Can I Trust You?

By Romeo Alexander

Sebastian

I've spent my adult life working in the shadows, handling information that could start wars, for people whose names most governments pretend not to know. I'm careful. Methodical. I don't make mistakes based on sentiment.

Then I walked into our foster mother's funeral and saw Leon standing there, and every calculation I'd made about keeping my distance from the past fell apart in about thirty seconds.

We grew up together. He was my only real friend in a system that didn't give you many of those. I buried how I felt about him a long time ago because he was straight, and I wasn't, and some things aren't worth the wreckage.

Except he isn't.

That revelation lasted exactly long enough for me to enjoy it before I realized something else: Leon works for The Company. And The Company just issued a contract on me.

The man I've been in love with since I was seventeen is here to kill me. That's the situation.

Leon

I have a code. I take contracts on people who deserve it, and I sleep fine at night because I've earned that certainty the hard way. I know what I am. I'm at peace with it.

What I'm less at peace with is Sebastian LaCroix standing in front of me, looking not a day older than I remember, which is profoundly irritating, and turning out to be someone I never knew at all.

He's not the quiet, careful kid I grew up with. Or he is, but that version of him apparently works for an organization that makes The Company look like a neighborhood watch. He has secrets that could level careers and end governments. He had them the whole time I knew him.

I was given an order. I had him. I let him go.

I've had one real cause in my life that I chose for myself. It's him. That's not a recent development.

Now we're both being hunted, running on bad odds and worse options, and somewhere between the gunfire and the arguments and the way he looks at me when he thinks I'm not watching, this stopped being just about survival.

The only way out runs straight through trusting the one person in the world I already trust completely. If I can get him to do the same.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0CRVSX8XT
• ISBN13: 9798874001094
• Release Date: January 2024
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 8.0"