Chapter 7

• Dean’s POV
• Hudson Cross wasn’t leaving his penthouse anymore.
• He wasn’t the man grinning for cameras or cutting deals over cocktails. He was hiding in his glass tower like a paranoid king, shades drawn, lights flickering at odd hours. That told me more than any headline with big bold letters ever could.
• So I watched.
• From the black sedan parked across the street, I had a clear view of his upper floors through high-powered optics. The Bureau would’ve chewed my ass if they knew, but I wasn’t doing this for them anymore. This was personal.
• The first thing I noticed was the pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, like a caged animal. The second thing was his lips moving. He wasn’t on the phone. He wasn’t wearing an earpiece. He was
• talking
• To no one.
• I snapped a few photos, zooming tighter. Sweat dripped down his temple. His hands slashed the air as if he was arguing with someone standing right in front of him. His head jerked suddenly, like he’d been touched.
• Then it happened.
• The wine glass on the table tipped. Not brushed by his hand. Not knocked by accident. It tipped, slow and deliberate, sliding across polished wood before shattering on the floor.
• I froze, my camera still trained on him. Hudson hadn’t moved. He was
• staring
• at the spot like it had betrayed him. Then he shouted—violent, furious, his mouth forming the same name I’d seen in reports, in witness statements, in the file I couldn’t let go of.
• Collette.
• My pulse thudded hard in my throat. Logic told me there had to be an explanation. A draft. A vibration. Anything. But my gut—the same gut that had kept me alive in interrogation rooms and back alleys—said different.
• Something was in that room with him.
• And I knew exactly who it was.
• I lowered the camera, dragging a hand over my mouth. She was supposed to be gone. Buried. But if Hudson was cracking this badly, if glass was moving and shadows were stirring when they shouldn’t, then maybe the file I’d been chasing wasn’t just another unsolved case.
• Maybe Collette Quinn wasn’t finished with Hudson Cross.
• My chest tightened. Her picture was burned into my mind—sharp jawline, eyes that didn’t flinch, that wicked smirk she wore like armor. A woman who had looked alive even in still photographs.
• And now, watching Hudson break apart at the seams, I wanted her alive more than ever.
• “Christ,” I muttered, adjusting myself in my seat as heat curled low in my gut. Wrong. It was wrong to want her. But it didn’t stop me. The thought of her whispering in my ear, laughing at me the way she laughed at him—it made my cock stir, thick and heavy against my zipper.
• I forced my gaze back to Hudson, now on his knees among the glass shards, head in his hands. The great billionaire, reduced to rubble by something I couldn’t explain.
• I should’ve been satisfied. Instead, all I could think was:
• If Collette Quinn was still here, in whatever form…
• I had to find her.
• And I had to make her mine.
• And maybe that made me as insane as he was—but for the first time in years, I really didn’t care.