Chapter 4: Enemy Lines

"You need to be my girlfriend tonight," he said.

Amara looked up from her book. "I'm sorry?"

"The Castellano family is attending the same event. They've been watching me — watching this house — for three months." He set a garment bag on the chair across from her with the ease of someone who never questioned whether his orders would be followed. "If they think I have a vulnerability, they'll use it. You need to appear to be exactly the opposite of a vulnerability."

She stared at the garment bag. "And you thought of me."

"You survived eleven minutes of freedom in bare feet," he said. "I thought of you."

It was not a compliment, she told herself. It was a calculation. Everything this man did was a calculation.

She wore the dress anyway.