Disarming the Protector

Federal prosecutor Sofia Vega has built her whole career on control. She never lies, never loses, and never lets a room see anything she didn't decide to show it. Then a dark SUV comes off a Chicago curb at the wrong angle, and walking away from it is the only part of her week that doesn't go to plan.

Her friends make the call Sofia would never have made for herself. It goes to Sentinel Group: four former operators who choose their own clients and answer to no one. The man who shows up at her door is Sebastian Ryder. Ex-Delta. Lethally calm. And completely immune to the thing Sofia does to every other person in her life. She manages the narrative. He just looks at her and waits.

The contract is simple. He keeps her alive until the verdict comes in. To do it he moves into her space, her routine, the twelve blocks she walks to the courthouse, and the careful distance he's kept around his own life for fifteen years. Sofia has survived worse than a man in her apartment. She has not survived a man who reads her this accurately and still asks for nothing.

The threat is closer than either of them wants to admit. The case is bigger than the file says. And the nearer Bash gets to whatever is trying to kill her, the harder it becomes to remember that when the contract ends, he's supposed to walk away.

The contract has an end date.
The wanting doesn't.