inside Declan's chest.
That specific phone contained access to records connecting the Morrow family’s legitimate companies, offshore accounts, and private communications.
In the wrong hands, it could expose enough of his criminal empire to cripple everything he had spent eleven years building.
Declan asked her again who had taken the device.
Gemma swallowed hard and looked toward the empty hallway.
She whispered that she didn't see their faces in the dark alley.
But she did recognize the custom silver watch on the man who beat her.
Declan felt his blood turn to ice.
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There was only one man in Chicago who wore that specific watch.
It was his own head of security, Marcus.
