She's been in protection for six months. Three safe houses. Two compromised.
The man they send her next isn't Bureau.
Casimir Voss has worked for Aleksei Zolotov for seven years. He's precise, quiet, and very good at his job. He moves people safely from one point to another and he doesn't get involved. He has never, in eleven years of this work, had a problem with the moving-on part.
Until Irina Sokolova.
She's a translator. A widow. Someone who has been managed, monitored, and handled like a package for eight months while the people trying to protect her keep handing her over to people who weren't protecting her at all. She's watched two safe houses get compromised. She's learned to notice surveillance cars. She's learned to have her bag packed before she's told to pack it.
What she hasn't expected is someone who tells her the reasons.
Casimir tells her everything — the threat, the leak, the documentation her dead husband built and hid in an insurance envelope that she's been carrying in her bag for eight months without knowing what it was. He treats her like a person rather than a liability. He stops just short of the line between professional and personal, every day, for eleven days.
Then the case breaks open. The threat closes in. And the line moves.
Somewhere between a Pennsylvania farmhouse and a Brooklyn flat — between cold tea at two in the morning and chrysanthemums on a windowsill — two very careful, very damaged people stop being careful.
Break the Silence is a full-length dark romance featuring the slow burn of two people who are both fluent in restraint, finally speaking the same language. Protector trope. Both characters damaged in quiet ways. He falls first but holds the line. She reads everything he doesn't say.
The man they send her next isn't Bureau.
Casimir Voss has worked for Aleksei Zolotov for seven years. He's precise, quiet, and very good at his job. He moves people safely from one point to another and he doesn't get involved. He has never, in eleven years of this work, had a problem with the moving-on part.
Until Irina Sokolova.
She's a translator. A widow. Someone who has been managed, monitored, and handled like a package for eight months while the people trying to protect her keep handing her over to people who weren't protecting her at all. She's watched two safe houses get compromised. She's learned to notice surveillance cars. She's learned to have her bag packed before she's told to pack it.
What she hasn't expected is someone who tells her the reasons.
Casimir tells her everything — the threat, the leak, the documentation her dead husband built and hid in an insurance envelope that she's been carrying in her bag for eight months without knowing what it was. He treats her like a person rather than a liability. He stops just short of the line between professional and personal, every day, for eleven days.
Then the case breaks open. The threat closes in. And the line moves.
Somewhere between a Pennsylvania farmhouse and a Brooklyn flat — between cold tea at two in the morning and chrysanthemums on a windowsill — two very careful, very damaged people stop being careful.
Break the Silence is a full-length dark romance featuring the slow burn of two people who are both fluent in restraint, finally speaking the same language. Protector trope. Both characters damaged in quiet ways. He falls first but holds the line. She reads everything he doesn't say.
Used availability for Danielle Kent's Break The Silence