Page 5 of Built for Mercy

“Who was that?” Duane, one of my best friends and my head of security, asked from his spot on my outdoor couch. His feet were propped on an ottoman and the flickering light from the firepit lit up his face.

“No one important,” I grumbled, tapping my phone restlessly in my hand. It bothered me that she wasn’t afraid for her safety. Was this woman on a suicide mission?

“Bullshit,” Paulie, my other best friend and right-hand man, said. “That phone call threw your mood. What’s your damage?”

I opted for silence, because really, what was I supposed to say? The one woman who I’ve been told my entire life to stay the fuck away from just called to harass me and I didn’t kill her when I had the chance? Yeah, no.

“Does this have anything to do with So—” I kicked Duane’s ankle. “Ow, bro, what the fuck?”

“Hey, why does he get to know something I don’t?” Paulie whined.

I rolled my eyes. “Get over it, P. You’ll know if it becomes relevant.”

Duane snorted, and before I could say anything more, my phone pinged with a text from Jeremiah, the guard currently on shift to tail Sophie. The message was a screenshot of a security camera. He stood in front of Sophie while she held his phone to her ear, looking equal parts afraid and furious. It was a look she wore well.

I tilted my phone away from the guys so they wouldn’t ask questions, only for Duane to muse, “Don’t be shy. If it’s a nude, share with the group.”

“Fuck off,” I snapped, heading straight back inside. Duane’s guys had strict orders directly from me to send me photos of Sophie, security footage included, and bypass Duane completely. I wasn’t sure why I was so adamant about keeping this hidden, but right now she was my dirty little secret until I could figure out why the hell she was wandering around my territory.

I sauntered into my office, opened the photo Jeremiah sent, and selected to print it. I poured myself two fingers of whiskey while I waited impatiently for the printer to finish the image. When it did, I gingerly picked it up and inspected it, swallowing a healthy swig of my drink as I did.

She was fucking beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes, tan skin. A body I’d fucking kill to have just once. An ass I’d like to mark.Fuck.

Tearing my eyes from my newest image of her, I walked down the hall to my bedroom, pushing open the door and coming to a stop in front of the collage on my wall, currently made up of dozens of images of Sophie that I’d collected over the last few weeks. I wasted no time taping it to the wall, underneath one of her sitting in her squad car and holding her hair up, exposing the graceful curve of her neck.

I stood there staring at her pictures for way too fucking long, bothered by my infatuation with her.

The sound of my friends’ laughter trickling in from the terrace snapped me back to reality. Finally, I turned my back on the wall that bordered on creepy stalker, shaking my head to clear it as I left my room.

I was only having her followed to make sure she wasn’t a threat to the empire her father left behind.

That was all.

It had to be.

5

Sophie

Aweek later, I still hadn’t shaken my new personal bodyguards—what I’d taken to calling them. It sounded better than weird stalker dudes who were mysteriously keeping tabs on me in a, presumably, non-dangerous way.

My best friend, Callie, slid into the booth across from me, her blue eyes alight with a certain happiness I hadn’t seen on her in, well, ever. It paired nicely with the glittering two-carat diamond on her finger.Jesus,that thing was obvious from a mile away. Probably just how her fiancé, and one my closest friends, liked it.

“How are you, stranger?” she asked as she flagged down a bartender. I almost asked her if she was okay to be drinking again since she’d spent so long working on her sobriety but decided to save the lecture for another day. Progress isn’t linear, and she had been drinking responsibly now for months. “Also, do you want anything to eat?”

Yes.

“No to the food,” I responded despondently, then shrugged. “Doing great, though. How are you, now that you’ve settled into the Big Apple with Liam?”

Deflect, deflect, deflect.

It was what I did best, and it often came back to bite me in the ass, but it at least bought me some more time before I had to talk about it. And in this instance, I’d been avoiding meeting Callie for weeks because I was hiding the truth about my dad’s case. When I’d found out, she was in a broken place and trying to put this life behind her, and I didn’t want to be responsible for piling onto her issues.

She gave me a knowing look as she turned to order a drink. “You don’t think I can’t see right through you? You’ve been distant. And now you’re not going to eat? Come on, Soph, you know I know you better than that.”

Shit.She was right. Truth was, I felt ashamed of what happened with my mysterious stalker a month ago. I attempted to be some avenging hero defending my family’s name only to wind up pinned to a brick wall and turned on like some kind of wild lunatic. I made a rash decision after stewing in my thoughts for months, and it could have gotten me killed. What’s worse was that now that I had made my presence known to that stupidly good-looking man, I was being followed constantly.

“Nah, I know you can.” I winked at her, then stared down at my drink, deciding to just rip the Band-Aid off. “I, uh, found the guys who killed my dad.”