While young doctor Adam Morrow resigns himself to an uninformed existence, world-weary assassin Ian Abbott struggles with a life he never asked for. When the two strangers meet by chance, the attraction is immediate. And deadly, as Adam walks in on Ian in the middle of a hit. The situation spirals out of control once Ian discovers he and Adam share a connection far more profound than either imagined. Shocked by the discovery, Ian makes the hasty decision to kidnap him. Overnight Adam is torn from his promising career and a family who believes him dead. Things go from bad to worse when he finds himself reunited with a mother he never knew who is now head of a covert and shadowy group of killers for hire. Forced into joining their ranks, with Ian as his reluctant trainer and handler, Adam is given a series of impossible tasks to complete. To survive, he must fight with everything he has to keep his life, his sanity, and his very soul from being swept up in a violent and chaotic world even as he battles his unwanted and complicated feelings for Ian. For his part Ian, a man with dark secrets of his own, has a past he isn't ready to share with Adam even as the other man worms into his life in more ways than one. The two grow closer and lines blur -- between good and evil, friend or foe, enemy or lover. But something, or someone, plots against them, determined to do everything in their power to keep them apart. Even if it means destroying them both.

The Dead Don't Lie

“You sonofabitch—” Dwyer glared at him as blood gushed through his fat fingers.


“Enough games.” Ian wanted answers, and he wanted them now. He held the weapon to Dwyer’s kneecap, intent clear. “Tell me now,” he demanded, pressing the muzzle in deeper.


Ian pulled the trigger, and Dwyer shrieked, high and shrill. The veins in his neck corded, and red as he struggled to curse Ian through the pain.


“You want another?” Ian threatened. “Name! Now!” He swung the revolver to Dwyer’s other knee and bore down, catching his eye. “Last chance.”


“St. Vincent, okay? They got him at St. Vincent. Don’t shoot!” Dwyer shouted, in hysterics.


“Was that so hard?” Ian asked as he turned to Mei as if to include her. She shook her head, appearing bored with the entire situation.


“Come on, let’s go.” They left Dwyer on the floor, screaming and cursing as he bled out on the floor.


Chapter 3