Free Play It Safe (The Safe House Series Book 2) by Leslie North Page B

ever return to the naïve woman she had been. She was a woman whose rediscovered weaponry skills empowered her, a woman who had found the strength within to break ties and forge new, unexpected ones, and who had uncovered a part of herself she hadn’t known existed: latent erogenous desires in the presence of an outrageously sexy SEAL. And though she could never be in a relationship with someone who subsisted on a steady diet of danger and women, Samson had as much genius of the non-book variety left to teach her as she had a craving to learn.
    If Julian realized the formula was a fake, Samson was a dead man walking.
    In that scenario, only she could sacrifice for him the way he had for her.
    A plan gathered in her mind. This time, she didn’t create lists or make choices based on all that could go awry. She focused on all that felt right and acted.
    Angela knocked on the driver’s partition. The tinted glass slid down a few inches.
    “Take me to Julian’s plane. I have to be on that flight.”
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Nine
     
    Julian Simkins was one loaded motherfucker.
    There had been Marianne’s family money—old French money that went back a century and included aristocrats and enough land to form a new nation. And Julian, himself, had built his empire in commercial real estate abroad. His contemporaries were the top one percent—dignitaries, celebrities, tycoons, CEOs of multi-national corporations—and it showed in every gilded fixture, every crystal sconce, every lavishly-appointed living space inside his Gulfstream G-550 jet.
    The guy had enough money to conceive and fund a private but untouchable vendetta.
    As the plane ascended to cruising altitude, Samson leaned his head back against the plump Italian-leather headrest in the empty executive cabin and tried to remember why the hell he thought this plan was a good idea. The absolute last thing he wanted was to let Angela go, but it was the only way he knew how to protect everyone—Angela, Mike, Manny, the innocents of his homeland. Even if it came down to the very real possibility that he was sealing his fate. Permanently.
    Six years ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. He’d have given anything to follow Riley into death. Almost had. But time had a way of rounding the jagged edges. Rockwell gave him renewed purpose, his combat brothers gave him new memories to replace the old, and he learned the best remedy for pain came when he sank himself into the willing flesh of a beautiful woman.
    Progressively, that had no longer been enough.
    He wanted a family—something real that grounded him and curbed his impulsiveness. And when he tired of the fight, someone waiting for him with a passionate heart and an unyielding devotion. He had that, once, but it was an illusion. Never again. The pain of loss next time would be insurmountable.
    Samson shuffled his feet. His heels hugged the hard-sided case containing four vials of serum, as if the liquid had the capacity to devastate. In his private world, it did.
    The cabin bulbs dimmed. Soft orbs of light from executive lamps pooled around clusters of furniture and tables. He had yet to see anyone from the four-person crew since takeoff; he supposed discretion and sight-unseen was how Julian preferred doing business. Samson lolled his head toward the closest portal windows. The dusky clouds below looked like confections, dipped in sugar and glazed orange from the setting sun. His eyelids grew leaden.
    He couldn’t say how long he dozed. By the rays still visible on the horizon, it couldn’t have been long. He shifted in his seat. His gaze snagged an argyle-patterned sticky note, affixed to the table beside him: What ifs…
    His stomach did a perfectly-executed parachute drop in the span of one breath. The paper was familiar, the handwriting more so. No. He glanced around.
    On a lamp shade behind him and diagonal, another note.
    Samson picked up the case at his feet, charged the second note and read: aren’t an