Proof (Targes Executive Protection Book 1)

“Good call, Cass,” I muttered as I tightened my fingers around the steering wheel of my 1969 Mustang Boss 429. I’d bought the car for dirt cheap when I’d been in my mid-teens and had spent years and thousands of dollars lovingly restoring it. Sully and JJ had been at my side throughout it all. Even their father, Sean, had helped us figure out some of the snags we’d run into. I could still remember the day we’d gotten the engine running for the first time. Sully, JJ, and I had packed into the vehicle and taken it for a celebratory drive.

JJ had been around eight or so at the time. His enthusiasm had been infectious, but what I’d most admired about the little boy had been his unwavering belief that we’d get the car restored. There’d been times where it had felt like JJ’s sole purpose had been to make sure I got my dream of having something that was all mine. Something I’d earned through hard work. Not a single penny of Ashby money had been used to pay for the car’s restoration.

I found myself smiling as I remembered his reaction when the car had started for the first time. JJ had been the one who’d turned the key and then he’d been high-fiving the rest of us over the roar of the engine.

The amusing memory quickly morphed into the last one I’d had of JJ. Even now I could taste the terror as I’d watched and felt the blood—his blood—slide down my bare forearm and hand as I’d cradled him against my chest.

“Fuck,” I snapped as I forced my eyes open.

I needed to remember when I’d needed to see JJ one more time before I’d been locked up. The time when he hadn’t been there.

I welcomed the sudden return of hatred along with the bitter sting of betrayal. It was enough to get my thoughts back on track and off the man who’d turned his back on me. I glanced at the interior of the car. It gleamed just like it had the last day I’d been behind the wheel.

When I’d gone to prison, I’d assumed I’d never see the car again. I’d figured my father would have had it in the crush pit at a junkyard before the ink on the official verdict documents had even dried. Thankfully, Sully had gotten to the car first. It was among the personal possessions he’d used to bribe me for five minutes of my time. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought Sully would save the car for me, let alone do what he’d done to get me out of prison. The whole thing was bittersweet because I couldn’t make sense of why he’d left me behind bars for so long if he’d believed all along that I hadn’t been the one who’d shot JJ.

During my original trial, on the few days Sully had been in court, he hadn’t been sitting on my side of the room. He’d never once looked at me, he hadn’t testified on my behalf, and he’d never spoken a single word to me from the moment I’d been arrested.

A little over a week ago, my future had been on hold as the attorney Sully had hired for my appeal had made his case to a judge. Now I was sitting in my beloved car doing the one thing my friend had asked in return for everything he’d done for me. The second Sully had said the job was to shadow his younger brother, my most secret hope that things would somehow go back to the way they’d been before that night had been obliterated. Sully hadn’t mentioned any particular threat against JJ, but he’d also been stingy with the details as to why he’d wanted someone keeping an eye on his younger brother. He’d been even more secretive about why it had to be me.

I reminded myself that none of it mattered because I was repaying a debt and nothing more. After I did this job for Sully, I was gone. Los Angeles would be in my rearview mirror, and I’d disappear. Cassius Ashby IV would be nothing but dust under my tires.

Problem with my new debt was that I’d simply traded one prison for another.

JJ.

“Fuck,” I snapped.

I’d been shadowing JJ for a week now and every second of it had been the cruelest form of torture. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the man who’d turned his back on me when I’d needed him most, but I also couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

A week ago, I’d dreamed of what it would be like to come face to face with JJ and tell him what every single second of life behind bars had been like for me. I’d wanted him to see for himself how his lies had changed me. Not just my life, but me. I’d wanted him to know how his betrayal had changed the man I’d been the few times he and I had been together.

For about ten seconds I’d dreamed of beating the shit out of JJ, but even if Sully hadn’t become part of the equation, I’d known deep down that I never would have put my hands on JJ. Not to hurt him, anyway. Given the chance, I’d probably put my hands on him for a whole other reason even if it was pure insanity.

Shit, I needed to get my head in the game. This was a job, nothing more. A favor for Sully. It was the least I could do for him. Truthfully, if it had been anyone other than JJ I’d been tasked to shadow, I’d have welcomed the distraction. Problem was, it was him.

In the past week, I’d learned JJ’s routine pretty quickly. He spent his days escorting his charge to wherever she wanted to go, and he spent his nights hanging out in some gay club that didn’t appear to cater to a more discerning level of clientele.

While JJ had spent the evening partying with whatever guy had picked him up—and there was no question that one would because JJ was the kind of man who turned heads when he walked into a room—I’d been sitting in my car seething with fury and a healthy dose of jealousy. It had taken every ounce of strength I’d had not to kick down the club’s door, find JJ and whatever prick he was with, and…

And.

That was the part that was the problem.

After I punched out the prick, I wanted to do so many things to JJ.

So many things that would have left the image of us burned so deep into his brain that no other man’s touch would ever be enough for him again.

I let out a breath as I watched the black SUV leave the gated property. The car’s windows were tinted so I couldn’t see inside of it, but I knew JJ was there. He and some big guy with dark hair always took the day watch. I’d been sure to keep my distance as I followed them, and while I was glad they’d been smart enough to change up their routine in terms of routes and locations, I was pissed that neither of the men had picked up on the fact that they had a tail.

Today’s route was different as I followed them, but in truth, I wasn’t really paying that much attention to our location because my thoughts were consumed with JJ. He looked both different and the same as he had two years earlier. Physically, he was as fit as I’d ever seen him, and my cock hadn’t missed out on that fact. The black suits he wore as part of his job should have doused my physical response to him because guys in suits did nothing but remind me of my father and his entourage of attorneys, assistants, chauffeurs, and, of course, bodyguards, but JJ in a suit was as bad for my sexual health as anything else he could be wearing… or not wearing. Yet as good as he had looked physically, there had been something about the way he moved and interacted with others that had been off.

I was so preoccupied with thoughts of JJ that I nearly missed the sight of the man standing in the middle of the winding canyon road. I slammed on the brakes and did everything I could to remain in control of the vehicle. Thankfully, it came to a jolting stop not five feet from the man.

The man with the gun pointed directly at me.

JJ.

I was pissed and pleased at the same time. Pissed that JJ had put himself in danger of being hit by my car and pleased that it was just him. No SUV, no big guy or wailing actress in the vicinity; no one, period.

“Get out of the car!” JJ shouted. “Open the door from the outside,” he added. If anything about the situation were humorous, I would have smiled at how quickly his cop instincts had kicked in.

I ignored the order, of course. Instead, I drove around him despite his warning shouts. I didn’t go far. I drove just far enough to pull off the side of the road. I wasn’t about to put some poor soul in danger by sitting in the middle of the road just after a sharp curve. I’d been waiting years for this opportunity, but I could wait a few seconds more.

By the time I pulled onto the shoulder and threw my car into park, JJ was striding behind me, the gun aimed at the back windshield and, of course, me. I was glad to see he was at least smart enough to use the vehicle as a shield if bullets began flying.

Jesus fucking Christ, Cass. What the fuck do you care if his instincts are working?

I ignored the voice in my head and yanked on the door handle so hard that I was surprised it didn’t rip right off. JJ continued to call out his warnings for me not to move or he’d shoot, but I didn’t care.

Just like I didn’t care that I’d left my own weapon on the passenger seat.

“I will shoot you, Cass,” JJ warned as I began walking toward him. His voice held the smallest of tremors in it.

Gone was the cop he’d once been and in his place was a man who knew he was the one in danger despite the loaded weapon in his hands.

Fury overruled any pity I had for him. That voice in my head was back. It was screaming at me that this was JJ. JJ, Sully’s little brother. JJ, the kid who used to look up to me like I was some kind of hero or something. JJ, the man I’d felt dying in my arms as I’d screamed for help.

JJ, the man who’d condemned me to life in a prison cell. The man who was responsible for me needing to be aware of everyone and everything around me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. The man who’d believed that I would ever hurt him.

“Not that man anymore,” I whispered to myself as I forced the reminder of prison away. JJ began taking steps backward.

“Cass, stop! Stop!”

The fearless man who’d stood in front of my car with a gun aimed at my head less than sixty seconds ago was now an uncertain former cop who knew he’d started a fight he wouldn’t win.

JJ’s hand wavered even as he kept his finger on the trigger. The closer I got, the more desperate his tone became.

“I will shoot you!”

I didn’t stop until I had my chest plastered against the barrel of his gun. I should have been worried that even though I knew JJ wouldn’t intentionally shoot me, his shaking hand could easily cause the gun to fire.

I wasn’t worried. I was too caught up in taking in every part of his face. Coal-black hair with matching arched eyebrows. Long, lush ebony lashes that brushed his skin whenever he blinked, straight nose with the tiny scar on one side from when he’d fallen off his bike at the age of nine, and full, sumptuous lips just begging to be kissed. But it was his eyes that had always mesmerized me the most. One was a striking shade of dark green while the other was hazel with flecks of gold scattered around the iris.

He still looked as young as he had the night that had changed everything. God, that night was supposed to have changed everything but not like it had.

We shouldn’t have been standing on a quiet stretch of road high in the Hollywood Hills with his gun aimed at my heart.

But we were there. He’d put us there.

The fury returned, making it easy for me to take the gun from him, release the clip and eject the bullet from the chamber before dropping the useless weapon to the ground. JJ hadn’t even registered that his gun was in pieces on the ground when I grabbed him by the lapels of his suit jacket and practically threw him onto the trunk of my car.

“I think you and I need to have a little chat,” I growled as JJ struggled to catch his breath.

“Fuck you,” he managed to choke out.

“I think you can do better than that, sweetheart,” I drawled.

“Fuck you, you murdering piece of shit!” JJ snapped. He took a half-hearted swing at me, but I was heavier than him and had been trained by the best when it came to subduing people, not to mention maiming and killing them.

The United States Marine Corps.

“That little girl was only ten years old!” JJ continued. “Did you make her watch while you put a bullet in her mother’s brain or was it the other way around? Did her mother have to watch her child⁠—”

That was all I let him get out. I brought down my right fist hard on the trunk right next to JJ’s head. Pain radiated from my hand outward to my arm.

“You of all people,” I snarled before snapping my mouth shut. I let the sting of his words drown beneath the sharp pain in my hand.

“Leave no witnesses, right, Cass? The Marines teach you that? Did they teach you how to toy with your victims first or was that just you?” JJ continued, seemingly uncaring of the danger he was in. His breathing had improved since I’d eased some of my weight off him.

“What the fuck do you know about anything?” I yelled. My emotions were all over the place. I wanted to feel more physical pain because JJ’s emotional hits were worse. To hear him actually say the words after everything that had happened…

JJ shoved me hard enough that I was forced to release him. This time, he was on the attack.

“I know that they’re going to put you back where you belong. I know it tore my brother apart to find out his best friend tried to kill his little brother. I know… I know…” His voice cracked.

“You know what?” I shouted because if he was going to come at me with everything he had then I wanted it done because I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. I’d spent two years planning for this very moment but the sight of JJ, actually putting my hands on him, hearing his vicious words, only served to remind me of the things that had happened before that night. I wanted to laugh because I’d been feeding off the taste of betrayal for so long that I’d forgotten what I’d really been hanging on to… what had kept me going every day of a life that had no longer been my own.

Hope.

Hope that JJ would admit the truth. Hope that we could go back to what we’d been. Hope that maybe this time he’d fight for me, for us.

JJ didn’t miss a beat. “I know you took something from me that night. Something you had no right to take. I know that I wish you’d had better aim because leaving me this way…”

My anger flatlined as I watched JJ coming apart at the same time that he was desperately clinging to control. To know he wished the bullet had hit its mark made me physically ill. What the fuck did his last words mean, anyway? I’d never seen him more physically fit or known him to be so bold, not mincing his words at all.

“What way?” I asked.

JJ remained quiet for several beats. He seemed to deflate like a tire that had picked up a nail.

“I trusted you,” he finally said in a whisper. “As much as I trusted my brother.”

The despair in his voice broke something inside of me.

“Finish it, Cass. Finish it or go and never come back,” JJ said quietly, his eyes holding mine with weary determination.

His words were like a slap in the face, another knife being plunged into my back.

“You’re not the only one who lost,” I responded before I could stop myself. I shook my head and glanced at the tiny pebbles that lined the road’s shoulder. I suddenly felt tired. Tired and unsatisfied.

“Go to hell, JJ,” I managed to say before I moved past him so I could get in my car and do what JJ had said.

Go.

Go and never come back.