Wicked and true, p.1
Wicked and True, page 1
Contents
About Wicked and True
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Wicked as Sin
Wicked & Devoted World
About Shayla Black
Other Books by Shayla Black
WICKED AND TRUE
Written by Shayla Black
This book is an original publication by Shayla Black.
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Copyright 2021 Shelley Bradley LLC
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Cover Design by: Rachel Connolly
Photographer: Wander Pedro Aguiar, WANDER AGUIAR :: PHOTOGRAPHY
Edited by: Amy Knupp of Blue Otter
Proofread by: Fedora Chen
Excerpt from Wicked as Sin © 2020 by Shelley Bradley LLC
ISBN: 978-1-936596-76-8
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by an electronic or mechanical means—except for brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews—without express written permission.
eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away, as it is illegal and an infringement on the copyright of this work.
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All rights reserved.
Acknowledgements
Books don’t happen without lots of amazing people to help an author. I have a list of amazing folks to thank for all their hard work on Zy and Tessa’s story.
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First and foremost, Rachel Connolly. The book definitely wouldn’t be as pretty without your cover genius, inside and out. But I appreciate you pushing me harder in some critical areas to make the story even better.
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Jenna Jacob, your unending support and the hours of talking, reading, and assuring me I’m not crazy mean the world to me.
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William…my husband and the love of my life. This journey is so much better with you by my side in the trenches. I thank you every day for taking a leap of faith with me and making this work.
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I’m also grateful to Sierra Cartwright. Your enthusiasm, generosity, and positive spirit really helped me, especially during a rough winter.
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Baby, biologically you’re my daughter, but you’re like a spirit sister, too. You get me, and you get these books. Thanks for always making me smile after a long day and for helping me keep the details straight.
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EK, you know who you are, and I’ve really enjoyed your help, your honesty, and all the long discussions we had about this duet. I needed that as I went out on this limb.
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Hugs to you all!
ABOUT WICKED AND TRUE
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He'd protect her from the world. But who will protect her from him?
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For agonizing months, Chase “Zyron” Garrett has been forbidden from touching Tessa, the pretty office assistant who makes him burn. But when danger strikes EM Security Management and top-secret information is leaked, it’s obvious the team has a mole…and the evidence points to the woman he’s fallen for. The bosses demand he investigate her, so he resolves to stop at nothing, even stripping her bare—body and soul—for the truth.
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Tessa Lawrence has known heartbreak in the past, but Zy has always been her staunchest protector. Since he was contractually off-limits, the Southern, sassy single mom clung to her friendship with the daring demolitions expert who’d stolen her heart and focused on making the best life for her daughter. But when the barriers between her and Zy are suddenly gone, she welcomes him into her bed, not realizing she’s giving him the power to destroy her. Or that the enemy is watching.
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Then the unthinkable happens, and Tessa is forced to make the most gut-wrenching choice of her life. Will their love survive the betrayal or will their future end before it’s even begun?
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
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If you have not read Wicked as Lies, please STOP.
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Wicked and True is the second part of a duet in the Wicked & Devoted series about demolitions expert Chase “Zyron” Garrett and single-mom Tessa Lawrence. In order to fully understand and enjoy this book, you should first read part one of this duet, Wicked as Lies.
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I sincerely hope you enjoy the saga of these two characters I’ve come to love so deeply, which is why they required two books to tell the full breadth of their story.
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Happy reading!
Shayla
January 26
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Chase “Zyron” Garrett sat back in his chair in the suddenly too-small conference room and stared at the trio of bosses glaring at him. He wished the BS Hunter, Logan, and Joaquin had just spewed was a punch line, but EM Security Management had a mole, and they very clearly weren’t joking.
It’s either your bestie or your girl.
You’ve got two weeks to figure out which one of them is guilty or we’re letting both go.
Bastards. Neither Trees nor Tessa was guilty of a fucking thing. Zy ought to know; he’d already spent three months nosing into his best friend’s life. He’d come up with zero dirt, proving Trees as innocent as Zy always suspected.
Now they wanted him to seduce Tessa Lawrence, their office assistant, to discern if she was guilty of selling them out. If he didn’t, they would fire her, despite the fact she was a single mom who needed her job.
You’ve got two weeks—max. If you fail, we’ll do the same to your fucking ass, too. Now get busy and get it done.
Calling them bastards was too polite. They were assholes.
Zy clenched his jaw and stood. How was he supposed to do what they’d demanded? He loved Tessa. He’d told her as much on Christmas Eve. Her response had been to run away, sure, but he was ninety-nine percent positive she’d left because she loved him, too…but thought their situation was hopeless. After all, they’d never dated or hooked up. Hell, they’d never even kissed because, for the last ten months, a single sticky paragraph in their employment contracts had kept them apart.
As of five minutes ago, it was gone.
I’m going to take her aside this morning and present her with a new contract. Better sick pay and vacation, tighter nondisclosure…and no nonfraternization clause. She’ll sign. Then you’ll both be off the hook.
Son of a bitch. Zy had waited and wanted Tessa, ached and burned for her. He’d been hoping that somehow, someday they could be more than co-workers and friends, but he’d never imagined that he’d be strong-armed into getting her between the sheets to spy on her. He didn’t have to fuck Tessa to know that selling the bosses out was something she’d never do. But he didn’t have a choice. Since they’d already coerced him into snooping on Trees, Zy figured he’d repeat the process…just with hot, bust-up-the-bed sex.
But one way or another, he would prove to the Three Stooges that they could one-hundred-percent trust Tessa.
“Get a move on,” Logan, the youngest of his bosses, insisted.
Fuck off, douche bucket.
But Zy kept his mouth shut and gave them all a tight smile as he headed for the door.
As he approached, it crashed open. Caleb Edgington, the team’s previous commander, charged in looking shell-shocked, like he’d collided with panic and run face-first into death.
“Colonel, sir?”
Hunter and Logan both stood. The quietest of his bosses, Joaquin, rose with a frown.
“Dad?” Hunter approached him.
The older man swallowed. “Your sister…”
Sudden tension gripped the room.
“What’s wrong with Kimber?” Logan scowled.
“I received a threat recently. It wasn’t specific, just a tube of lipstick and a warning to hand over Valeria Montilla before they took whoever the tube belonged to. I didn’t know who—” Emotion choked off the colonel’s words. He pressed his fist to his lips, grasping for the fortitude to finish delivering the bad news.
Zy’s gut twisted. The man’s only daughter, Hunter and Logan’s sister…
Another guy came in behind the colonel—big, blond, badass, and totally pissed off. Deke Trenton, Kimber’s husband. “She’s gone. She dropped the kids off at daycare, then made a trip to the grocery store…and didn’t come home. A courier delivered this thirty minutes ago.”
They all crowded around as he whipped out a picture of Kimber, her auburn hair tangled, her big eyes red rimmed, with a gag over her mouth, her hands tied behind her back, and a gun to her head.
Holy shit.
“We’ll get her back.” Despite his face going pale, Hunter sounded resolute. “We’ll do whatever it takes—”
“You’re fucking right we will,” Deke spat. “I want my kitten back. Jack and the rest of the Oracle team are at our office strategizing. Any help you can spare…”
“You’ll have it,” Hunter promised. “We need to lock down the res
“Fast,” the colonel managed. “Before it’s too late.”
The older man ducked out, looking as if he could barely keep himself together.
Deke didn’t look much calmer. “Thanks for whatever you can do.”
“Fuck that, she’s our sister. We’ll devote day and night to saving her.”
Kimber’s husband nodded, then he was gone, too. Silence prevailed for a protracted moment before Hunter swallowed, collecting himself. He turned to ice in an instant. Logan lived up to his fiery temper, grabbing an eraser from the nearest whiteboard then throwing it violently. His empty coffee mug followed, shattering against the wall.
Before he could toss anything else, Joaquin stepped in. “We don’t have time for this.”
“I know. I fucking know. Goddamn son of a bitch!”
Hunter and Joaquin jogged out the door, quietly strategizing ways to keep all the others in their family safe. Logan fumed, trying to gather himself, his lungs working like a bellows.
“I’ll come with you,” Zy offered. “I’ll devote all my energy—”
“No. This shit is centered around Valeria Montilla,” he said of the deceased drug lord’s estranged wife, whom Caleb Edgington and his sons had rescued from her husband almost two years ago. “Now that her safe house has been breached, Trees and Kane are going to relocate her and her family pronto—and we’ll be monitoring every step. But none of that will mean shit if you can’t nail our mole.”
In other words, prove Tessa was guilty and stop her.
Zy bit back an argument. Logan didn’t have time for it with his sister in the clutches of a cartel demanding information the team couldn’t afford to give. Giving up a client would ruin their professional reputation.
In short, they were utterly screwed between a rock and a hard place.
“I’m leaving,” the former SEAL barked. “You’re in charge until one of my brothers or I come back.”
“Me?”
“Josiah and Cutter have quit, Trees will be on the road to Florida, taking Kane, who just started his first day on the job. That leaves you and One-Mile, and he’s too unpredictable to be in charge.”
Good point.
“I’ll handle things.”
With a nod, Logan tore out of the conference room, slamming the door behind him. After some shouting in the hall and more door slamming in the distance, the office fell silent.
Kimber being abducted was a curve ball he hadn’t seen coming. No one had.
Zy marched out of the conference room. The rest of the team stood in the middle of the reception area, looking as shocked as he felt. Tessa was clearly more shaken than anyone to learn that her friend had been abducted.
She grabbed his arm. “Do you know anything beyond the fact Kimber has been taken?”
“No. No one does.”
“I can’t believe this is happening…”
“The bosses will do everything they can to find her.” Especially since their case had seemingly put Kimber in the crosshairs.
“What if they can’t?”
Her death wouldn’t be pretty, but he didn’t say that.
Zy was so used to playing dangerous games with dangerous criminals that he sometimes forgot that people like Tessa weren’t. And despite the bosses’ suspicions, he doubted she had any experience dealing with a cartel.
He just had to prove that…somehow.
“Don’t think that way.” He wanted to comfort her but wouldn’t take her in his arms here. Neither of them needed to give the office any fodder. Despite the fact he worked with well-trained operatives, they gossiped like a gaggle of hens. “The colonel, Hunter, Logan, and Joaquin are the very best at what they do. And I don’t know Deke, but—”
“He’s scary.”
That didn’t surprise Zy. As co-owner of their sister organization, Oracle Security, along with the infamous Jack Cole, he figured Kimber’s husband had a fearsome motherfucker side. “Then they’ll leave no stone unturned to bring her back. Have faith.”
“I’m trying.” But Tessa was clearly distressed.
He wasn’t surprised; she was sweet. She had a practical streak and could have a spine of steel when she needed to. But women weren’t typically good at compartmentalizing their feelings. That wasn’t a sexist comment, just a general observation. And because Tessa had a tender heart, she’d find it more difficult than most.
“We’ll get through this. In the meantime, Trees and Kane are heading out soon. Did the bosses give you any information on that?”
“No.”
Of course they hadn’t. They thought she was a spy, so why tell her they were sending two operatives to the Sunshine State to secure Valeria Montilla and her son, along with her sister, Laila?
“Let me check with Trees and Kane, see what’s up. As soon as I’m done, we’ll make their travel arrangements while they go home to pack.”
“A-are they going to help find Kimber?”
“No. They’ve got another gig.” Zy hated not telling her what it was, but if he kept quiet and their mission still went south, he could say with total honesty that Tessa hadn’t been aware of a single detail.
“What about One-Mile?”
Zy wasn’t sure what kind of task to give their resident smart-ass sniper, but he’d dream up something. If ever the quote about idle hands being the devil’s playthings applied to someone, it was Pierce Walker—who only tolerated his fiancée, Brea, using his given name.
“I’ll talk to him, too. For now, stay near the phone in case the bosses need anything.” He stepped closer, resisting the urge to touch her, and dropped his voice. “But I’m here if you need me.”
“I know.” She lifted her stare to him, and he almost fucking lost himself in her verdant eyes. “Thank you.”
She shouldn’t thank him. He was going to seduce her for all the wrong reasons. It would ultimately save her. But if she ever found out all the reasons he’d lured her between the sheets, she would hate him forever.
Nothing like having your balls in a vise…
Zy bit back a curse and headed to find Trees, who stood near the coffeepot with Kane and Walker, discussing strategy. “Those fuckers we work for left me in charge.”
One-Mile cursed. Trees raised a brow. Clearly, they thought him being temporary head honcho was as ridiculous as he did. Getting those two to follow his orders would be harder than herding cats. The verdict was still out on Kane, but the bosses hired a certain breed of warrior. Zy doubted very much the new guy would be cut from a different cloth.
So he changed the subject. “Where are we with your trip to Florida?”
“We have a problem,” Trees finally said. “We don’t know exactly where we’re going. Valeria came home from a concert last night and realized someone had broken into her safe house. They ransacked it, too. There were signs of a struggle…but her sister and her son were nowhere to be found.”
“Logan said as much.”
“If Laila got out, she left in a hurry, because her phone, wallet, and money were all still there. But if the cartel took her…”
“If they did, why would they have kidnapped Kimber this morning, demanding to know Valeria’s location? They already have hostages they can better use as leverage.”
Good point. “Because they want to fish Valeria out fast and they’re leaving no stone unturned?”
