Page 18 of Covert Temptation (SEAL Team Blackout Charlie #4)

To someone who’d stood in the center of the world’s power, confident and full of purpose.

That version of herself had bloomed under the pressure of embassy offices and state dinners.

There, at least, everything followed protocol.

There were no screaming matches. No broken glass.

Just a place where what she did had importance and helped to change lives.

Then it all fell apart, as splintered as the cheap wood of the old table.

Kennedy blinked and looked away from the smashed furniture, swallowing the lump rising in her throat. She would not cry over what her life had become—those days were behind her.

When she turned her head, she locked eyes with Dante. Her lover.

There were a hundred reasons why they shouldn’t be tangled up in the wake of the bliss they shared. Yet, none of them mattered.

In her past, she protected herself with a tough shell. She didn’t let anybody in. Everybody was an enemy. Over the last few weeks, she had adopted that again.

But this version of her…felt different.

Maybe, just maybe, she could find herself again.

Or build something entirely new.

The roughened touch of Dante’s fingertip on her chin brought her back to him.

His eyes were warm when he looked at her. “Let’s clean up and eat.”

She firmed her jaw in determination. “Then I can help you with whatever you’re working on.”

Surprise flashed across his face as if he hadn’t been expecting her to say that.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Kennedy.”

“Why not? I’m more than qualified. I have a lot of skills. I’m a master at organizing data.”

“I have no doubt of that.” Several beats passed while he stared down at her. Finally, he said, “I’ll think about it.”

A smile spread over her face before she could stop it. “That’s more than I expected.”

It hit her then—Dante had his own walls, just as thick and weathered as hers. And for the first time, she wondered if she wasn’t only seeing past them…but slowly being let in.

She didn’t say anything in that moment, just held his gaze for a beat longer than necessary. Something unspoken passed between them—recognition, maybe. Understanding.

She wasn’t the only one who’d learned how to survive behind walls.

They went to opposite bedrooms to clean up, but the thought lingered like steam in her mind. She stood under the spray of the shower, eyes closed, wondering when the shift had happened—when Dante King had gone from someone she couldn’t trust to someone she didn’t want to stop believing in.

By the time she emerged in clean clothes, still towel-drying her hair, the scent of hot pepperoni pulled her out of her head.

He was in the kitchen, laying out slices of pizza onto paper plates one at a time and heating them in the microwave like it was a tactical mission. His hair was damp, the dark swirls pushed back off his forehead, and he’d changed into a plain gray T-shirt that clung to his back as he moved.

It was so…normal. Comforting, even. And after everything they just shared, Kennedy found herself strangely grateful for the simplicity of it.

Food. Warmth. Him.

She sidled up to the counter beside him and plucked one of the turnovers out of the box. She bit into the flaky crust and the tart cherry filling with a groan.

“Is that a good groan or a bad one?” he asked.

“Good,” she responded around the bite. Then, on a whim, she held it out to him.

A beat passed between them.

Another wall to climb…but maybe not quite a fortress to scale.

Dante bit off a chunk and chewed.

Her ovaries exploded. God, the man was even sexy when he chewed, hard jaw flexing at the crease. Her attention dropped to his hard lips, and a shiver rolled down her spine at the memory of what those lips were capable of.

“Kennedy.” Her name came with a note of warning.

“Yes?” She used her sweetest voice.

“If you don’t stop looking at me that way, we’ll never get this pizza in us let alone get any work done.”

She bounced on her toes a little. “So you’re going to let me help?”

“I’m still thinking about it.” Even though he wasn’t committing to her request, she could see he was wavering—that he might actually be starting to believe her. Trust her.

They ate on the sofa in companionable silence, cradling their plates on their knees and setting their bottles of water on the floor. After they finished, she rose first and reached out to take his plate from him.

He blinked, but it didn’t hide how startled he looked at her gesture.

When she returned from the kitchen, Dante was already seated at his desk. But to her surprise, he’d dragged an old wooden chair over next to his.

A warm balm of pleasure spread across her senses.

As she sank to the seat beside him, he didn’t waste any time and began filling her in. “What I’m about to show you is classified.”

She studied him. “Why are you trusting me now?”

His profile was a blank mask, giving nothing away. “Because you claim you’re trustworthy.”

Her insides gave a little leap of joy that he was granting her this confidence. “Okay…I’m listening.”

He launched into a brief recap of an attack that took out almost an entire special ops team, and Alyssa’s new boyfriend, Julian Chase, was the last man standing. They believed there was a link between that event and the attacks on Alyssa.

Both Alyssa and the special ops team were in the same city at the time of another bombing at a Red Cross in Syria that killed several workers.

As he spoke, Dante watched her closely, as if waiting for her to crack and reveal some secret.

Kennedy held back the sigh of despair fighting its way up her throat. She could argue with him, tell him again that she didn’t know how Alyssa’s schedule was leaked. That she had nothing to do with the software found on her phone…and that she never gave anyone access to her phone.

But that old feeling of resignation stopped her.

The words were bottled up, unable to be spoken.

“You still with me, Kennedy?”

“It depends. Is this another interrogation? Because if it is, I don’t want to help you anymore.”

He let out a low sigh and touched the back of her hand. “Let’s put that aside for now. I would like your help. I’m going to show you some photos and see if you recognize anyone in them.”

Her instinct told her to run away from this—that it was a trap. But then Dante touched her hand again, callused fingers trailing over the back of her knuckles to curl lightly around her wrist.

He was trying. She would try too.

He pulled up a photo, and she found herself studying the image of a young man. With plain brown hair and unremarkable features, he could disappear into any crowd without a second glance.

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anyone like that.”

“Understandable,” he said slowly, “because he’s supposed to be dead.”

He clicked on a link, and video footage rolled on-screen. “This was taken from security cameras on the day Alan Shaw was shot.”

Her insides gripped at the reminder of a good friend lost. Sadness drew her lips into a tight line, but she nodded for Dante to show her.

“Slowing playback speed now. Tell me if you recognize anyone at all. Even someone Alyssa worked with,” Dante said, his voice low and focused.

Kennedy leaned over his shoulder. The glow of the laptop screen caught the sharp line of his jaw and the tightness surrounding his eyes.

She redirected her attention to the screen. A figure passed across the frame.

Something about the man tugged at Kennedy’s memory.

“Wait.” She touched his wrist lightly. “Go back. Just a few seconds.”

He hit rewind, letting the footage crawl frame by frame. Kennedy leaned closer. “There.” She tapped the screen. “Pause it.”

Dante froze the image. “What is it?”

She squinted, eyes narrowing. “That guy—I’ve seen him before. The hair… It stands out.”

“How so?”

“It’s obviously a home dye job.”

“How do you know?”

She shrugged. “Look at how yellow it is. He isn’t a natural blond.”

Where had she seen this guy? That hair…

The blond was too brassy, like he’d over-processed it without a clue what toner was. Most guys who dyed their hair either wanted it to look good or embraced the messy, grunge vibe. This wasn’t either. It was wrong in a way that made her look twice.

And that was why he stood out so much.

“Oh my god.” Her face felt wooden. “I saw him before! In Amsterdam!”

Dante’s head snapped to her. “Tell me everything you remember, Kennedy. This is very important.”

“H-he was in a-a photo taken of me and Alyssa!” Her words tripped over each other in her haste to get them out. “We were attending a conference on environmental protection.” She latched on to his arm. “I need my phone, Dante. I need to access my photo albums!”

Leaning over the keyboard, he opened a window, typed in a passcode…

And there it was. All of her photos that synced to the cloud on her phone.

A noise broke from her. “You already had my photos? You have everything on me.”

“It has to be this way. For now,” he added, as if trying to soften the blow of her still being under suspicion. Maybe because he was no longer on the side that suspected her.

She stared at the tiny thumbnails of photos. “Let me at the keyboard.”

Wordlessly, he angled the laptop toward her, and she hunched her shoulders as she scrolled fast, fingers trembling slightly.

The photo came to mind before she even saw it—her and Alyssa, grinning under the warm Amsterdam sun, both of them exhausted, grubby after a day of traipsing through tulip fields and across farmland, and somehow still smiling outside a UN peacekeeping station.

“There.” Her whisper quivered as she enlarged the photo. “Look in the background. Over Alyssa’s shoulder.”

Dante leaned in. The figure was small, blurred, but unmistakably the same man. Cheap dye job. Watchful eyes. Standing just close enough to notice—but far enough to be ignored.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “We just ID’d a ghost that even the FBI missed.”

For a beat, anger flared in Kennedy. At the breach of her own world. At the fact that Dante had combed through nearly every part of her life, driven by doubt.

Well, almost all of her life.

One truth still lay buried, locked so deep it would never see the light of day.

She nodded and looked back at the screen. “Do you have access to facial recognition?”

He tapped in a few commands.

The system began processing, a scan sweeping over images in a database.

Within seconds, a match popped up. They stared at the three photos side by side by side—the blurry footage, the photo from Amsterdam…and an older photo of a young man who looked like he once had hope for a bright future.

MATCH: 92% probability.

Dante cut a hand through the air. “Even if he’s altered his face—hair, beard, whatever—bone structure doesn’t lie.”

“Exactly,” Kennedy murmured, almost struck speechless. “Look at his ears. See the outward flare at the top? It’s a specific angle in both photos. Same with the jawline. He’s just grown out the stubble to soften it.”

Dante sat back slowly, staring.

Kennedy saw the breath go out of his lungs. “What is it, Dante?”

“He’s alive,” Dante said, like he couldn’t believe the words.

“Who is he?” Fear was a hard, sick ball deep in the pit of her gut.

“The son.” He pitched his voice low. “The son of the Red Cross worker who died in that explosion. The event we believe links Echo team’s demise and the attacks on Alyssa.”

Echo team. He hadn’t said the name out loud until now. But hearing it spoken brought the weight of it crashing in.

Suddenly, it wasn’t just an abstract team of men who lost their lives. It was real people.

Dante’s Adam’s apple bulged in his throat, deadly sharp. “He’s not just alive—he’s been watching. Following.” He shoved away from the desk fast, sending his chair skittering backward on the hardwood. “Fucking plotting. For a year . And we missed it.”

He took off across the room in long, quick strides, so fast that even her mind that loved to count steps couldn’t keep up.

He let out a growl. When he met her gaze, his eyes blazed with fury, a fury she never, ever wanted to see directed at her.

“He was there when Shaw was assassinated,” he said.

Her mind felt dulled by so many scattered pieces of the mystery. But Dante’s smart glasses had recorded the man waiting in the crowd outside the courtroom when he exited behind Alan Shaw.

“He’s been in the crowd this whole goddamn time, in the shadows, watching this whole thing unravel!” Dante cut his hand through the air again as if he could slice down an army. “His mother was killed, and now the son’s seeking revenge.”

Her stomach pitched. “Oh god. Dante, what are we going to do with this information?”

He snatched up his phone. “I need to tell Con.”

She watched him move to the far side of the room—five measured paces. Though he muttered into the phone, the urgency in his voice made her blood run cold.

Then he went still.

His shoulders slumped, his head bowing forward.

Kennedy stood up from the chair and moved closer.

Dante nodded as if to himself. Then he swallowed hard and dropped the phone from his ear.

She lay a hand on his arm to feel the tendons at their snapping point. Tipping her head up, she searched his face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

His jaw flexed in the crease again. This time, she wanted to smooth her fingertips over it.

To soothe him.

“Team’s deployed. They didn’t loop me in. I’m not even needed for intel.”

The anger in his voice shuddered with an undercurrent of some other emotion—hurt.

“I was fucking benched .”

Her heart twisted at the expression on his face. He wasn’t angry. He was…left behind.

That kind of quiet devastation she knew too well.

She brushed her fingers over his arm, trying to find words to ease him. “They probably had no choice,” she said carefully. “Maybe it was last minute.”

“Con always tells me,” Dante muttered.

“Your role in the team is important. Especially now.”

He didn’t look at her.

“You’re not out, Dante. You just uncovered information that changes everything .”

Finally, he looked down at her, his eyes searching.

And maybe in that moment, something shifted. Not in the mission. But between them.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “This isn’t over.”

“Not even close.” Her smile was small, and she forced more strength into it than she felt. She’d begun to lose too much hope in the world to summon it for the both of them.

His eyes locked on hers, the fire that had been burning in the dark depths now banked.

Kennedy’s faith in the world had burned to ash long ago. But if Dante lost his too…what was left for either of them to hold on to?