Chapter 1

Chapter One

Determination filled Cassandra Whitehall as she tapped away at the keyboard. The office was quiet. Everyone had left. Fox and his team were on a job with Julian, their FBI contact.

She’d landed on her feet when she’d gotten the job with Alliez Security. Getting away from the place that’d caused her so much stress had been vital for her well-being.

Now, she found herself elbows deep in the very type of work she’d walked away from. Yet this time, though, it wasn’t as bad as what Cass had been doing for the CIA. At least with Alliez, she’d saved people’s lives, unlike what she’d been doing.

How many deaths sat on her shoulders, all in the name of keeping the country safe ?

Too many to count. Although, what she’d been involved with had saved lives too, but the cost had been a lot higher than what she and Alliez did.

She typed in the last command, hit return, and waited.

The cursor flashed mockingly. Had she been successful this time, or was it another failure?

A beep sounded, and Cass stared at the screen.

She’d done it.

The file finally unlocked.

It’d taken her months to figure out a way in. It had been locked down tighter than a nun’s vagina.

Now she knew why.

The information scrolling across the screen turned her blood cold. She had to be reading it incorrectly. It couldn’t possibly say what she thought it said.

However, the words didn’t change to something more palatable, no matter how many times the meaning hit her brain.

“This can’t be right. It has to be wrong,” she muttered.

Have I cracked the wrong file?

Cass mentally scoffed at her fanciful thought. How could it be the wrong one when it was named after the designation she’d had while working with the CIA?

Code Name: Red Feather .

That had been the codename the CIA had given her .

No, she hadn’t made a mistake. What was displayed on the screen was the truth, and yet it made a mockery of everything she’d ever known.

Her whole life had been a lie.

How could they have done this to her?

Why had they done it?

What could they have possibly achieved by doing this to her?

A blinding pain split her skull, and she gasped loudly, clutching her head in her hands. She smashed her eyes shut, waiting for the throbbing to pass.

When will these attacks stops?

Why did they keep happening?

This one was different.

Behind her closed eyes, a vision appeared. A vague shadow of a man held her tight as he ran through the streets.

As quickly as it started, the image faded to gray. Had she seen anything at all?

The throbbing began to ease.

A short attack this time.

“Cass?”

She jumped when the warm hands landed on her shoulders .

Hadn’t she been alone?

His voice soft and comforting.

Cass wanted to lean into it, let him take away all the stress and pain, but she couldn't.

Not now. Not after what she’d just uncovered.

Not after she’d just found out who she was.

Who was she?

“What the fuck?” The hands on her shoulders squeezed tightly.

He’d seen the open document on her screen. Had read the same damning words she had.

Now he knew the truth, too.

Cass shook off Irish’s hold and pushed away from her desk. “I can’t do this now.”

She stood, hit a button on her keyboard, and the information disappeared.

If only she could make it disappear from her memory as easily as she could from the screen.

“Cass, this is big.” Irish kept his voice low and even. The opposite of his previous exclamation.

Of course it was big. Everything she thought she knew about her life was a lie.

Everything Cass remembered from the age of eight was fabricated. A fancy story that, while she’d lived it, hadn’t been her truth .

“Which means I need time to process it all. Give me that, please.” She looked up at Irish.

His quiet presence was always so comforting—and annoying. He saw too much.

Always observing but never speaking.

Except for that one time when they’d given in to the attraction that swirled beneath them.

What she would give right this second to let him make her forget what she’d seen. Cass couldn’t let that happen. Nothing could happen between them, which was why they’d never spoken about that one night.

After interminable seconds, Irish nodded. “I’ll drive you home.”

There was no point arguing with him. She wouldn’t win—and if she were being honest with herself, she didn’t want to.

For a brief moment, she wanted to give him all the control. Let him take her home.

“I’d appreciate that.”

Together, they closed up the Alliez office and made their way to the parking garage beneath the building.

Cass got into Irish’s Camaro, and as he revved the V-8 engine, she wished it was that easy to blow the cobwebs from her brain.

A dull ache remained from her earlier attack, but she was too afraid to close her eyes in case that vision came back.

Although, wouldn’t she want it to? Was it a clue as to what happened to her in the eight years prior to her first memory with her parents?

She mentally scoffed at the term parents .

They’d been nothing more than fill-ins.

“I know you said you need to process, but if you want to talk about it. Work through it, you know I’m here for you.”

Cass sighed. “I know. I just…it feels false. Like it’s all a big joke, but I don’t think it is. Who am I?” she finished on a whisper.

“You’re Cassandra Whitehall. Amazing computer genius. A person who we couldn’t survive without. A person who I consider a friend.”

A friend.

As much as she tried to deny herself any sort of relationship with Irish, she wanted one. Cass wanted to be able to lean on him, but if she held herself back, he stood twenty feet away from anyone.

There was a brick wall as high as the sky and as wide as the circumference of the earth surrounding Irish.

She knew why, but she’d never told him she knew. Never let on that she knew the real reason he’d been dishonorably discharged.

“That’s who I am now.” She picked up from the last part of their conversation. “Who was I before I turned eight?”

There was no point in attempting to forget, wishing that Irish hadn’t seen what she’d found.

He had.

“The memories are there. They just need to be unlocked.”

Great, how was that supposed to help her?

“Those are words, Irish. Unhelpful words, by the way.”

He pulled into the driveway of her little bungalow.

Her two-bedroom house was her pride and joy. It’d been in a little tired looking when she’d purchased it. The previous owners had started some renovations but had been unable to finish them. She’d breathed life back into it, finished the remodel to her taste, and she hoped when she got inside, it would breathe life back into her because tonight, that was what she needed.

She twisted to face Irish, lifting her chin to portray a confidence she didn’t quite feel. Even in the dim lighting of the interior of his car, felt his piercing blue eyes studying her, as if he could see into the depths of her soul .

Nothing good would come of him trying to figure her out when she didn’t know how to figure herself out.

“Thanks for driving me home. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Cass released her seatbelt, grabbed her purse from the car floor, and reached for the door handle.

A large hand landed on her forearm.

Her skin tingled, and the warm fluttering feelings she always experienced when Irish touched her flared to life in her belly.

“If you think I’m letting you be by yourself tonight, you don’t know me at all.”

It wasn’t a shocker that he’d want to come inside.

Also, it wasn’t as if this was the first time he’d driven her home. Many a night when it’d been just the two of them left in the Alliez office, he’d insisted on escorting her home, even though Cass had protested and told him she was more than capable to see herself home.

He’d wanted to make sure she got home because it was late and anyone could be lurking around. Irish always insisted on picking her up in the morning, seeing as her car was at the office.

“I need to be alone, Irish,” she responded. “Please.”

His hand came up and touched her cheek sweetly and gently—everything she expected from him. “Being alone would be the worst thing you can do, Alastriona.”

Dammit he’d pulled out the big guns—using the Irish version of her name.

She loved it when he’d called her that.

It was rare, and she treasured each time he did.

“Don’t,” she whispered, tears threatening to slide down her cheeks. Cass wasn’t a crier, had never been. Yet right this second, she wanted to bawl her eyes out at the unfairness of everything.

“I will. Always.”

The more she fought him, the more he’d dig his heels in. They’d been down this road a few times in the last few months.

Ever since she’d started getting her bad headaches.

“Fine,” she agreed. “Let’s go.” Cass was out of the car and almost at her front door before Irish caught up with her.

There were still a few feet between them, but he was there. She wished she wasn’t so attuned to Irish and everything he did. Her life would be so much easier, and well, especially now it would be far better if he kept his distance.

Irish took the keys from her fingers and opened the door, again something he always did when he drove her home, as if his opening the door would ward off evil spirits or something.

Cass also understood she needed to stay by the door while he walked through the house to make sure no one was hiding in the dark corners.

It didn’t matter that she had a sophisticated security system—one with cameras and an alarm. The same alarm he always disengaged when he stepped over the threshold.

Tonight, she wasn’t going to stand docilely by the door. She was going into her home to open the bottle of white wine that Eveline had left the last time she, Astrid and Teresa had been over.

That night had been fun.

They’d been gushing over Teresa’s cute baby belly, teasing her that her baby would come out wearing Angelo’s trademark smirk.

It had felt good to hang out with the girls. To be normal for a while. For a few hours she’d forgotten about the file that she’d finally cracked that night and the headaches she’d been having.

Cass dumped her bag on the kitchen counter and grabbed the bottle of wine from the refrigerator.

“Cass, you know you’re supposed to wait until I give you the all clear,” Irish growled as he stalked to where she stood by the counter, glass of wine already at her lips.

All the emotions that’d been swirling through her the last hour bonded to form a giant ball of anger, and it burst at Irish’s high-handed comment.

She put her glass down, wanting to slam it, but if she did, it could shatter and that was the last thing she wanted to deal with. Cass poked his chest with her finger. “Listen, here Dylan O’Reilly. I don’t need you to check my house when you know the security system I have in place here. If anyone had broken in, the alarm would’ve gone off. I would’ve got an alert on my phone, and everyone at Alliez would know about it. So, back-off.”

Irish grabbed her hand, pressing it flat against his chest.

Beneath her fingertips, his heart pounded.

Their gazes clashed, and his ice-blue eyes reminded her of a flame.

Her breaths became ragged, and desire burned away her anger. “Not happening,” Cass managed.

Before she could protest, his lips slammed down on hers, and she closed her eyes, giving in to what she’d secretly wanted.