Page 130 of Surrender to Me
“Go on.”
This is the moment, the one I’ve been dreading since the second I learned who he was. The one I can’t outrun anymore.
I drag in a breath that shakes all the way to my bones. “My name is Lyra Moreau.”
He goes very, very still. I don’t have to tell him anything more. Stryker knows exactly who I am and everything that means.
There’s nowhere left to hide. And after everything I’ve done to him, he deserves the whole truth.
But my heart is breaking.
After this, he will never look at me the same again, and he’ll have no choice but to but to turn me over to the authorities and walk away from me.
“I’m sure I’m on some Interpol wanted list.” I take a steadying breath. “My father lifted the Hollingsworth Collection.” I bring my chin up, unflinchingly meeting his gaze. “Hawkeye has spent years looking for me and my father.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lyra
Stryker’s expression goes stark, unreadable in that deadly-quiet way that makes even the shadows seem to hold their breath.
He takes in everything—my name, my father, the Hollingsworth heist—and all the pieces have clicked into place behind his eyes.
I remember my father’s glee when he got away, when he showed me some of the prized pieces.
Hawkeye had been the premier protection firm in the world, renowned for safeguarding treasures no one else could—museum-grade antiquities, royal collections, diplomatic vault transfers. Their reputation was airtight.
Until my father slipped through their carefully constructed layers of security.
The fact that he’d lifted the entire collection from under their watch didn’t just stun the art world—it electrified the dark corners beneath it.
His name traveled fast—whispered, admired, mythologized. He became a shadow hero.
And it changed him.
Made him hungrier. Reckless. Proud of the wrong things. The heist wasn’t just a payday—It was a coronation. He wanted bigger scores, louder stories, a crown no one had asked him to wear.
It stopped being about survival and started being about proving he couldn’t be touched.
And then, right before everything fell apart, he tucked the fob and locket into my go bag and told me he’d won the biggest prize of his life—that this heist would be his last.
He just didn’t know how right he was.
A tremor ripples through me.
Stryker moves me closer immediately, sliding one arm behind my back to brace me. He eases me upright against his chest, my legs draped over his, my shoulder tucked beneath his chin.
His body is warm and immovable, a barricade against a world that’s always hunted me.
It’s a place I never want to leave, and the fact he hasn’t already set me aside shocks me in a way I can’t yet comprehend.
“Lyra.”
He says it like it’s a vow—low, steady, absolute—and for a heartbeat I forget how to breathe. No alias. No mask. No running. Just my name, spoken by a man who sees everything I am and hasn’t flinched.
“None of what he did is on you.”
I wish that were true.
