Walking The Edge: A Romantic Suspense/Espionage Thriller (Corpus Brides Trilogy Book 1) (26 page)

About The Author

Zee Monodee

Stories about love, life, relationships...in a melting-pot of culture

Author, editor, smitten wife, in-over-her-head mum to a tween boy, best-buddy stepmum to a teenage lad, bookaholic, lover of all things fluffy & pink, chronic shoeholic, incompetent housewife desperate to channel Nigella Lawson (and who’ll prolly always fail at making domestic goddess status)...

Zee hails from the multicultural, rainbow-nation island of Mauritius, in the southern Indian Ocean, where she grew up on the figurative fence—one side had her ancestors’ Indian and Muslim culture; the other had modernity and the global village. When one day she realised she could dip her toes into both sides without losing her integrity, she found her identity.

This quest for ‘finding your place’ is what she attempts to bring in all her stories, across all the genres she writes. Her heroines represent today’s women trying to reconcile love, life, & relationships in a melting pot of cultures, while her heroes are Alpha men who often get put back into their rightful place by the headstrong women she writes. Love is always a winner in her stories, though; that’s a given.

**Find more about the latest on Zee and her works in her monthly newsletter http://eepurl.com/5GULr

**Read about her life & her books at her website/blog http://zeemonodee.blogspot.com/

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Corpus Brides #2, Before The Morning

In this prequel to the explosive
Corpus Brides
trilogy, find out how a mutiny started inside the clandestine
Corpus
agency...and how the deadliest of all
Corpus
agents found herself embroiled in this plot.

Before The Morning

. . . is a time of great darkness. . .

A trained killer with borderline sociopathic tendencies.

Rayne Cheltham traced out her life’s path at age twelve: she would marry her best friend and bear his children, and in the process, stifle the restless edge in her. When he vows never to marry, she gives in to the darkness and becomes a clandestine agent—until the day he walks into her world again, and her carefully fabricated façade crumbles.

A former cop burned by life and his personal demons.

When Ash Gilfoy meets a woman who reminds him of his childhood best friend, he starts upon a path that leads him down into an abyss once again. The day Rayne waltzes back into his life, he knows she is his second chance, and the one who will save him.

Each thinks the other is their redemption...until they discover how deep the other’s edge of darkness goes

No one knows Rayne used to be a spy and an assassin, and no one knows why Ash left the police force. The secrets between them make them sit on a keg of gunpowder with a lit fuse in their hands. Neither understands what ‘normal’ means now, especially Rayne, whose whole life is built on a lie. Truth is threatening to explode in their faces, and that is not the only menace they have to face. Someone is out to get Rayne, and she must disclose her past before it is too late.

Can Rayne and Ash survive all that’s thrown in their path? Can they hang on to the last thread of their relationship, and can they emerge, still together and still alive, in the morning after the deepest darkness?

Turn the page for your sneak peek at the second book in this romantic suspense/espionage romance series that goes to the very origins of the stirrings inside the
Corpus
agency.

Available now for Pre-Order

Chapter One

London. Mayfair

Thursday, July 12. 4.55 p.m.

To hell with common sense and protocol
—he’d be damned if he let a woman get assaulted in front of him. His job as a paramedic with the London Ambulance Service meant he had to provide assistance, under any circumstance.

Ash Gilfoy sprang to his feet after he made sure his partner attended to their patient on the ground. They had already ascertained the ABCDs of the situation—Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Disability—and categorized the patient as non-time critical.

What was about to happen, though? Definitely time-sensitive.

He’d sensed trouble brewing the minute he’d looked up and spotted the silver-haired man storm out of the open French window at the top of the stone steps leading down the tiered garden. The bloke rushed hot on the heels of a tall, curvy woman dressed in a white mini dress that clung to her soft body. Both of them spoke in loud, angry voices in a language he didn’t understand. Russian, he’d risk a guess—he’d heard the halted quality of Russian speech a lot while growing up, his next-door neighbour being of such origin.

The silver-haired man caught up with the woman; he grabbed her arm and yanked her to him. When she landed against his chest, he kissed her, hard.

Lovers’ tiff
. Ash paused in his step, but he revised his opinion when she wrestled free and shoved the man away, before she slapped him.

And everything will now turn into a total muck-up.
The look of fury on the other man’s face clearly stated he wouldn’t take the hit lying down, not in front of the small group assembled in the garden where they, too, must have heard the angry discussion. The guy released her, drew one arm back, and then slammed his fist into her face.

In a precarious position, with one foot on the edge of the landing, she reeled from the blow. Ash charged up the stairs, two by two, and caught her in his arms. He took her whole weight on; his back crashed into the three-foot tall, carved stone banister as he braced her with one arm around her waist.

Sharp pain, like licks of scorching fire, erupted along his spine, and he let out a gasp. With his free hand, he reached for the banister and gripped the edge, hard, to stop their fall. His fingers hurt, as if the bones splintered under the harsh pressure, and the skin of his palm stung and burned where it had chafed against the coarse rock. But nothing mattered except that he’d caught her before she rolled headfirst down the steep flight.

Her limp body thumped into his like dead weight, and when he managed to breathe without flames of agony searing up his back, he lowered them both onto the steps and released her into a sitting position.

“Are you okay?” He glanced up towards the man at the same time someone brushed past him up the stairs.

Ash trained his gaze on the newcomer, a large, bouncer-type bloke with thinning platinum hair—one of the men he had attended to when he came in.

On the landing, the big guy restrained the silver-haired man.

Good—at least, he’d been taken care of, for the moment. And where the hell were the bloody cops, who should’ve secured the whole scene, when someone needed them?

Ash returned his attention to the woman. “Ma’m?”

She lowered her head; long and straight, glossy black hair a stark contrast against the long-sleeved white jacket she wore over her clinging short dress. The locks fell like a concealing curtain across her shoulders and hid her cheeks.

“Let me look at your face.”

She shook her head.

“Please. You’re hurt, and I should check on you.”

Gingerly, he reached out and cradled her face in his palms. He coaxed her to tilt her head back...and his heart skipped a beat.

He knew her.

“Rayne.” The name slipped off his tongue in a mere whisper.

She parted ruby-coloured lips and her heavily made-up, dark blue-grey eyes grew wide, but she didn’t give any indication if she knew him; didn’t say his name.

No—she couldn’t be his childhood best friend, whom he hadn’t seen in seventeen years...

“Irina!” a man shouted.

A large, male hand closed like a vise on her upper arm. Ash glanced away from her face, finding the silver-haired bloke at their side. The man had left Bouncer Guy on the landing and come for them. He pulled her to her feet, handling her like one would a rag doll.

“Nikolai...” She breathed the name out in a throaty voice, then launched into Russian.

From her tone, Ash guessed she must be pleading with the other man. The Nikolai fellow didn’t heed her words—instead, he dug his fingers into her flesh. Her features scrunched under the agony, but she didn’t make a sound, took the inhumane treatment with her eyes downcast.

The bastard!

“Get your hands off her.” Ash moved one step up onto the landing and pushed Nikolai away.

“Stay out of this. It’s none of your business.” Nikolai’s words sounded clipped and dry, with a pronounced Eastern European accent.

Ash also heard menace in the tone, but he paid it no heed. Domestic abusers like this bloke were all smoke and no fire, especially when they went up against a man not intimidated by a fistfight. “It is when you assault her in front of me.”

With barely a foot’s distance between them, they stood nose to nose.

“Nikolai,
ostanovit’
!” the woman shrieked.

She’d asked this Nikolai to stop—that one word, Ash could understand.

She reached out to hold the man’s arm, but he pushed her away. The young woman lost her balance and landed in a heap on the hard stone floor. Bouncer Guy took a step in her direction, but then he stopped. No one here would dare go up against this Nikolai guy.

“What’s going on here?” Darren Cahill, the police sergeant who had secured the scene for the paramedics, ran up the stairs to where they stood. The strappy cop settled one beefy arm against each man’s chest and pushed them apart.

“This fellow just hit the woman here. Slammed a fist into her temple.” Ash went down in a crouch and helped her get up.

“I told you to stay out of this.” Nikolai’s voice sounded lethal, his pale face a mask of brooding fury. “None of your business.”

Ash jumped to his feet and went up against the Russian man again, chests slamming. The bloody bastard—he showed no remorse for hitting her so hard. “Damn wrong! You cannot assault somebody like this—”

“Gilfoy, let it go.” Cahill called out the order with a hand on Ash’s shoulder, pulling him back. “You’re not a cop anymore.”

Bloody hell!
He turned a narrowed glare onto a grim-faced Cahill. The cop shook his head softly, a silent message urging Ash to stay put.

He had to comply. Nothing else he could do. Damn it. Ash grabbed Cahill’s arm, the one restraining him, and shoved the cop away from him.

At times like these, he craved to curse his whole life to hell and back. He’d become a paramedic to make a difference, for God’s sake, to save lives. Not to watch innocent women get beaten by irate fellows with punch-happy fists.

Like Karen...

Cops could do nothing against abusers unless the women took the first step and pressed charges. Even then, with a restraining order in place, the furious husband found a way to get to them, these encounters often ending in murder. Not a bloody thing the police could do, and he’d grown tired of heeding rules and other stupid protocol that would see a woman go to her death and not lift a finger to help her. That feeling of helplessness had driven him crazy—the orders and modus operandi of the police making  him sick of himself, so he’d quit...to come work in a position where he wouldn’t be restrained by the fear of a lawsuit slapped onto the whole profession when he attempted to help someone and not let another kill the person.

All to no avail, with cops like Cahill involved. Damn it.

Maybe he could try another approach. He knew how cops worked—why not use the same code of behaviour to his advantage?

“I saw it happen,” he said to Cahill. “Take my witness statement. You were here, too, when it took place. You can arrest him.”

Cahill drew closer and lowered his voice. “I can’t, and you know it. Not if she won’t press charges.”

“Then, ask her.”

Cahill sighed. He looked up to where the woman—Irina—stood. “Ma’m, do you want to press charges against this man?”

Her face remained blank.

Comprehension dawned in Ash’s mind. “She doesn’t understand English.”

“And I don’t speak Russian,” Cahill said. “Let. It. Go.”

“Damn it. We can’t just leave her here.”

Cahill gave him a pointed stare.

Ash curled his hands into fists at his side. “I need to check on her.”

“You stay away from her.” Nikolai grabbed her arm again and tugged her towards the French windows leading into the house.

No way would the damn prick whisk her away so easily. Ash followed in their footsteps and caught up with them on the threshold of a luxuriantly appointed sitting room. “She’s hurt. At least let me look at her.”

Cahill stepped in and, after another pointed glance at Ash, turned to Nikolai. “Sir, please. He’s just doing his job. I promise we’ll be out of your hair the minute he’s done.”

Nikolai stood there, with his back erect. Tall, imposing, a man who carried an air of menace and danger as a halo—his steely eyes bored into Ash. Without a shred of doubt, everyone who met this man would have no trouble believing they better stay in his good books.

The grey gaze moved from him to Irina.

She glanced up, and Nikolai gave a small nod. “You have two minutes.”

Ash took her arm with a gentle touch and directed her towards a sofa in the sitting room.

“Sit down.” He softly pushed on her shoulders to make her understand. He then kneeled in front of her and cradled her face in his palms; made her look at him.

Damn, she looked so much like... But this couldn’t be possible. Her name was Irina; she was Russian; and she hadn’t recognized him. No matter how much she reminded him of Rayne Cheltham, she wasn’t his childhood best friend. He also remembered Rayne as he had last seen her, seventeen years earlier, when they had parted ways at London Waterloo where she took the train to go to France.

Rayne would be thirty-five today, and Irina looked like she must be in her early twenties. She still carried a soft layer of baby fat on her cheeks and along her jaw line.

The area along her left cheekbone had darkened to an ugly, dark red colour. It would definitely swell and bruise later on. Thankfully, the skin hadn’t broken. He ran the pad of his thumb against the injury. She winced, and he noticed the healing cut on her lower lip, concealed with dark-red lipstick. His gaze roaming over her, he frowned at the lightweight jacket sheathing her from the waist up, with closed buttons riding to her throat. She couldn’t be cold, not in this smouldering summer heat.

She hid bruises. The fist slam today hadn’t been her first.

“Why do you let him do this to you?”

She blinked. Her lips parted, but she didn’t answer. He’d forgotten she didn’t speak English.

“Are you done?” Nikolai asked from the doorway.

Reluctantly, Ash released her. As much as it pained him to admit, he couldn’t do anything more for her. She seemed alert, and he couldn’t proceed with a neurological assessment, given how she wouldn’t understand his questions—Nikolai wouldn’t help as the translator here. “You should put an ice pack on her cheek.”

Nikolai remained stoic. Ash turned back to Irina.

“Take care of yourself,” he said softly. She wouldn’t understand his words, but maybe she’d figure out the message in his tone.

She peeked up. “
Spasiba
.”

Thank you.
The word came as a small whisper, but Ash smiled, and nodded to indicate he understood what she’d said.

He brushed past Nikolai on his way out. The hushed and frantic voices of the couple in the throes of an argument reached him. He didn’t turn back, kept walking down the stairs to the ground level where his partner, Ally, waited for him to lift their patient onto the stretcher. A few feet from them on the wide patio, the party that had stopped temporarily after a fight between three men derailed had gone back to full swing. Alcohol flowed freely, the too-sweet smell of liquor floating over to them.

Ash and Ally had been called to attend to the assault victims. Two of them had minor scrapes and bruises, but the last one, piss-drunk already in the middle of the afternoon, had taken a nasty fall down the stone steps leading from the upper floor to the lower ground level of the garden. At least, the others had had the good sense not to move him from his position.

He crouched by the young man’s side. The guy kept up a litany of moans, even with his mangled left lower leg secured into a box splint and receiving analgesia. Despite the non-rebreathing mask delivering high-concentration oxygen to the bloke’s mouth, Ash could still make loud, long-suffering groans. No haemorrhage to the limb, and though limb trauma could be painful, the drugs should’ve kicked in by then.