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

“Adam never asked for this, any of this. You might consider cutting him some slack. You know, rather than torturing him for something that isn’t his fault.”


“Is that what you think?” Ian asked, cringing at the mere suggestion. “That I’m doing this to punish him?”


“I’m keeping his ass alive,” Ian spat. “He’s so goddamn na?ve and earnest, honest. He’ll never last unless I…” He paused, unsure. Mei nodded, as if encouraging him to continue. “I have to hurt him. There’s no other way.”


Mei shook her head. “That’s Rhys talking.”


“Rhys has nothing to do with this,” Ian growled, going straight into defensive mode. “And what the hell do you know about him anyway?”


Mei backed off, for now. “You’re right. I was wrong to question you and to bring up, well, the past. I apologize.”


“Are we done now?” Ian grumbled, wanting to be alone with his thoughts, the terrible knot forming.


Chapter 27