Page 10

E rasing the taint of my father’s sins to bring glory back to my family name is the ultimate goal.

It is all that matters.

Clementine Aziz is simply a means to an end.

I repeated that to myself ten times in the past five seconds, but even I was starting to doubt my sincerity.

I almost wished I’d sought her out for another reason. For selfish ones alone.

She was so sweet, so sexy, tempting me like no other. I supposed I could consider that a bonus.

See, my father might have destroyed the Callahan name in the underworld, and yeah, I was committed to bringing it back.

Sure, I had to crawl through shit to get there, but I wasn’t cut from the same cloth as the old man.

No small time hustling for me. I’d built my legitimate security firm from the ground up myself.

I named my business Callahan Protection Group because no matter what the prick bastard who sired me did, that was my name, and I was fucking proud of it.

Only one thing could secure us as the premier firm for protection against cyberattacks, and that was taking down the current number one, Sigma International.

I had a plan, of course, and it involved seducing the man’s daughter and installing some of my patented spyware on her laptop. Once I was in, I could infiltrate the system.

So, first things first, right?

I had to get the girl.

My phone buzzed. It was a text from my father’s brother, Lorne.

L.C.

You done playing up to the princess, nephew? It’s time you followed through on your promises.

This fucking asshole.

Me

Will update in person. Do not text me again.

I sent the reply and blocked his messages.

I had no room in my head for that asshole right now.

“Where are we going, Boss?” the driver interrupted my thoughts.

“I thought dessert at that French place by her house,” I said, and he got to work, contacting them to reserve a table.

It was one of those pretentious places where you needed to book months in advance. But not her. And not me, either.

Her family had clout, but I was no slouch in that department either. People knew my name. Or they were starting to remember it.

As they said—the infamous they —money talked. And I had enough to secure me whatever fucking table I wanted.

The December breeze blew against me once more, but I hardly felt it. I was too amped, waiting for Clementine outside her uncle’s house.

I thought I would have to resort to using my powers of persuasion—in other words, I’d fuck her into a stupor and take what I wanted. I needed to push all my fanciful notions of having a personal life out of my head.

But tempting little Clementine was proving harder to resist than I thought. She was a conundrum. She was so damn pretty it broke my heart to look at her for too long.

Pale ivory skin.

Fiery red mane.

Curvy as hell body.

Bright eyes.

Killer smile.

I ran a hand over my face as I stared at the encrypted file with all the information I’d collected on Clementine in my drive on my secured cell phone while she grabbed her things inside.

I knew she liked horses. Used to compete, in fact.

I knew there’d been a kidnapping attempt when she was twelve.

Unadulterated anger filled me as I imagined how scared she must have been for the six hours she’d been held by some fucking punks who thought they could ransom her for a quick buck.

I made a mental note to find out more about the culprits. If any had slipped past Josef Aziz’s ire, they could deal with mine now.

That’s a fucking promise.

I kept reading and my heart squeezed when I learned that had happened only months after her mother had been diagnosed with cervical cancer.

They’d caught it early enough that Mrs. Aziz was completely fine now, but I could only imagine how tough that must have been on the whole family.

If there was one thing I’d learned from working with Liam O’Doyle and witnessing firsthand the Volkov, the Ramirez, and the Aziz families, it was that those men loved their women fiercely.

My eyes roamed over the rest of the file, and I frowned as I came to the list of men she’d dated.

Six dates in the past year.

Six fucking patsies who couldn’t make it past one drink or dinner.

“They weren’t for you, Darlin’,” I murmured roughly, clicking the button that opened the folder of surveillance images I had of her.

My darlin’ Clementine.

I grinned, taking in the flashes of red hair and the sparkle of her eyes in the random pics I had of her.

Goddamn, she was pretty. Too pretty for me.

I knew what I looked like. I was a big tatted up bastard with a short-cropped beard and my hair shaved almost bald on the sides. The short faux hawk I kept was still dark, but I was slowly going gray.

I was too old. Too jaded. Too damn fucking hard for this soft bit of a girl.

But I wanted her. And I was going to have her.

Not for keeps. But for my own purposes. And to sate the hunger that had been growing ever since I laid eyes on her.

I shook my head to clear it.

Yeah, I knew exactly what my Darlin’ Clementine needed.

Not one of those boys she infrequently went out with.

She needed a real man.

Me.

She needed me.

My heart started to thud, and my cock strained beneath my tailored slacks.

Fuck.

I couldn’t afford to be sentimental about this. My pursuit of Clementine Aziz was not personal.

It was business.

At least, that’s what I’d been telling myself for a year.

I’d spent the majority of that time trying to learn everything I could about her. But from afar, my options were limited.

She had bodyguards and her cyber security was excellent. But that was to be expected.

Still, what I did learn piqued my interest. I had to admit, I was curious about the woman.

Who was she really?

And I didn’t mean just the daughter of Josef Aziz or some poor little rich girl who worked for her father’s company.

What made her tick?

And more importantly, could I make her tick for me?