Page 33 of Her Mercenary

The bite to the words, the abhorrence. The strength.

Her body trembled. Not with fear, but with anger. With that God-given grit that all of us possess but only a few understand how to properly unleash.

Samantha Greene wasn’t scared of me. Or if she was, she was forcing herself to be strong, gripping onto her one remaining shred of self-respect with bloody fingernails.

The woman still had fight in her. Despite everything she’d been through, Samantha Greene refused to give up on herself.

And I respected the hell out of it.

A flurry of something that resembled emotions spun inside me. A mixture of gut-wrenching sorrow at the survival mode she’d adopted—had to adopt. Samantha assumed she was about to be raped, but because she knew that fighting was useless, she’d learned that she had to accept certain things, and Jesus Christ, the woman did it with fucking dignity.

I studied her, experiencing a mad rush of anger that she’d been forced into this situation, fury at the men responsible for it, and a deep-rooted understanding of the vile hatred she had for me in that moment. But most of all, I felt complete shock at the strength and vehemence, the backbone on this small, vulnerable woman standing in front of me.

“Get it over with already.”

I was flummoxed at how wrong I’d been in my original assessment of her. During my research, I’d labeled Samantha Greene as an extremely emotional, mentally fragile train wreck. As nothing special. A kid.

The woman was anything but.

Rarely am I surprised. I take pride in my ability to accurately assess and read someone with little to no information. Nothing forces you to become an expert at sizing up people like a childhood spent living on the streets. Whether by choice or survival, I’d developed a keen intuition before the age of ten.

It failed me with this woman.

My heart pounded, and I didn’t fully understand why. Why was she having such an effect on me? Samantha Greene wasn’t the first woman I’d seen chained and naked, not the first woman I’d been attracted to. Nor the first I’d had to pretend to bed while undercover.

An anger I hadn’t felt before simmered in my stomach. Samantha Greene was so small and innocent. She was a teacher, for Christ’s sake.

What had she been subjected to?

What was I too late to save her from?

What did she think of me? That I was a nasty old man? That I was evil?

And how far was that from the truth?

A sudden urge overcame me to make her to think otherwise. To prove to her I wasn’t the vile person she thought I was.

In that moment, the tables turned. Everything became about her. Saving Samantha became equally as important as destroying Conor Cussane.

But how? I had to stick to the plan.

I never deviated from a plan. Not ever.

We stared at each other, the electricity between us so strong, it blurred everything else around us.

I wanted to soothe her, sweep her up in my arms and tell her everything was going to be okay. That I was going to ensure that.

But I couldn’t.

This isn’t the fucking plan.

I had to find another way to get her alone without the goons waiting outside. To ask her about the USB. To replace my fucking spine that she seemed to have obliterated with a single flutter of her eyelashes.

I had to wait for Conor to arrive to execute the plan I’d spent days outlining. I had to meet him. After all, I’d worked my entire life for this moment.

This isn’t the fucking plan, Roman.

Staring down at her, I thought of the guards on the other side of the door. And suddenly, this moment became a test for us both.