Chapter 1 - THE MAN I HIRED BY MISTAKE
My name is Iris Dunn.
I was thirty-four, a jewelry designer from Philadelphia, and the Hartwell Gallery’s annual winter benefit was supposed to be the biggest night of my career.
The necklace around my throat had taken nine months to create.
Forty-three diamonds. Platinum. Hand-cut details. A hundred thousand dollars’ worth of proof that maybe the tiny studio I had built after years of being underestimated could become something more.
Then my security company canceled forty minutes before the event.
That was how I found Rafe.
Black suit. Dark hair. Broad shoulders. Standing beside a marble pillar and watching exits instead of people.
“Are you my guard?”
He studied me for one strange second.
Then he said yes.
I even straightened his tie.
I had no idea Rafael DeLuca was the man half the powerful people in that ballroom were afraid to look at too long.
For the next several hours, he played along.
When my ex-boyfriend Preston Hale mocked my body in front of a crowd, Rafe stepped between us.
When Preston lied that Eleanor Ashford wanted me upstairs, Rafe stopped me from following him.
And when the lights went out at 11:40 and someone tried to rip the necklace from my throat, Rafe pulled me away before they could take it.
Then one of his men called him “Boss.”
Everything changed.
Rafe wasn’t hired security.
He ran the DeLuca organization.
Worse, the attempted robbery had been planned in advance. Someone had photographed me leaving my studio. Someone knew the exact minute the gallery lights would fail. Someone even broke into my studio and stole a replica necklace I had made for insurance photographs.
Then an anonymous message appeared on my phone.
DON’T TRUST THE MAN BESIDE YOU. ASK HIM WHY YOUR FATHER’S NAME IS IN HIS SAFE.
My father, Daniel Dunn, had been dead sixteen years.
Before Rafe could explain, every screen in the ballroom went black.
White letters appeared.
RAFAEL DELUCA KNOWS WHY DANIEL DUNN DIED.
Then Rafe stopped looking at the screens.
He stared at the necklace around my throat.
At the large center diamond.
“Iris,” he said quietly. “Don’t touch it.”
May you like
A tiny red light began blinking inside the stone.
And Rafe’s face told me he knew exactly what it meant.
