Chapter 1
Iwas going to marry Ronnie Underwood.
And it was going to be the best moment of my life. The truest moment of my life. Nothing would ever top this.
She deserved something incredible and incredible was what I was going to give her.
Pulling all the strings I had, plus asking my friend Dr. Lila Winchester to pull a few of her own—which, given Lila’s interesting past CIA life, were impressive and influential—I’d arranged the most amazing, intimate wedding on the most beautiful, secluded beach in Key West. Who knew an ex-cage fighter, gang member and blackmailed criminal informant could be so…well, romantic?
I wanted to take her to Hawaii, but we couldn’t bring Groot. And I knew Ronnie well enough. No Groot, no go. When it came to the young Doberman, it was a toss-up between me and the pup for who Ronnie loved more. Probably Groot. I was okay with that. The damn mutt was adorable, and protective as hell.
Ending my call with Fluffy to inform him when and where he needed to get his ass to Key West—a guy needed a Best Man after all, and the Marine was the best of men I’d ever known—I strolled out onto the deck of my home’s pool and found Ronnie free-stroking through the water with exquisite grace.
Hell, she was gorgeous. And sexy. And mine.
The reason I drew breath.
Three weeks ago, I’d almost lost her when Queen B turned up, ready to erase all living links to her association with Trinity—the violent gang I’d once been a member of. Two weeks before that, I’d almost lost Ronnie when she’d risked her life to save mine from one of Trinity’s most unhinged members determined to settle a violent score with me. A week before that, her life had been threatened when the deranged detective obsessed with me had decided Ronnie needed to be removed from the picture.
Almost two months of a fucking nightmare for her. She’d been thrown into an insane, dangerous world, and here she was, still with me, still in love with me, swimming like she didn’t have a care in the world.
Christ, I loved her.
Would die for her. Kill for her.
Almost had more than once.
Throat thick, chest tight, I watched her swim.
A part of me would have been content just sitting my ass on one of the poolside chairs and watching her body move and glide through the clear water forever: long legs scissoring with natural rhythm, toned arms breaking and slicing the surface the same way. She’d once represented the state in swimming, back when she was seventeen. During—as her mom called it—her “jock” period.
I’d gone and watched her, stood up in the bleachers, baseball cap low over my hardened teenager’s face, wearing a letterman jacket I’d paid a kid from another high school seventy-five bucks to borrow.
I’d stood motionless, just reveling in the way she moved, the way she smiled at her fellow competitors, the way she laughed as she climbed onto the block at the beginning of her first race as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
And she hadn’t. Not really. The only thing that irked Ronnie back then was me. I made sure she detested me. I loved her even then, but it wasn’t safe.
To be honest, I didn’t know if it was even now.
I hoped to fuck it was.
I knew back then she was what gave my life meaning. By my design, she thought I was the anti-Christ. It had been easier that way, making sure she despised me. She would have been mortified to know I was standing in the bleachers, silently cheering her on, my heart aching to yell her name, for her to see me there and smile at me…
I never called her name. Not that entire day. Not even when another kid from a rival school slammed into and knocked her over her as they were both hurrying to the marshalling area just before for her fourth race, the hundred meters backstroke.
Her shoulder was injured when she hit the concrete, badly, and that was game-over for Ronnie at the competition.
I hadn’t called her name. But I’d risked everything by rushing down to her. I’d caught myself, stopping just as I was about to shove everyone mingling around her aside.
Heart in my throat, I’d stood frozen, watching her through the lurching gap of people.
Even back then what I felt for Ronnie could have been used against me. I may have only been an eighteen-year-old, but I was an eighteen-year-old already balls-deep in a violent life, in a violent gang—Trinity, the fucking curse of my existence—with a corrupt perverted bastard of a cop circling me.
Instead of rushing to Ronnie’s side, instead of helping her deal with the pain of her injury, I stood back, aching all over for her, for the life with her I believed I could never have.
When the paramedics arrived, I slipped away through the crowd. I followed the ambulance to the hospital where they took her and waited until her parents arrived. They were flustered and worried and, in her mom’s case, freaking out.
I returned the letterman jacket to the kid, gave him another hundred for keeping it longer than I’d planned, and returned to my normal life of being an underground MMA fighter on the wrong side of everything.