1. Snow

ONE

SNOW

DEREK

G oddamn it. It’s snowing again.

Anywhere other than Springfield, the light snowfall might be pretty, but the white flakes are a dingy grey almost as soon as they hit the asphalt in a city like this one. It tries its best to be festive, though, especially in the downtown area where I’ve been patrolling lately.

There are lights up all over the place. Red ribbons are tied around the lampposts on Main except for where some punk kids have yanked them down, with the shops all showing off the last of their holiday sales. The countdown to Christmas is on, and despite the slush, the streets are filled with last minute shoppers trying to get the best bargains with only a handful of days left ‘til the actual holiday.

And cops. The streets are absolutely teeming with cops this afternoon.

That’s why I’m standing on this particular corner where my boss put me, currently blowing on my raw hands as I curse under my breath for forgetting the winter gloves that go with my uniform. It’s cold as fuck out, but not so cold to chase away the snow, I guess. The wind whips the tiny bits of ice into my face as I turn toward the coffee shop at my back, searching for my mentor.

As the rookie, with only six months as part of the Springfield Police Department under my belt so far, going on a coffee run is usually my job. But when my fellow officer can use the excuse to take ten inside the warmth of the shop instead of getting snowed on, he ‘insisted’ on grabbing some for us both while leaving me outside.

I’d offered to head in with him. He’s technically my trainer until Sarge releases him from that duty, so I should go in there, too, right? Fat chance. With Springfield on high alert these days after a recent slew of high-profile hits, it isn’t worth getting chewed out to leave my post without a superior officer’s say so.

Everyone knows this city has a problem with organized crime. The vice mayor getting whacked is only the latest in a bunch of murders that have gripped the city this past year, but since I was a kid at Springfield High, we’ve all known about the gangs, mafias, and syndicates that rule the city. Either you join up and fall in line, or you accept that they control every little detail about living in Springfield.

There was also a third option, one that I settled on after so many years of watching the Sinners and the Dragonflies make out like bandits while I jumped from one job—and one woman—to the next.

I was tired of that shit. I wanted to be the man on top. I wanted a woman for more than a night. Where’s Derek’s fucking happy-ever-after, right?

And that’s when it hit me. Altruistic fool that I was, I could help clean up the city, find a girl I could be worthy of, maybe even get one of those tiny little houses on the edge of Springfield where they have white picket fences and the local gangsters aren’t as powerful as they are in their individual strongholds.

I’d be a fucking cop and be untouchable .

That was my plan around this time last Christmas. When I first enrolled at the academy in the new year, deciding that becoming a rookie police officer at the ripe old age of thirty was my latest calling after a lifetime in other protector gigs like bouncing and being mall security, I was honestly optimistic enough to think that I could make a difference. With Derek Coleman on the force, I could try to knock Devil Crewes and his Sinners Syndicate down a peg, maybe even target Damien Libellula and his Family once I was done cleaning up the streets on the West Side.

Yeah, right. That laughable naivety lasted until my first bribe within a week of buddying up with my mentor, when he showed me just how lucrative it could be to keep the mafias’ interests in mind as I patrolled the city.

Add that to all the other lessons I’d learned as he trained me and, yeah. Cops in Springfield are either on the take or they’re dead. No two ways about it. Protect the civilians as best you can, go after the crooks that aren’t paying you, and if you’re a little crooked, just remember that it could always be worse. You could be irredeemably corrupt, instead of just a little… questionable. You could use your power and privilege to hurt people instead of watching out for them while also watching out for yourself.

See, I’m not a bad man. At least, I don’t think I am. I line my pockets when I can, and I look the other way as Devil brings in his guns, Libellula runs his drugs, all while keeping the innocent civilians out of it.

All, that is, except one… who, despite not being involved with the local mafias as far as I can tell, is nowhere near as innocent as her pretty brown eyes and strawberry blonde hair would suggest.

Thinking of my Dove usually sends all my blood rushing south. The memory of her hesitant smile the first time we met under pretty shitty circumstances, the look of utter concentration that twists her gorgeous features before she snaps another one of her pictures, how she snuffles and snores in a sleep so deep, she has no clue that I’m even there… just thinking of my pretty girl gets me so hard sometimes, I’d fuck through a wall to get to her if I could.

Does it matter that she doesn’t even know I exist? That, though we only spoke to each other once, I’ve spent the last six months waiting as patiently as I fucking could until I can finally claim her as mine?

Not if you ask my mentor.

Too bad that not even momentarily closing my eyes and remembering what Dove’s delectable curves look like without a stitch of clothing on isn’t enough to ward off this evening’s chill. I’ve only got another couple of hours to go on my shift, but considering I’ll be outside even after that, I’m not looking forward to the temperature dropping further.

Shit. My work shoes are designed for long hours on the beat, but not when the temperature is well below freezing. I’ve lost feeling in my toes. Stamping my feet, trying to get some warmth back, I’m counting down the moments until I can be warm inside of a nice, cozy bedroom.

Sure, it’s not my bedroom, but that’s what makes the idea of it so damn cozy—and the hours between now and then fucking endless.

Just when I’m ready to say ‘fuck it’ and step inside the nearby deli for a second to thaw out, a bump against my shoulder has me whipping my head around.

I see the devilish smirk first, the cup of steaming coffee he’s holding out to me next.

“For you, rook.”

“Thanks, Burns. Appreciate it.”

Officer Mace Burns, the man who’s been teaching me everything he knows—in more ways than one.

To be honest, I did do a double-take when he introduced himself as Mace after the sarge partnered me up with him to learn the job. His name is Mason, but he prefers to go by the shorter version of his name. Between his last name being ‘Burns’ and him being a veteran beat cop on the force, you’d think he would stick with ‘Mason’. That he doesn’t, that he chooses to be Mace fucking Burns when you can’t deny that police brutality is constantly in the news… well, that tells you everything you need to know about this man.

“Drink up,” he says, and his dark blue eyes are gleaming beneath the glow of the nearby streetlamp. “You got a long night ahead of you.”

He’s not wrong. “Always do,” I say with a shrug, taking a sip of my coffee. Fuck, that’s hot. It burns my tongue, but I actually don’t mind it too much. If it’ll chase the chill out of my bones, I’ll take a wounded tongue for a couple of minutes.

“Not much longer, though, eh, rook?” Burns snorts. He lifts his own coffee cup to his lips, though he doesn’t drink. “You and your New Year’s resolution bullshit.”

My back goes tight under the weight of my SPD-issued coat. “It’s not bullshit. It’s a target deadline.”

“Haven’t I taught you anything? Like any good sting operation, you do your research. You learn everything you can to have the upper hand. You show no mercy, you go in prepared, but there’s such thing as overplanning, kid. Sometimes you have to be on your toes. Find an opportunity. Make one. Take one.”

I nod in agreement, all while trying not to show him how much it rankles to be called ‘kid’ like that. I’m only a couple of years younger than Burns, two or three maybe, and I’m actually a few inches taller than he is. Sure, I only just joined the Springfield Police Department in June, while Burns is a longtime beat cop who is happy to keep his position, but kid ?

He knows it bothers me. Burns is a perceptive bastard. I mean, for fuck’s sake, he picked up on my obsession for my precious Dove back when I stupidly thought she was just a woman I could fuck and forget.

As if I could have her once and let her go. No. From the moment I first saw her, responding to a call at Waverly’s Department Store at the end of June, I wanted her. I had every intention of going back after—when I was off the clock and out of my blues—to ask her to go out for a drink. I was still naive those first few weeks on the job. I thought it would be an abuse of power to go from being a responding officer to a guy looking to get laid, all while she was dealing with the fallout of having had to deal with the cops in the first place.

I went to Waverly’s with Burns that day. It was supposed to be a routine call. Some idiot headed to the part of the store where a shop photographer takes your picture in front of a few different backdrops. He wanted to take a couples’ photo with his new girl, but forgot to dump the last one first. She showed up, the altercation got physical, and the poor photographer ended up with her camera smashed and her face punched when she tried to break it up.

Dove Yarrow. One of her co-workers called the cops, but she hung around to give a statement even after Burns and I got the brawling women in cuffs. She mourned the loss of the camera, though it was company property, and passed on seeing a paramedic despite her left eye having swelled shut by the time we were on scene.

She put on a brave face for us, and I might’ve tightened the cuffs on the one who suckerpunched Dove, but that’s because I already knew—from the second she flagged us down and, in a shaky voice, tried to explain what had happened—that this woman was mine.

My body knew, too. I’m fucking thirty. I can control my cock. A stiff breeze might’ve been enough to make me hard when I was a teenager, but it takes more than a pair of big tits, some sad brown eyes, and an ass as gorgeous as Dove’s to have me getting aroused while I’m on duty.

And then I met her. Everything about this woman was primed to get a reaction out of me. The way she seemed to have a deliciously sweet scent, almost like she’s made of cotton candy. Her hair twisted in soft curls as they nestled on her shoulders. Her thick body poured into her Waverly’s uniform, made up of a tight white polo and black pants that molded to every last curve she has.

Her bravery. How she interfered in a catfight, took a punch, and still tried to sweep the whole thing under the carpet so that no one got in trouble. That was the manager’s decision to make, though, and I was happy to cart the offenders down to the station if only because it pissed me off to high heaven that anyone would mark up her gorgeous face.

I promised myself from that moment on she’d have her own personal protector. Me . I’d keep her safe, use my badge for good, and make sure that when she saw me the next time, her smile wouldn’t be as hesitant as it was.

I would protect her. I would love her. I would make her fall in love with me, too, and I’d have that happy-ever-after that I deserved so fucking badly.

Burns figured it out. Before I could even plot my next move, he knew —and just like how he’d been training me to be a cop in the weeks leading up to that fateful call, he eventually started to spend a part of every one of our shifts giving me advice on how to make Dove mine.

I listened to him. At first, I stayed in the shadows. I watched her from a distance, but soon I needed more. He expected as much, admitting that when it came to his relationship with his wife, he also tried to keep his distance in the beginning.

It didn’t work. But you know what did?

Going inside of her apartment.

Dove has this small one-bedroom apartment in the rougher part of the downtown area. She lives on the sixth floor, but like so many of the tenements in Springfield, it has a fire escape.

And like so many of the renters, she got a little lax when it came to the security of her apartment.

That’s how I justified the cameras. Whenever I could—and probably even when I shouldn’t—I slip into Dove’s apartment. I get off on watching her sleep, but once I realized that her sleeping pills make her basically dead to the world most nights, I’d explore her personal space. But what about when I was ready to crash and needed to sleep in my own empty bed? Or if Sarge scheduled me and Burns for the rare overnight patrol? I rigged it so that the window was always open for me, but I couldn’t leave my precious Dove unprotected.

So I installed cameras. That way I could always make sure she was safe—and alone.

For months, I’ve done my research. I know everything there is to know about Dove Marie Yarrow, twenty-eight, and a Libra with an affinity for stuffed cats—mainly the ginger-colored ones—her Canon Eos R5 camera, and the Springfield Sparks, the local unaffiliated baseball team.

Have I over-prepared? Maybe. But knowing Dove as well as I do… I’ll only get one shot at this.

Burns makes fun of me for having a deadline. I promised myself that, by January 1st, one way or another I was making my move. Hell, I’ve already started. Besides my extracurricular activities—stalking, I mean my stalking , my breaking and entering and watching her whenever I can—I’ve taken advantage of the season to let her know I’m here.

I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.

What started out as fascination with the photographer has grown over the last six months into a full-blown obsession with Dove Yarrow. I think about her constantly. I imagine what she’ll sound like when she moans my name. I’ve got a ring all picked out, though even I’m not nuts enough to buy it before she even knows what my name is.

Burns is aware that I aim to marry this girl. He called me out on it, and though I cleared my throat and shook my head and tried to deny it, he instinctively knew I was full of shit. Of course, to show that he didn’t judge, he told me that he fell for his wife from the moment she gave him a daisy from her flower shop to brighten his day.

He had the ring picked out and purchased before they were officially a couple, and look at them now: his Angela is as head-over-heels for her cop as Dove will be for me sooner or later.

Nothing will stop me. Not her. Not my job. Nothing … and it was Mace Burns who helped me realize just how in over my head I was when he mentioned how the trigger that pushed him from stalking his wife to claiming her was finding out she went out to Mama Maria’s for dinner with the guy who owns the hobby shop on Main.

That was thanks to my nosy ass wondering why Burns’s friendly mask—the one he seems to wear whenever we’re on patrol—always seems to crack when we move past that store. Glaring in the window, murder in every line of his face, I was beginning to think that Burns just really fucking hated trains or something when he admitted that the guy behind the counter used to have a thing for Angela Burns.

Then, he turned to me at the same time as he turned the subject around on me, too, as he asked, “What would you do if she goes on a date with another man?”

Kill him.

The answer is instant. I don’t have to ask what Burns is talking about or who he’s referring to. There is only one ‘she’ that means anything to me, and just the idea that Dove might spend time with another man…

Fuck, no.

That’s when everything changed. The second I realized that I’d kill anyone that tried to come between Dove and me, I knew I found my trigger. To keep from doing anything too rash and reckless, I set my deadline, and threw myself into learning everything I could about Dove. But I never forgot that, though I consider her mine, she doesn’t know that she is yet.

Soon, though. Soon .

Besides, I’m a cop. I have a gun. Accidents happen, right? All over the country, cops murder civilians and get off with barely a slap on the wrist. In Springfield? Please. After I signed on to Devil’s payroll, just another of Lincoln Crewes’s loyal pigs, as long as I don’t target a Sinner, I have nothing to worry about.

Dove isn’t affiliated with any other gangs. Of course, with her extracurricular activities, that might get her in trouble—but then again…

Find an opportunity. Make one. Take one.

Yessir.