"Okay, but I'm not ready to talk to him," I said as Paxton helped me slide a shirt over my head. The pain in my side was almost unbearable, but I had to push forward and find my son.

  The door to the room pushed open and Brock strode in, dressed in his signature black shirt arms crossed over his chest. The last time I saw my boss this mad we'd had a mission go bad. I wasn't sure if I'd ever remembered him being this pissed at one of his employees. "And why are you not ready to talk?"

  The second he found out what I did years ago, he’ll never forgive me. My entire team would hate me when they figure out my lie. I would rather disappear than witness the disappointment. Especially how my lie would affect my teammate Eric. "I'll explain later. I need to get my son."

  "No. There is a room full of people upstairs who you owe an explanation. As for your son, you know I wouldn't let anything happen to a kid. Now you have five minutes to get your ass upstairs." He turned and left.

  Paxton came up behind me and placed a soft kiss on the top of my head. "Let me help you get cleaned up." I planned to say no, but pain speared my side when I tried to move.

  He walked me back to the chair and I sat down. "If you overdo it, you won't be any help to your son. I know you’re strong, but you need to let people help you."

  "It's not easy. This meeting upstairs is going to change my life. Everyone will hate me."

  "I won't." There was no hesitation in his voice.

  Dr. Paxton Renolds was dangerous—and not in the way my son's father was. He was dangerous because I could see myself with him. The only reason we were together was for a mission. No way the sexy plastic surgeon would settle for a woman full of scars inside and out. While I reminded myself of all that, he'd run a brush through my hair and pulled my blonde strands into a ponytail. "Did they teach that in medical school?"

  "Nope, I used to brush my sister's hair. Also read in a few books women like to have their hair brushed."

  I'd never thought about a man brushing my hair, but I had to admit his gentle touch grounded me. "I think it's time. Stalling won't change anything."

  He escorted me down the hall, fingers resting on the small of my back. A sigh escaped me when I noticed the elevator. Each step was painful, and I knew there was no way I could climb a set of stairs. Paxton pressed his thumb against the black box on the wall, and the door slid open. The upstairs of the club was like walking into a high-end real estate business.

  We proceeded through the halls until we reached two floor-to-ceiling frosted glass doors that stood partially open. My boss Brock sat at the head of the table with his laptop, a Mt. Dew, and a pack of licorice. Next to him was Wes, flipping through a stack of photos, and Eric, a long-time employee of Blackwood Security. Eric and Brock would hate me after I told them my secret. They were both friends with the real Mia. Eric and Mia went through basic training together. They were close, but never dated. The first couple of years after I started to work at Blackwood Mercenary, I’d told him I didn't feel the same. When he asked me out. I had no faith I'd walk out of the room with my job.

  Paxton slid the chair out for me. He happened to pick the one right next to my boss. Over the course of six years, I could count the number of times I'd seen my boss mad or disappointed on one hand. I respected Brock and all my team members. At times I wanted to talk about my past, but I thought keeping my secret buried protected my son. When he found out the truth, it would crush Brock to the soul. Lucas wasn't the only one I was protecting. I'd made a promise to Tabitha and her sister when we were kids, and I'd failed to keep her safe. Amid all the chaos, I hadn't even stopped to process that my oldest friend was killed.

  "I think we should start with your real name," Brock began.

  I winced at the coldness in his words. "Brock—"

  "Don't you think she's been through enough?" Paxton rested his arms on the table and clenched his fists. I couldn't remember the last time a guy stuck up for me. Donovan had at times, but in the end, he was loyal to his father. The men and women I worked with protected each other in the field. This was different. I doubted anyone at Blackwood Mercenary would speak to me after today, and I wouldn't blame them.

  "Everyone at Blackwood has a past. Even some with hidden identities, but we are family. You should know things are never buried deep enough." Brock leaned back in the chair and narrowed his eyes. "I'm the best hacker in the world, and I've known you for eighteen years."

  He'd known the real Mia eighteen years ago, but I wasn't her.

  "Were all those talks we had years ago about our future real?" Eric had spent summers in the United Kingdom with his grandparents. His British accent came out whenever he got mad or angry.

  "Eric, I don't know what to say."

  So much of this was a mess. Years ago, the job offer to work at Blackwood Mercenary came from Sam Blackwood. We'd worked a few cases together when I'd spent some time in the CIA. I was shocked when I arrived at Blackwood Mercenary for my first day and Brock and Eric were at the door waiting to greet me. They were both ecstatic, and I worried that if I hurried back out the door, they would hunt my ass down. For years, I kept up the Mia persona she helped me perfect.

  Brock pinched the bridge of his nose. "You have no hidden identity. No paper trail leading to another life. Your identity tracks from when you were a kid to when you joined the Navy to the accident where you were discharged and picked up by the CIA. The Clark family has three daughters. One died, let's see, about twelve years ago. At the time, we were with you. So does this family have another daughter, or are you not Mia?"

  "Did you kill her?" Eric reached for his gun and placed his weapon on the conference room table.

  "No." I wasn't sure if they would believe me.

  Paxton shot up from his chair. "Mia could have died yesterday. I brought you guys in here because I assumed you would help her. Instead, this has turned into an interrogation. You can get the fuck out of my building."

  I reached out and touched Paxton's forearm. "They have the right to be mad and want answers. I'm just not sure where I should start."

  He didn't move for a second, then grudgingly sat back down.

  Brock threw a picture of Mia's from when she graduated from basic training on the table. Tabitha and I were in the picture. Dalia's hair was bleach-blonde, which Cyrus preferred, but I had large sunglasses to cover the purple bruise eyes which made it almost impossible to identify me as Armando Clark’s eldest daughter. I had to blink back the tears. Both of my best friends were dead, and they sacrificed for me.

  Eric threw more pictures on the table, and some of them were even of me. "How is this possible? You could be Mia's twin.”

  Paxton shifted in his seat. "Plastic surgery. If I had to guess, you’ve had your nose, brows, cheeks, and chin done. Whoever did your surgery was skilled, but I can spot signs of the surgery. Last night I didn't spend time looking at your body, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you changed a few more characteristics."

  He was spot on. I went through months of plastic surgery to change my features. Wes had stopped thumbing through the photos and stared at my face. Brock's fingers hovered over the keyboard. "So, you’re Dalia Clark? Then where the hell is Mia?"

  I rolled my neck to the side. "I really don't have time to explain. How about we have a meeting after I pick Lucas up and put him somewhere safe? Because he's not safe in that house."

  "I have three men posted outside. We've hacked the security system of your family's estate, and we are watching your son." Brock turned the screen and revealed Lucas at the kitchen counter eating what resembled chocolate chip pancakes. Sebastian sat next to him, and my mom was at the stove.

  "You don't need to do all of this," I said. "I appreciate everything you've done, but this is my mess."

  "I haven't decided if I will let you walk out the door yet. I owe Mia so much, and if that means I have to take you down, I will."

  Paxton growled next to me, but I ignored the man.

  "I won't give names of the people who helped me," I waited until Brock nodded. "Yes, I'm the daughter of Armando Clark." I tapped on the photo from Mia's basic training graduation. "This right here is me next to Mia. The three of us met in elementary school. Tabitha is the other woman in the picture. She is Mia's sister and the person Lucas lived with for the past twelve years."

  The door to the conference room opened. Kat wandered in with Jessica. Jessica and my boss were married, but Kat was the wife of Antonio Ross, who owned another security company Blackwood worked closely with. I'd become close friends with both women and hoped they didn't hate me by the end of the meeting. Jessica slid into a seat next to Brock and grabbed a stick of licorice from the bag.

  Kat sat down next to Eric and tapped on her phone before she propped it up on the table with a little stand. Patty, another one of my friends, appeared on the screen. She'd moved back to Shailia a few years ago to run the country. "Okay, you can start," Patty announced from the phone.

  "Patty, you and Sam no longer own or work for Blackwood Mercenary. Kat, I offered you a job a few times, but you refused to work for me. This is a private meeting." Brock sounded annoyed. Kat didn't budge from her spot. "I swear I sometimes feel like nobody listens to me."

  "I listen," Wes announced.

  "Teacher's pet," I mumbled under my breath.

  "Hey, guys, can we get on with the meeting?" Patty's voice came from the phone. "I have to be on the phone with the prime minister of France in an hour, and I don't want to miss how Mia covered her identity."

  "Plastic surgery," Eric growled. "And she's not Mia. No, this bitch has been impersonating the woman I loved."

  I winced. Before I could get out a word, Kat spoke. "There has to be more. The records Brock had Sophie pull from the CIA would've mentioned her ties to the Clark family. The reason the CIA recruited Mia out of the Navy was that she got close to that Calhoun family in Mexico," Kat paused. "Wait! Didn't the oldest Clark daughter marry someone in the Calhoun family?"

  I held up my hand to stop the talking, or they would never stop. "How about we stop speculating about why I did anything and let me tell the story—I was born into the Clark family. I'm the eldest daughter, and have two younger sisters and a twin brother. My parents sent us to the best boarding school money could buy. Almost every kid that attended came from a wealthy family, but the school also handed out scholarships to families in need. My friend Tabitha and her sister Mia were on this scholarship."

  "Impressive," Kat whistled. "At the age of eight, you started to figure out a plan to change your identity. I'm not sure how many third graders could think that way. But I'll have to keep it in mind in case my boys try this."

  I shook my head. "No. We'd made a blood oath that I would always have their backs, and they would do the same for me. I hated the other rich kids. At a young age, I understood where my parents' money came from. I think I was five when I saw the first body carried out of our house. My parents hated that I was friends with Mia and Tabitha, so we kept our friendship a secret. In the long run, it ended up working out for me."

  "The timeline doesn't add up. You would have had to die and immediately swap places with Mia. No way you could step into her life with nobody noticing. And you still haven't answered where the real Mia is."

  Paxton tapped his hand on the table. "Plastic surgery takes months to heal. He does have a point."

  "The ambush," Eric paled as he reached for the folder on the table and flipped through the file.

  "Impossible. I talked to Mia almost weekly while she was in the hospital," Brock said.

  "Eric is on the right track, and you did talk to her weekly," I confirmed. I was in the room every time she took one of those calls. She respected him so much. "Let me keep going, and everything will make sense. A week before I graduated high school, I turned eighteen. Dad had talked about marrying me off to help the family, but I didn't think he would go through with an arranged marriage, and if he actually did, I assumed the wedding would be at least a year later. I'd received a full ride scholarship to Harvard and planned to attend in the fall. The day after my graduation, Dad called me into his office, and Cyrus Calhoun was sitting in the chair. I was informed I would be going home with him and not to bother packing. That day, I left my childhood home with only the clothes on my back."

  Kat pulled out a piece of paper and pen from her purse and wrote something down. I couldn't see what she scribbled from where I was sitting. She glanced up, and our eyes connected. "Who else agreed to this wedding?"

  I shook my head. "Kat, I forbid you killing my parents."

  "Is this like forbid, but a with a wink?" she asked, not dropping the pen.

  "No wink." I took a deep breath to continue my story. "We were married for six years. I was just a trophy. And a blank canvas to mark up."

  "The scars?" Wes asked.

  Eric growled. "You said they were from the ambush. Everything is a game to you."

  "None of this is a game. The scars on my body… I spent hours lying in my own blood because my husband enjoyed seeing me bleed. Sometimes I would pass out from the pain. I found it easier to say the scars were from Mia's accident than my own. Yes. Do you think it's easy to sit and talk about this?"

  "I don't understand why you won't tell me where the real Mia is," Brock said.

  "I'm getting there. My marriage was a nightmare. At first, he didn't demand kids out of me. He had seven sons and daughters from his previous weddings. Some older than me. All of them spoiled, and one day he decided he wanted another kid. Months passed, but I wasn't getting pregnant. The beatings increased. He found a new girlfriend and shipped me to his house in Mexico. That's where I learned about his human trafficking business. I'd gotten some information to Mia, and a raid happened, but somehow Cyrus and his men were tipped off. Cyrus showed up a few days later and accused me of ratting him out to the authorities. I didn't think I would live through that beating. He left me unconscious on the floor. Donovan, his son, had a doctor come take care of me after Cyrus left. That's when my relationship with Dr… I’m not giving up his name. I owe the doctor everything."

  Paxton reached over and grabbed my hand. I couldn't face him as I spoke about the darkest point in my life. One I never even wanted the people I loved to know existed. I tried to pull my hand away, but Paxton tightened his grip. "I'm not sure why, but Donovan stayed in Mexico and didn't treat me like trash, and I fell for him. A couple of months later, I found out I was pregnant."

  Brock got up from his chair and started to pace along the edge of the room. "So, you're telling me Lucas is Donovan's son. Jesus, Mia, is that who tried to take him?"

  "They don't know about him. Before I could tell Donovan about our son Cyrus sent him on a job, and while he was gone, Cyrus showed up at the house in Mexico and told me he wanted to take me on a yachting trip. Word in the organization was that his new girlfriend wanted to get married. That couldn't happen unless we divorced, but Cyrus didn't believe in divorce. The only explanation for the trip was he planned to kill me." I closed my eyes and thought back to the night I tried to escape. "I'd stolen some pills from the medicine cabinet and crushed them in his favorite whisky when he wasn't looking. That night on the boat, he stopped breathing. I knew his staff were loyal and would blame me when he didn't wake up. I left the bed went up to the front of the boat and stared at the moon. Growing up, I would stare at the stars and wish for another family. I heard the buzz of a boat coming near I and figured Cyrus hired someone to come on the boat and kill me… It would be a perfect alibi."

  Patty cleared her throat. "This is getting really good. I'm not going to feel guilty having Sam take the call with the prime minister of France." She rubbed her hands together. "I can't wait for the part where you finally tell us where the other Mia is located. My bet is on sipping mai tais on the beach."

  "This story only has more death," I sighed. "That night on the boat, I had to decide to let whoever he hired kill me or change my future. The super-yacht had a motorboat attached to the side. I ran to it, jumped in, and lowered it. Except I couldn't get the damn thing to start. I was slowly floating away from the boat, but if his goons peered over the edge, they would spot me. It felt like an hour before I heard someone say they couldn't find me. Then they got back on jet skis and ten seconds later, the boat exploded. A piece of the boat hit the side of my head and I blacked out. I woke up on the beach, lying face down. To this day, I have no clue what happened. I pulled myself off the beach and limped to the nearest bar. That's where I saw the news playing a story about how Cyrus and his wife Dalia died. I knew that was my chance. I was dead. Luckily, for years I’d put money into a secret account."

  "Wouldn't you have had access to his fortune if you claimed to live?" Jessica asked.

  "No. The prenup only gave me a pittance, nothing worth exposing the fact I was pregnant. Donovan would want his son, and I wanted out of the world. I don't know why I went to my parents. Dad said the only way he would help is if I married another rival leader or I had to leave."

  "I'm guessing you walked away, and your parents let everyone believe you were dead?" Wes asked.

  "Yes," I sighed. "The night I left my parents' house, I drove to Tabitha's. We were trying to come up with a plan when we got a call from Mia. She'd been in an accident with the military and was being flown to the local hospital."

  "She demanded a hospital in Ft. Lauderdale," Eric admitted. "I could never figure out why. She only said she didn't want to go to a hospital in DC. She had months of rehab to go through. I'm still not sure how she got a facility that was in Florida approved with the higher-ups."

  "Mia had a little pull after all the intel I gave her over the years. Tabitha and I rushed to the hospital. She was more bruised than anything. We were discussing my options when the doctor came in with some lab results. Mia was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. The doctor gave her three months to live." I swiped the tears from my face. "After the doctor left the room, she smiled at me and said everything works for a reason. I didn't understand what she meant at first. My friend just got the worst news, she was dying, but she had a smile on her face."

 

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