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For anyone who has or is suffering from addiction or loss. This one is for you.

To show you, that no matter what, you can make it out of the other side.

I have so many people who helped me bring this story to life and I’ll be eternally grateful for all of their help!

As always I want to thank my family for putting up with all my silly talk, late nights/early mornings and for supporting me in following my dreams to be a writer. You’re all amazing and I love you loads!

Thank you to my beta readers, Danielle, Angela L, Liza, Elaine and Amanda! Thank you for helping me see what needed to be changed and for helping me make this story what it is! I love you all loads!

Thank you to my American proofing Queen, Angela J! You helped me sooo much and I’m so so thankful! Love ya!

A special thank you to Danielle, who again, helped me go through every little bit of this story and for always being there.

To my editor Judy, thank you for correcting my commas! Those darn things! Haha!

Thank you to Kellie Dennis for making an amazeballs cover, and thank you to Dave Kelley for the photography!

Thank you to Jacqulyn Currey for being the model on this cover! It was just peeerfect for Kitty!

A huge thank you to ALL the Bloggers, readers and authors that share all of my stuff! I appreciate it so much and I just love being part of the indie community!

Last but by no means least; thank you to all my amazing readers, for all of the messages that I receive on a daily basis. It warms my heart so much to know that you enjoy my stories. I hope you love this one as much as I do!

Thank you for allowing me to do what I love most and tell these stories!

I hated it with a passion.

I didn’t want someone being paid to protect me, I wanted to be able to do that shit myself.

That was my end goal... and I reached it.

For a while, things were perfect. Well, not perfect but as good as they could be. I had a self-built family, people who cared and respected me.

Now?

Now I’m not too sure.

My eyes turn to the window, watching as all of the guys are standing in the middle of the compound, laughing and joking. There was a time where I would have been in the middle of that.

Instead, I sit here, staring from the outside in.

I look down at the pills carefully placed in a line on the table and my shaky hand moves forward, picking up the bottle of water, unscrewing the cap and taking a small swallow as my eyes flick back to the window.

I wish I was standing out there with them. I want to be normal again, but I can’t let them see this version of me.

After I’ve taken these, everything will be right in the world again and I’ll be able to be me, the me that I’ve become.

I pick up the tablets, one by one, swallowing each with a gulp of water.

After taking six, I can feel my muscles loosen, my eyes sharpen and my world tilts back on the axis that I’ve been so used to.

Ten minutes

and I’ll be back to who I was. That strong, spunky woman.

I lean back in my wingback chair and close my eyes, sighing and enjoying the high.

I push the folder across to Kay as we finish up the meeting. “Just needs typing up,” I tell her.

Her dark brown eyes meet mine and she nods then smiles, adding it onto her growing pile. Ever since she came here two years ago the whole place has changed. At first I was skeptical about another woman coming to work here, but as I got to know her, I realized that it was the best thing that could have happened. Not just for Ty, but for the team as a whole.

She brought a softer side to the team and looked at things differently than the rest of us did. At first she was just working in the office, then she started to go out on jobs with us after completing her training.

We went out on quite a few together because sometimes things just needed to be looked at from women’s perspectives. Now she mainly goes out on jobs, either with me or Ty, and because of that the office work is piling up. Ty wants someone to take over in the office, but we can’t have just anybody in here so he keeps putting it off.

What we do here at MAC Security is important and at times dangerous, it takes a special kind of person to be able to work here and get along with all of us.

Not only that, but we’ve had enough drama over the last couple of years to last a lifetime.

I turn my eyes back to Boss as he gives us a rundown on what is happening and the latest jobs that need to be worked.

“Kitty? Luke? You’re on a new job. It came in just last night.” He passes us each a folder and leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers under his chin.

I open it up and skim over all of the information that I need to take in. That’s one of my skills. I can read things faster than the majority of people can and take in all the information at the same time, recalling it at anytime I need to. Some people like to call it a photographic memory but I just like to think that I’m good at recalling information. I imagine my mind as a vault with lots of filing cabinets, each sorted into alphabetical order and organized to a T.

That way I can go into any file that I need to at any given time and recall all of the information down to the very last small detail.

Locking all of the information in a file in my mind, I close the folder in front of me and wait for the daily meeting to be over. I’m itching to be back on a case, a case where I can get my teeth stuck into it. Metaphorically, of course.

“Me and Kay will be out all day,” Ty tells us, lifting up out of his chair at the head of the table.

“Ooooo, I wonder what you two will be doing, huh? Huh?” Evan says, his brows waggling up and down as he smirks at them.

I snort as I push up out of my own chair and ruffle his hair.