His Unwanted Bride: The Secret Genius Commander

Corey slipped from her car, moving with a silent efficiency that belied her casual appearance. She stayed in the blind spot of the main gate's cameras, a path she had mapped in her head in the thirty seconds she'd stood there.

She circled around to the back of the cemetery, where the grounds bordered a steep, rocky cliff overlooking the ocean. The security was lighter here, the assumption being that no one would be foolish enough to attempt an approach from the sea.

From her backpack, she retrieved a pair of thin, high-grip climbing gloves and a compact grappling hook attached to a lightweight, high-tensile line.

She swung the hook once, twice, then launched it upward. It sailed through the air with a faint whistle, catching with a muffled thump as the claws bit into the wood of an ancient oak tree that grew just inside the wall. She tested the line. It was secure.

With the fluid grace of a predator, she began to climb. Her movements were economical and silent. She reached the top of the wall, swung a leg over, and dropped to the grass on the other side, landing in a soft crouch that absorbed all sound and impact. She was in.

She took a moment to get her bearings, then began walking toward her mother's plot, her pace unhurried, as if she belonged there.

The cemetery was eerily quiet, the only sound the mournful cry of gulls and the whisper of the sea breeze through the pines.

She saw her mother's headstone in the distance, a simple, elegant slab of white marble. It was immaculate, as if someone had recently cleaned it. At its base was a bouquet of fresh white irises.

Corey froze. White irises had been her mother's favorite. Besides her, who else would know that? Who else would be here?

She slowed her approach, her senses on high alert.

As she drew closer, she saw him. A man, his back to her, sitting in a sleek, black wheelchair. Even seated, his frame was imposing-broad shoulders, a straight back, the expensive cut of his black wool coat hinting at immense wealth and power.

Several bodyguards stood at a respectful distance, their presence a silent, menacing perimeter.

This had to be him. The man who had booked the entire cemetery. A Fitzgerald.

She stopped a few yards away, her presence still unnoticed. She and the man in the wheelchair, separated by a few feet of manicured grass, both staring at the same name carved in stone: Corinna Emerson.

The air grew thick with a strange, unspoken tension. Minutes passed. The man didn't move. He seemed lost in his own world, a world of silence and grief.

Corey stood her ground, a silent sentinel. She wasn't here to confront him, not yet. She was here for her mother.

The wind picked up, whipping a strand of her dark hair across her face. She reached up and tucked it behind her ear.

The small movement broke the spell.

The man's head turned slowly. He maneuvered the wheelchair with a quiet, electric whir, his body rotating to face her.

Corey met his gaze without flinching.

His face was brutally handsome, with sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw, but it was pale, almost translucent, as if he hadn't seen the sun in years. And his eyes... they were the deepest, darkest blue she had ever seen, and utterly devoid of life. They were the eyes of a man who had seen too much and felt nothing at all.

This was Lucas Fitzgerald. Her fiancé.

His gaze swept over her, taking in her simple clothes, her wind-tousled hair. There was no surprise in his expression, no anger at her intrusion. Just a vast, chilling emptiness.

She returned his stare with a calm of her own, her heart beating a slow, steady rhythm. Her training had prepared her for this. To face down a target.

But her training hadn't prepared her for the unnerving stillness of the man who was to be her husband.

They stared at each other in the silence of the graveyard, a man in a wheelchair and a woman who had just scaled a twelve-foot wall, their silent confrontation unfolding over a dead woman's grave.