CHAPTER1 — THE KISS
Chapter 01 - CHAPTER1 — THE KISS
Jodi Russo had never kissed a stranger in her life.
Not at twenty-five, not during the reckless years of college, not even after two glasses of champagne at the kind of parties where people forgot names before midnight. She believed a kiss meant something. Maybe not forever, but something.
That was why, when she caught sight of the tiny red reflection in the fourth-floor window across the street, she did the only thing she could think of.
She grabbed the front of Hector Richie's white shirt and kissed him.
It was not a romantic kiss. It was barely a kiss at all. Her lips touched his for a second, her fingers clenched in the expensive fabric, and she moved her body directly between him and the window.
Hector went still.
Behind them, a room full of wealthy strangers seemed to stop breathing.
The ballroom of the Bellmont Hotel had been glowing with crystal chandeliers and champagne glasses a moment earlier. Men in black tuxedos had been laughing beside women in silk gowns. A jazz quartet had been playing near the marble staircase. Now the music seemed impossibly distant.
Jodi kept her face close to Hector's.
"Don't move," she whispered.
His dark eyes narrowed.
He was taller than she had expected. Much taller. His shoulders were broad beneath the black suit, and when she had grabbed him, she had felt solid muscle beneath the white shirt. A dark tattoo disappeared beneath his collar.
Hector Richie was not a man people touched without permission.
Jodi knew that.
Everyone in the room knew that.
The rumors about him had reached even people who pretended not to know his name. He owned restaurants, shipping companies, private security firms, and enough property to make respectable businessmen nervous. There were other stories too, stories told quietly and never repeated in public.
Hector looked at her as though she had just walked into a lion's cage and closed the door behind herself.
"Who sent you?" he asked.
"Nobody."
She kept her voice low.
"There’s a sniper."
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then Hector's expression changed.
Not fear.
Calculation.
His gaze moved past her shoulder without turning his head. One of his men near the bar touched his ear. Another stopped smiling.
Across the street, behind the fourth-floor window, a rifle slowly disappeared into darkness.
Hector's voice was almost a whisper.
"How did you see him?"
Jodi's fingers tightened around his shirt.
She wished he hadn't asked.
"My father trained me."
The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Hector stared at her.
"Who was your father?"
Jodi's heart began to pound.
She had spent eight years making sure no one asked that question.
"My father was—"
A champagne glass shattered behind them.
Jodi flinched.
Hector immediately pulled her against his chest and turned them both toward the sound. His men moved. Guests screamed. Someone dropped a chair.
But Jodi wasn't looking at the broken glass.
She was looking at the balcony.
A man stood there wearing a waiter’s jacket.
He was staring directly at her.
Then he smiled.
Jodi knew that smile.
She had not seen it since the night her father disappeared.
And suddenly she understood that the sniper had never been the real danger.
Someone had wanted Hector to survive tonight.
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Someone had wanted Jodi to reveal herself.
And whoever it was had just succeeded.
