Chapter one
Diana Bennett trailed her fingers slowly down the mahogany banister, the cool, polished wood a familiar comfort against her palm. In her mind’s eye, she was a child again, skirts flying as she raced up these very stairs, her father in playful pursuit. Those had been days of laughter and tall tales—stories of Great-Great-Uncle Arthur, a man of such legendary daring that half his adventures seemed birthed from her father’s imagination.
Perhaps they were. Who knew?
John Bennett had been a master of creating fiction, having authored twenty-five celebrated mystery novels before his passing. Diana had grown up assuming the stories of Arthur’s exotic exploits were merely rehearsals for her father’s next bestseller. After all, some of the tales were too unbelievable for the printed page—yet readers around the world couldn’t get enough of the Tapestry of Lies series.
In those novels, Great-Great-Uncle Arthur was portrayed as a rogue of the highest order, a man who traveled the globe in search of sunken gold and forgotten gods. In fiction, Arthur had amassed a fortune. As Diana surveyed the foyer of the forty-five-room estate, it was clear that at least part of that story was rooted in truth. The house itself bore silent witness: exotic artifacts collected and displayed here for more than eighty years, each worth a king’s ransom.
But truth, unlike fiction, came with consequences.
When her father fell ill, funds were needed—quickly. Hospital bills mounted. Back taxes loomed. And as John Bennett lay dying in that sterile hospital bed, Great-Great-Uncle Arthur’s empire began to crumble, stone by stone, until its weight settled squarely upon Diana’s shoulders.
Her heart ached at the necessity of today’s auction, but there was no delaying it any longer. Debt collectors and tax agents circled like wolves, patient and relentless.
The sharp crack of the auctioneer’s gavel snapped her back to the present.
“Sold!”
The word struck her like a physical blow. Diana watched, breath hitching, as Lot 402—a landscape of haunting beauty—was carried away by white-gloved porters. Her gaze shifted to the buyer: a man in a charcoal suit, his satisfied smirk sending a shiver of unease down her spine. He lacked the soft reverence of a true collector. There was something lean and hungry about him. Predatory.
The bidding opened on a magnificent Xuande Ming vase. Again, the paddle rose—his paddle—smooth and arrogant. Diana fixed him with a glare sharp enough to cut glass, silently pleading for a rival bidder to challenge him. None did. His pockets, it seemed, were as deep as his eyes were cold.
Unable to endure watching her life dismantled piece by piece, she retreated into her father’s study.
The scent of stale pipe tobacco lingered, wrapping around her like a ghostly embrace. Her father had been her anchor, her constant. His death five years ago had left a hollow space inside her no amount of ancient lore or inherited grandeur could ever fill.
Her gaze lifted to the portrait of Arthur.
He stared back with weathered grit and defiant eyes—eyes that mirrored the same stubborn resolve Diana saw whenever she faced her own reflection. In the painting, Arthur stood with one calloused hand resting on a brass globe, a scarlet cravat knotted loosely at his throat, radiating a quiet, dangerous confidence.
“Ah, there you are.”
Diana whirled, a gasp tearing from her throat.
The man from the auction—the buyer of the Ming vase—stood in the doorway, his sharp features and deeply set eyes assessing her with unnerving intensity.
“This area is off-limits,” she said, forcing steel into her voice. He may have startled her, but she refused to let him see it, even as instinct urged her to retreat.
He stepped farther into the room, as though ownership were his by right. “My name,” he said smoothly, “is George Desmond.”
“I don’t care who you are. This room is private.”
His dark eyes narrowed, amusement flickering there—cold and calculating. “For a librarian, you’re surprisingly sassy,” he mused, his cultured voice edged with threat. “But utterly wasted on a woman watching her legacy bleed away.”
He moved closer. The air seemed to thin beneath his presence. “I am not ‘the public,’ Miss Bennett. I am the man who holds the keys to your salvation. I recognize desperation when I see it. You’re not selling because you wish to—you’re selling because you must.”
He gestured toward the desk, his gaze lingering on the wood as if he could see through it. “Your father wove beautiful mysteries, but he left you a grand estate and an empty purse. I can offer you a different ending. One where you keep your dignity—and this drafty monument to the past—and I take only what I require.”
He leaned in. The sharp scent of his metallic cologne clashed with the warmth of the room. “The Bennett portrait. The desk. And every scrap of paper hidden in its drawers. Give them to me, and the tax lien haunting your sleep will disappear before sunset.”
His attention slid back to the portrait, and Diana could have sworn his eyes burned with hunger.
“Those,” she said through clenched teeth, surprised by the steadiness of her own voice, “are family heirlooms. They are not for sale.”
Desmond clicked his tongue. “Heirlooms are luxuries for those without debt,” he replied, stepping fully into her space. “I know about your taxes, Diana. Hand over the portrait and the desk, and your troubles end today.”
Her pulse froze. How does he know?
Still, pride rose like armor. “I will not change my mind.”
He might have continued, but an interruption spared her.
“Oh! Pardon me,” an auction assistant said from the doorway, visibly flustered. “Mr. Sterling asked me to find you.”
Grateful for the intrusion, Diana turned a cool smile on George Desmond. “You’ll excuse me.”
She addressed the assistant, chin lifted. “Please see that Mr. Desmond finds the front door. He seems to be under the mistaken impression that I conduct private sales.”
With that dismissal, she walked past them, her steps measured, her head high. She didn’t look back.
But his voice followed her, low and certain, clinging like mist.
“This isn’t finished, Miss Bennett.”
Eagles Wolf
Chapter One
Rio de Janeiro
1996
His name wasn’t Jack, but that’s what everyone called him. He received the nickname years ago when he’d been twenty and began working for a drug cartel operating out of New York City. At first, they only required him to drop off packages at local merchants, and collect the payments owed on the delivery of whatever illegal substance he passed onto them. After that, The Family, as that’s what the mob organization called itself, gave him a different job. Then another, and another, until he became one of their most trusted employees. He became known as a ‘Jack-of-all trades’ because he’d been willing to do anything The Family asked of him, and people began calling him Jack because of it.
That was a couple of years ago, and somehow, the name just clung to him like cheese to macaroni, regardless of the fact he didn’t work for those people anymore. Now, he drifted from country to country; trying to stay hidden. Trying to stay alive. Too many people wanted him dead, and only because they thought he knew too much. But after being on the run for two years, it was becoming tiresome. And he was sick to death of continually having to watch over his shoulder, looking for whomever the New York family might have sent to silence him.
That’s why he was here, in this crowded and smoke-filled bar, sitting across from the United States agents. He was making a deal with them. They would give him protection, a full pardon for all crimes he committed in the States, a new identity, and in turn, he’d spill the beans on the Lewis family.
At the moment, the FBI agents weren’t saying anything. They seemed to be more interested in the commotion which began seconds ago somewhere behind Jack than they were with the informant sitting across from them. The disturbance was of no interest to Jack. He spent enough time in these types of establishments to know - if you didn’t want trouble, you kept to yourself. But when one of the two men across from him visibly paled, and the other one ducked his head and hissed, “Holy shit! What’s he doing here?!” Jack threw caution to the wind and turned around.
There was no way for Jack to know if the man making his way through the crowded bar was who his companions were referring to, but that did not prevent Jack from praying the guy weaving his way through the maze of people toward this table wasn’t their subject matter. Not that Jack knew the man with the face set in stone. Truth be told, he’d never seen the six-foot three-inch man, and he did not have a clue who he was. But it wasn’t the height, or powerful looking build, that had Jack praying to a god he’d never believed in. It was the simple fact the guy had a look about him that said, “Danger, give me a wide berth.”
It appeared everyone in the bar received the same message because they were doing exactly that. Moving away from the man long before he neared them.
The man alone wasn’t the cause for the commotion going on as people moved out of his way, closing the distance to where Jack and the two agents sat. It was the large dog following close to the man’s heels that was causing the bar’s patrons to press up against the walls or exit the building without haste.
Jack blinked several times, thinking his eyes were deceiving him. The dog wasn’t a dog, as in a house pet. It was a… wolf? A wolf?! That just couldn’t be.
Suddenly, there wasn’t any more time for Jack to ponder this revelation. The dog’s- rather, wolf’s- owner stopped walking, and stood only a foot away from the bewildered Jack.
“You, Jack?” the guy gritted out in a tone that clearly said Jack had better say yes and do it now.
Jack swallowed, thinking the family had found him after all these years, and that this was the man who was going to end his life.
One of the agents stood up and had the nerve to ask Mr. Danger, “What in the hell are you doing here, Wolf?”
That question brought a dark look from Mr. Danger, and confused Jack because, if Mr. Danger was Wolf, then what in the hell was that creature behind the man, looking at him as though he were tonight’s dinner?
“You, Jack?” Mr. Danger, or Wolf, or whomever the guy was, repeated and didn’t look none too pleased to have had to ask a second time. Nor did he answer the question directed at him by the United States agent.
The second negotiator stood up and said, “I don’t know what in the hell you’re doing here Wolf, but this is our case; not yours.”
This time, Mr. Danger’s dark chocolate-colored eyes never left Jack’s face; though Jack wished they had. He had the misfortune of seeing those emotionless eyes turn blacker than sin, and somehow Jack just knew this was trouble with a capital T.
“Once more, then I’m through. You Jack?”
Truth or lie? Those were Jack’s options, but the man did not give him time to consider what his response would be. In the blink of an eye, he found his head slammed against the table, Mr. Danger’s one hand holding his head there, while his other pointed at the two pale-faced agents and said, “Don’t.”
Even Jack winced at hearing that single spoken word. There was enough malice in it to have frozen Satan’s balls.
“Goddamn it, Hunter!” Jack heard one of the agent’s bluster and wondered who in the hell the man was speaking to now. “This man has information about the Lewis family, and Uncle Sam wants it! We’re making a deal with him…”
“When I’m through, feel free to continue with your bargaining.” That hand on the back of Jack’s head grew tighter, if that were possible. It already felt as though a vice was attached to it and was squeezing his skull into the wood.
“What do you want, mister?!” Jack yelped, trying to break free, regardless of the fact it was a useless attempt.
“Nice to know you’re not deaf,” Danger said.
“For God’s sake, Hunter! Let the man go!”
“Neko, watch them.” Danger’s voice didn’t raise an octave, and Jack didn’t need to wonder for long who in the hell Neko was because suddenly, there was one big mass of fur, with four paws attached to it, standing on the table less than six inches from his face, and the two agents were uttering curses, but not moving a muscle otherwise. “Sit down, kids,” Danger suggested, and the two sickly looking men across from him did just that. “Now, I’ve been nice up ‘til now. And I rarely repeat myself more than once. But I’m going to give this one more try. You Jack?”
Jack didn’t try to claim otherwise. “Yes!” he screamed, and suddenly, the vice holding him disappeared, and he could move his head.
Danger sat down. “Was that so hard?”
Jack slid off the table, holding his head, and found his own chair. “What in the hell do you want, mister?!”
“I’m looking for a man named Pierre Bellefeuille,” Danger’s voice was flat as he spoke. “He also goes by the names Jon Du Bois, and Jon Du Pree. You know him?”
Jack might have thought the two agents had looked pale, but it was nothing compared to the green coloring his face turned upon hearing those names. “I’ve never heard of him!” he exclaimed, terror lacing his voice.
One agent was foolish enough to lean forward to protest, but the snarl directed his way by the enormous wolf standing on the table sat him back in the chair real quick. “Damn it, Hunter! Call off your dog!”
Hunter didn’t, but he suggested the man not move again. “Next time, he’ll bite.”
“This man is under our protection!” the other insisted, but he hadn’t been as stupid as his partner. Not one part of him moved in any way that would send a snarl in his direction.
“Your protection?” Hunter scoffed and leaned back in the chair. “And a fine dandy job the two of you are doing!”
Both men’s faces turned beet red at that sarcastic remark. If Hunter chose to, he could snap Jack’s neck before they understood his intent to do so and they knew it.
Jack’s head was beginning to stop throbbing, but his anger was rising. “I’m making a deal with these men, so I don’t have to talk to you!”
Hunter’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes did. Jack hadn’t known eyes could turn any darker, but what he saw in them now reflected death. His. “I’ll make you a deal, Jack. You tell me what I want to know, and I won’t kill you. Take it or leave it.”
Jack swallowed hard and didn’t doubt for a minute the man meant what he said. “I don’t know the person you asked me about!” he insisted, and suddenly his face was introduced to the tabletop once more. If he wasn’t experiencing this firsthand, he would have believed no one could move with the lightning speed this demon from hell did.
“Try again,” the demon said.
“All right! All right!” Jack screamed. “Just let me go, and I’ll tell you!”
That promise got his face raised high enough to be propelled back into the tabletop once more. “Tell me now, or you’re going to hurt.”
Going to? If the guy didn’t think a broken nose was painful, obviously he’d never had one!
“The last I heard, the man you’re looking for was in El Salvador!” Jack exclaimed, and from there he sang like a bird, disclosing the general location of Pierre Bellefeuille’s last known stronghold, and wondered which of the two men were the most dangerous. Bellefeuille, who was involved with terrorism, illegal drug trafficking or anything else outside of the law, or this man with a wolf named Neko, and death-filled promises. “That’s all I know! I swear it!”
Hunter raised the man’s head, then slammed it back into the table once more, just for good measure, before letting go. “Thanks, Jack.” He turned to leave.
He was halfway to the door before he called his wolf to his side, and completely gone before anyone in the bar felt safe enough to move around. And it was another five minutes after that before the three men he’d graced with his presence did anything at all.
“Who in the hell was that?!” Jack screeched, holding his nose and trying to stop the bleeding with some paper napkins.
The two agents shifted in their chairs. “You don’t want to know,” one of them offered. Neither one of them felt like explaining to Jack that the man was on their side. Hell, most of the time, they didn’t believe it themselves.
​
End of Excerpt
