Page 43 of Man of Lies

I didn't do connections. Not real ones. I was the king of keeping people at a distance, building just enough rapport to get whatI needed but never wading in so far that I couldn't see the shoreline. Mason was different. His waters ran so still and deep that I wanted to hold my breath and dive head-first without looking. He made me believe that I could. That maybe this time, I wouldn't fuck it all up.

But that was the problem. Because I'd been down this road before, and I knew what lay at the end of it. I remembered what happened two years ago. I'd been living under a different name then, pretending to be someone else. Someone who could actually help people. Or maybe it was more selfish than that, and I'd just been looking for a family to fill the void left by my own after we scattered to the winds. The family I'd found had needed help, and I thought I could be that for them, that I could fix what was broken.

But that wasn't my job. I'd never forget the betrayal in their eyes when they found out the truth, and how quickly it had turned to disgust. It was the same look I saw in my reflection if I looked too hard in the mirror—disgust at the empty shell of a man I'd become.

No one wanted the true Silas. They just wanted the man I pretended to be.

And now I was here, doing the same damn thing with Mason. He'd already started to fill a hole I'd become an expert at pretending wasn't growing every day inside me. He saw straight through the bullshit façade I'd spent years perfecting. Sure, he liked it when I got bossy, but the softer core underneath kept him coming back and gave him the safety he needed. God, I wanted to be that for him. But Mason deserved someone who could settle down, someone who could offer honesty at the very least. I could never be that man. I was built out of so many lies, I didn't even know who I was anymore.

I was going to hurt him—and it scared the hell out of me.

I couldn't even guarantee that I wouldn't be coming after his brothers before long.

Especially Dominic.

The look in that man's eyes was dark, not just the look of a man who'd done bad things, but one who was used to getting away with them. I'd been around long enough to know when someone was hiding something—and when it came to Dominic, my gut was screaming that he was into more evil in Devil's Garden than his brothers could bear to admit.

I didn't hear it at first—just the quiet rumble of my bike beneath me and the steady hiss of the wind pushing past. Then a pair of headlights sliced through my peripheral vision, and the low growl of a much larger engine ripped through the night. A sleek, black Jaguar gunned it from behind a signpost on a darkened turnout, surging up to pace me, and I instinctively eased up on the throttle to allow it to pass.

My stomach dropped as the car veered into the lane with me, crowding me into the oncoming lane. The ultra-bright headlights swarmed me, blinding, and the highway warped to a narrow tunnel. There wasn't enough room for both of us, and the Jaguar wasn't letting up. It was a game of dominance that no bike could win.

The nose of the Jag cut across my front, forcing me off the pavement. My tires screamed as they skidded over gravel, and I threw myself into the skid, leaning into it with everything I had until my boots scraped the ground.

If I didn't get control, I was going down. Hard.

Gravel chewed at my tires, biting back, but I muscled the bike into a controlled slide, stopping just short of a patch of wild brambles that snagged at my jacket and scraped at my face. The sudden stop nearly pitched me over the handlebars.

The Jag idled nearby, purring like a panther, blocking me in to deny a quick escape. Behind the tinted glass, I could barely make out the figures of two men. In a blink, I had the nine-millimeter out of my saddlebag and trained center-mass on the man sliding from behind the wheel.

His face was hidden in the headlights' backwash, but I instantly recognized him. High cheekbones, angular jaw, and a Roman nose broken more than a few times. But something about his careless, controlled movements put me on edge. He was too at ease, like his anger from the earlier fight had snapped off like a broken switch. I didn't trust that reptilian calm. The guy was still a problem, but a quiet one now, the kind no one saw coming until it was tearing out a throat.

The giant in the passenger seat hadn't moved. He was big, swarthy, and built like a bulldozer; the kind of muscle kept around to clean up messes.

My finger twitched, lying along the guard, but I didn't touch the trigger. Not yet.

"You should've spent all that money you've got on driving lessons, Dominic," I said, careful to keep my anger from bleeding into the words. "You could've learned how to park that shiny toy in a way that won't get you shot."

Dominic's eyes slid over the barrel of my Glock, ambivalent enough to make it clear that I was the one being sized up—and found wanting.

"You aren't going to shoot me," he said emotionlessly, like he was stating a simple fact.

The cocky bastard.

I shifted my finger from the guard to the trigger, telegraphing the movement just to watch him squirm. "How's that?" I asked tightly, lifting a challenging brow. "How can you be so sure?"

He didn't even blink. He just stared back at me with those flat, shark-like eyes. A cold smirk twisted his lips, like he knew the game better than I did.

"Feds don't kill people in cold blood."

It hit me like a slap, right across the face. With a single word, Dominic had taken a scalpel to everything I'd built. My gut twisted, spasming around the icy wave of alarm flooding my body. No one had ever nailed me before. I'd never fucked up that badly—until now.

My pulse kicked up a notch, but the gun didn't waver.

He offered a cynical smile, like he was reading my every thought. "Well, not unless they're sure they can get away with it." His words weren't just a taunt—they were a needle, prodding for a reaction.

I didn't give him one, despite the raw panic creeping in. It was a new kind of fear that I couldn't bluff my way out of. I was a master at bullshitting. Always had been. Years of training had taught me how to spin a lie until it felt like truth—until it fit so perfectly into the narrative that no one could see the seams. There were no heroes in this job, so I'd never tried to be one. I just needed to stay one step ahead until we'd gathered enough evidence to mop up the ruined lives I left behind. It wasn't aboutbeing right—it was about control. Control the conversation. Control the game. I'd been trained to read people, adjust on the fly, and make them doubt themselves long enough for me to disappear into the background. Get in, get out.

But Dominic wasn't guessing. Somehow, he already knew.

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