Cipher

HE’S SWORN TO GUARD HER LIFE. SHE MIGHT BE THE ONE TO SAVE HIS.

Love burned me once. Badly. I married young, believed in forever, and learned the hard way that vows aren’t bulletproof. Now she’s remarried, I’m deployed overseas, and my orders are…humiliating. Protect the Secretary of Defense’s daughter—a stunning, infuriating model whose life is all cameras and curated perfection.

I’m not a bodyguard. I’m a Tier 1 Operator. This assignment should’ve been beneath me.

But Scarlett Thomas isn’t what the headlines say. She’s braver than she should be, lonelier than she lets on, and somehow more dangerous to me than the missions the Army usually sends me on. When her publicist decides the easiest way to explain my presence is to label me her boyfriend, I should object.

But I don’t.

People think my life is charmed—glamorous, effortless, enviable. They don’t see the isolation. The pressure. The father who loves his country more than his daughter.

I’ve learned to keep everyone at arm’s length. Modeling taught me how to maintain a beautiful image, not live a life. I’ve never fallen in love. I never wanted to.

Then Kyler Wade walked in—silent, scarred, impossible to impress—and he looked at me like he could see past every mask I’ve ever worn. I’m not supposed to care what he thinks, or whether he trusts me, or why he stayed on this assignment when he clearly didn’t want it.

But I do.