Page 8 of Wrecked With You

I nod. He was with MI6 and with Deliverance, a vigilante group that was formed to take out men just like Cane and rescue kidnapping victims.

“You don’t have to always work alone,” he says.

“I don’t. There’s Lorenzo. There’ve been others.” When I worked as a PI, I partnered with an ex-cop. Lorenzo had helped get me and Eliza off the streets. But the truth is, even when we worked together on cases, we had our own separate threads to follow. Most of the time, like Quince said, I work alone. I like it that way.

“You know this could get messy. I would have helped. But you should have kept me in the loop. When cops get involved … if this somehow comes back to us…”

“It won’t.”

His brow furrows.

“The site will be clean by morning. And if the body’s discovered before then, it’ll be covered up. There won’t be blowback.”

He’s silent for a moment. He knows who I used to work for, the kind of connections I have. “You wanted to take out Cane. And the government wanted to know who he was laundering money for.”

“You’re a smart guy, Mr. Bond.”

He waits for me to say more, but I stay silent. He knows the score. I think he even understands what drives me.

I didn’t change the past by killing Cane, but I think I did get justice. At least a little.

Eliza deserves that. And so, I think, do I.

Chapter Three

I sit on the edge of the infinity pool, looking out over the hills of Malibu and the Pacific Ocean beyond. This isn’t my first time in Damien Stark’s backyard, but I never get tired of this view.

Why would I? It’s everything I didn’t have as a kid. I’d grown up in a shithole of a house, nothing like this. I’d shared a windowless basement room with my little sister, courtesy of our prick of a father. A man we’d escaped when I was fifteen and Eliza was eight. A man who didn’t care about pretty views or his children or anything other than himself, his pervy urges, and the cheap whiskey he guzzled by the gallon.

Bastard.

Abusive, rank, lowlife, dead bastard.

I’ve done a lot of things in my life. Some pretty damn dicey. But they all led to this. To a life that’s clean and, for the most part, safe. For myself, sure, but mostly for Eliza.

I glance around out of habit to find her. Even though she’s grown, and even though we’re often physically apart, I can’t seem to stop looking out for her. I see her with Quince, her gleaming mahogany hair falling around her shoulders and the hem of a sundress fluttering in the wind around her knees.

At her side, Quince is decked out in a faded blue tee and threadbare jeans. He looks nothing like the black clad partner who saved my ass from dropping twenty-four floors to the concrete two nights ago. And not just his clothes. No, on our mission he’d been all business. Now, he looks like a man in love.

And despite all my years of being the most important person in Eliza’s life, I’m not only okay with that, I’m genuinely happy for her.

For me, too, actually. Eliza and I never had a family. Hell, we never had close friends. There’s Lorenzo, the partner in the private investigation firm I own. Or, rather, owned. Past tense now that I’ve sold him my interest. But that’s about it.

Now Eliza has Quince and all of the folks at Stark Security and all of the folks in their circle. And now I get the benefit of the overflow, too.

Which is why I’m here at a party celebrating Dallas and Jane Sykes and their new baby. A couple I don’t really know, though I’ve read enough about them online and in the papers over the years. Hard to avoid news about a playboy heir who ends up marrying his sister.

“Hey.”

I jump at the sound of the voice behind me, then silently curse. Not because I don’t want to talk to Cass, but because I’d been so damn relaxed that I’d let down my guard. And I never let down my guard.

So that’s my first lesson—be a team player, sure. But don’t stop checking my six.

I paste on a smile, then turn around to face my ex. Or sort of ex. The truth is, there’d never been anything more between us than a good time. Cass had been coming off of a bad breakup. And as for me…?

Well, I am who I am. I like Cass. I like sex. As far as I’d been concerned there wasn’t much more to be said.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” Cass says, stealing my line. Although honestly, I should have expected that Cass would be here in billionaire Damien Stark’s backyard.