Obsessed

by Aleatha Romig

  Contents

  OBSESSED

  COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE INFORMATION

  OBSESSED

  Prologue

  1. Mason

  2. Laurel

  3. Kader

  4. Laurel

  5. Laurel

  6. Laurel

  7. Kader

  8. Laurel

  9. Kader

  10. Mason

  11. Laurel

  12. Laurel

  13. Laurel

  14. Kader

  15. Laurel

  16. Laurel

  17. Kader

  18. Mason

  19. Laurel

  20. Laurel

  21. Laurel

  22. Laurel

  23. Kader

  24. Laurel

  25. Kader

  26. Mason

  27. Laurel

  28. Laurel

  29. Laurel

  30. Mason

  31. Kader

  32. Sergeant First Class Pierce

  33. Laurel

  34. Laurel

  35. Laurel

  A peek at SECRETS, book #1 Web of Sin

  What to do now

  Books by New York Times bestselling author Aleatha Romig

  About the Author

  Book #2 of the TANGLED WEB trilogy

  New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of the Consequences, Infidelity, and Web of Sin series

  COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE INFORMATION

  OBSESSED

  Book 2 of the TANGLED WEB trilogy

  Copyright @ 2019 Romig Works, LLC

  Published by Romig Works, LLC

  2019 Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-947189-36-2

  Cover art: Kellie Dennis at Book Cover by Design (www.bookcoverbydesign.co.uk)

  Editing: Lisa Aurello

  Formatting: Romig Works, LLC

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  2019 Edition License

  * * *

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the appropriate retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  OBSESSED

  BLURB

  Everything changed the night our eyes met across the room. His green gaze upon me prickled my skin with uncustomary warmth while my peek beneath his cuff—of a riot of color on his wrist—sparked my insatiable curiosity. Tall and mysterious, Kader was a man whose secrets I longed to know.

  * * *

  Little did I realize that the night we met was only the beginning—the beginning to the end of the existence I knew. With my life’s work now stolen and being offered to the highest bidder and friends and colleagues scattered, the future was unclear.

  * * *

  I’d wanted to believe that Kader was my eye in the middle of the raging category 5 hurricane my life had become.

  * * *

  Nothing could be further from the truth.

  * * *

  What will happen as his assignment becomes our obsession?

  * * *

  From New York Times bestselling author Aleatha Romig comes a brand-new dark romance bringing us back to the same dangerous underworld as SECRETS. You do not need to read the Web of Sin trilogy to get caught in this new and intriguing saga, Tangled Web.

  * * *

  OBSESSED is book two of the TANGLED WEB trilogy that began with TWISTED and will conclude with BOUND.

  Have you been Aleatha’d?

  Prologue

  The end of Twisted, book #1 of the Tangled Web trilogy

  * * *

  Laurel

  * * *

  As the echoes of my ecstasy began to fade, beneath my touch his muscles grew taut. No longer still, the concrete room filled with the same sound that had woken me the other day.

  It had been a roar.

  It hadn’t been a lion.

  The beast had a name.

  Kader.

  I wrapped my arms tighter around his neck as I buried my face in his shoulder.

  This wasn’t the time to cry, but that didn’t stop my reaction.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said after a kiss to my forehead.

  “It’s not that.”

  Pushing up with his arms, he eased out of me. “I shouldn’t—”

  I lifted my finger to his lips. “It was...” I feigned a smile though he couldn’t see me. “God, it was...mostly great.”

  “Mostly?”

  Was there humor in his tone?

  “I think I need practice.”

  The bed started to shift and I reached for his hand. “Don’t leave. Please stay here.”

  With a sigh, he lifted the covers over me.

  I waited for the door, for the indication he’d walked away. Instead, after a moment, the blankets moved. “You need to scoot over if you want me to stay.”

  “You’ll stay?”

  “I’m tired. The door to the outside is locked.”

  Was that a yes?

  Excitement sparked to life as I slid over toward the wall. The mattress moved as he lay down and pulled the covers over both of us.

  Within the eye of the storm, I’d found a stranger to protect me from dangers I didn’t understand. As we settled in beside one another, I relished his warmth. When I turned on my side facing him, I realized that not only was he wearing a t-shirt, but his legs were covered in soft pants.

  “I think this dress code is unfair,” I said.

  Kader rolled toward me as his large palm skirted over my skin; from my shoulder it went down over my breast, waist, and hip. It came to a stop as his fingers splayed over the soft flesh of my backside. “I don’t know. It seems fair to me.”

  “I don’t know how I became your job. I really know nothing about you or who hired you, but thank you for doing your job and keeping me safe.”

  For longer than I expected, silence settled over the room. It was as his hand on my backside flexed, pulling me closer to his warmth that he replied, “You’re mistaken. That wasn’t what I was hired to do.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No. I was hired to kill you.”

  Mason

  Over seven years ago within a Chicago skyscraper

  * * *

  My nerves were on edge, every sound magnified, even the weight of my shirt seemed exaggerated. Running my hand over the back of my neck, the stubble from my short hair felt like bristles beneath my palm. Nothing helped. The sense of confinement worsened as I paced the concrete floor, watching large screens that wouldn’t show me what I needed to know, where I needed to be.

  I was a trapped animal.

  A lion restrained to the zoo.

  Bursting with ability, innate and primal, the king of the jungle should be on the African plains, not behind bars.

  No, I wasn’t in jail though at the moment it felt like it.

  I was on the private working floor of the soon-to-be new Sparrow organization—our new command center.

  It wasn’t my location that made me uncomfortable. This was now my home. I had an apartment one floor up, the same floor as Reid’s and Patrick’s. Sparrow had the big-ass two-floor monstrosity above ours.

  There wasn’t any jealousy on any of our part. He’d been the one born with the fucking silver spoon. If you ask
ed him, that wasn’t a gift. He’d tell you it had been tarnished since day one. Either way, it didn’t change the fact that the money behind our lives, plans, and living arrangements came from him. Oh, hell, we all worked to make it. We all had abilities, and soon, the fortune his father had sown would be his for the taking.

  Our unlikely family came together courtesy of Uncle Sam. We met in basic training and stayed together through literal war. I remembered every detail of what we’d done.

  I wished I didn’t.

  When I first heard Sparrow’s name, working with or for him was the last thing on my mind.

  Killing him was the first.

  Now, I’m wearing out a path in the concrete floor as I watched the large screens overhead, the ones rotating the images of surveillance scattered about the city of Chicago.

  “I should be with him,” I said to the only other person present, Reid Murray.

  “Man, Sparrow has his reasons.”

  Ever since we’d all moved back to Chicago, that was the way it had been: Patrick and Reid, Sparrow and me. It took time for Sparrow and me to get on the same page, but once we did, we were like glue.

  There was one time we were separated. It was after the others stepped away from the war.

  Stepping away made it sound like they took a fucking stroll. That wasn’t it. They took the out they were offered after two tours. They did it because they had plans.

  We all did.

  Uncle Sam made me another offer.

  I thought I was ready for civilian life. And then at the last moment, I changed my plans and took one more tour—making it three.

  After the three of them came back, Sparrow went to the University of Michigan, Patrick studied business and finance at the University of Chicago Booth, and Reid studied computer engineering at MIT. We all knew Sparrow somehow arranged the admission and financing. The GI Bill only went so far.

  Education was part of our plans.

  Accomplishing our goal took more than muscle. The world was changing. To get on top and stay there took brains as well as brawn.

  Instead of going the way of college, I chose twelve more months to hone the skills Uncle Sam taught me. At least, that’s what I told everyone. The truth was simpler. They made me an offer and I wasn’t ready to go back to real life.

  The extra time without these other assholes made me realize that while I was part of a team, part of a company—I missed the camaraderie that the four of us shared. The television news made it look like all we did was combat, day in, day out. The combat was the easiest part for me. It gave me a purpose, a focus. The downtime was the real hell. That was the time when I lay in my bunk and my mind wandered.

  I wasn’t alone, but I was.

  Without Sparrow, Reid, and Patrick around, the downtime was worse.

  The four of us had gotten to know one another. Over time, we’d shared shit.

  Sparrow’s fucked-up father.

  Patrick’s time living on the streets.

  The unexpected death of Reid’s grandmother—his only family and the woman who raised him.

  The disappearance of my sister Missy.

  During that third tour, I kept things under wrap. I didn’t want to come across as some pussy who still mourned the loss of his sister, something that happened when I was just a kid.

  Did the time really matter?

  Weeks, months, or years didn’t lessen the trauma that came with having your sister disappear on her way home from school. Two years younger than me, Missy depended on me. I should have been with her. I should have protected her—I failed.

  That failure never left me, pushing me to work harder, to succeed at any cost.

  When I made the decision after the third tour not to reenlist for a fourth, my expertise was more than that of a sniper with Special Forces. I also excelled in linguistics. For a kid from South Chicago, it was an unusual skill.

  Iraqi, Arabic, and Kurdish were the recognized languages of Iraq. However, the places and towns where we went, the people spoke many variants: Armenian, Feyli Lurish, Mandaic, Persian, and Shabaki. To this day, I have no idea how I understood them and why I could read as well as write them, but they just made sense to me.

  From our first tour, I understood the local kids—the ones who would come to us wanting candy. I understood their parents and the signs. That sought-after skill made me an even greater asset to Uncle Sam. That’s also part of the reason why when they made me an offer to stay that third tour, I took it.

  The offer was even better for a fourth. Nevertheless, I couldn’t do it.

  I had other plans.

  I did what I should have done months earlier. I came back to Chicago and studied the shit Reid did. With the computer skills and the ability to read without a translator, there weren’t many places on the web or the dark web I couldn’t access.

  The four of us had plans for Chicago, and I was ready to get down to business. I’d achieved my goals in the Special Forces. I needed to do what I could to bring Sparrow’s father to his fucking knees.

  While it would have been simple to put a bullet between his eyes—from the twenty-fifth floor of a neighboring structure while he walked from the doors of his office building on Michigan Avenue to his waiting car—that wasn’t the plan.

  We weren’t just taking out the motherfucker for what he’d done; we were bringing down his ring of child exploitation. That meant we had to not only be efficient but also smart. We spent time laying the groundwork for Sparrow to take over.

  The old realm was going down. Our time was now. Shit was happening tonight.

  For three impoverished youths and one rich kid, we’d made ourselves an unstoppable team.

  My pacing ceased long enough to watch Reid’s fingers flying across the multiple keyboards. I could do what he did, but the reason for my anxiety was that I preferred to be in on the action. It didn’t matter if it was in the field or on the street.

  That was where I should be right now.

  “Are you sure that will hold up when they look into it?” I asked, looking at the screen with the broadcast from within the senior offices at Sparrow Enterprises. From the look of it, Sterling Sparrow was in his office, periodically moving from his desk to the window, the window to the desk. The time stamp was right, but we knew the picture was wrong.

  Sparrow wasn’t in his office on Michigan Avenue. He was at a very important meeting.

  “Yeah, there’s nothing to stand out. They won’t even question it.”

  I stretched my arms over my head, bringing my hands to the back of my head. “I should fucking be there. I would do it. I told him I would. Killing that motherfucker would be the highlight of my life.”

  Reid looked up and smiled.

  Really? A smile?

  “If that’s your highlight,” he said, “you need to get out more.”

  Ignoring his comment, I walked over to a nearby weight bench and lay back on the vinyl. The free weight above me, resting in the cradle, had two one-hundred-pound weights on each end. Gripping the silver bar, I positioned my shoulders, tightened my abs, and took a deep breath.

  It was the unknown that was eating at me. We’d purposely run a loop at the construction site as well as the offices. If I could see the fucker die with my own eyes, maybe I’d feel better.

  Reid appeared over me in my line of vision.

  “Shouldn’t you be over there?” I asked with a tilt of my head toward the computers.

  “You’re too antsy. I’m spotting you if you’re going to pump iron.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Not babysitting,” he said. “Sparrow doesn’t need one either. This is his battle. He’s wanted this his whole fucking life.”

  “For Missy...” I began, unwilling to allow myself to finish the sentence.

  “We don’t know for sure. It could have been McFadden or...” He shook his head. “...can’t kill them all.”

  With a grunt I lifted the four hundred pounds, straightening my elbow
s. The muscles in my shoulders and arms pulled taut. My abdomen tightened, doing its part to hold the weight steady. The bar within my grip trembled as I counted to ten.

  One.

  Two.

  Steadily the seconds passed.

  It felt good to exert myself.

  Letting out a breath, I returned the bar to the cradle. The metal upon metal clanked through the tension crackling in the air. Standing, I met Reid eye to eye. “Kill every fucking one.” My head shook. “I can sure as shit try.”

  He looked up at the screens. “It should be done.”

  “Let me know when you get the final signal from Patrick.”

  It didn’t take long until we both let out a long sigh.

  “It’s done,” Reid said.

  Allister fucking Sparrow was dead.

  “Hell no,” I said. “It’s only just begun. We’re going to own this city.”

  “You mean Sparrow will.”

  Technically Reid was right. However, for Sparrow to take and hold the position his father just unwillingly abdicated, Sparrow needed a trusted team. We were young, knowledgeable, intelligent killing machines. The old guard had let down their defenses. They’d grown soft and comfortable with the world around them. The organization was primed for a takeover. If it hadn’t been us, it would have been someone else.