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

Weak and filthy, the realization clear, nothing was worse than imprisonment. Adam would rather die than endure another second in this hell. Ian had been right. The pain was brutal. More than he dreamed possible to live through, let alone withstand.


Adam shouted and cursed his way through each tearing, bone crunching moment. He pulled and yanked and dug until everything was slick with blood and sweat. The torn flesh of his forearms left little more than open ragged wounds that burned as he screamed and screamed. He worried his heart might burst from the strain. If Adam could have seen himself, he would’ve been unable to recognize the man before him. His features were distorted, twisted into a mask of suffering.


The room was at least ninety degrees. Perspiration saturated his skin and made his eyes burn. Adam’s mouth tasted like hot ash; still, he struggled, until after a lifetime in hell, he broke free.


Chapter 28