Romeo, p.1
Romeo, page 1
Copyright © 2022 by Sybil Bartel
Cover art by: CT Cover Creations
Cover Photo by: Wander Aguiar
Cover Model: Travis S.
Edited by: Hot Tree Editing
The Ryter’s Proof
Formatting by: Champagne Book Design
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
Warning: This book contains offensive language, alpha males and sexual situations. Mature audiences only. 18+
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Books by Sybil Bartel
About This Book
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Epilogue
ZULU
NOVEMBER
ECHO
Acknowledgments
About the Author
BOOKS BY SYBIL BARTEL
The Alpha Elite Series
SEAL
ALPHA
VICTOR
ROMEO
ZULU
NOVEMBER
ECHO
WHISKEY
KILO
DELTA
The Alpha Bodyguard Series
SCANDALOUS
MERCILESS
RECKLESS
RUTHLESS
FEARLESS
CALLOUS
RELENTLESS
SHAMELESS
HEARTLESS
The Uncompromising Alphas Series
TALON
NEIL
ANDRÉ
BENNETT
CALLAN
The Alpha Antihero Series
HARD LIMIT
HARD JUSTICE
HARD SIN
HARD TRUTH
THE ALPHA ANTIHERO SERIES: BOOKS 1-2
The Alpha Escort Series
THRUST
ROUGH
GRIND
The Unchecked Series
IMPOSSIBLE PROMISE
IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE
IMPOSSIBLE END
The Rock Harder Series
NO APOLOGIES
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ROMEO
Pilot.
Handler.
Marine.
My first memory was in the cockpit of a plane. My second was of a uniform. All I’d ever wanted was to be a pilot. The Marines gave me wings, and I gave them my all.
Half a dozen deployments, countless flight hours—I knew the controls in the cockpit better than I knew my own name. I never made mistakes. But war didn’t care how good you were. One surface-to-air missile and my career was over.
Thinking I’d left dangerous missions and adrenaline rushes in my rearview, I was piloting a seaplane in the Florida Keys when a beat-to-hell, dark-eyed blonde washed ashore. In nothing but a bikini, she asked me for help. Help I couldn’t give without an assist from Alpha Elite Security. Except AES wanted a favor in return…. One that would put me right back in the line of fire.
Code name: Romeo.
Mission: Rescue.
ROMEO is a standalone book in the exciting Alpha Elite Series by USA Today Bestselling author, Sybil Bartel. Come meet Roark “Romeo” MacElheran and the dominant alpha heroes who work for AES!
For my only child, my beloved son, Oliver.
You were my greatest gift. The world was a better place with you in it.
Everything in my life was better because of you.
Thank you for teaching me unconditional love, perseverance, and compassion.
You are and will always be my entire world.
I love you, Sweet Boy, and I miss you beyond measure.
Oliver Shane Bartel 2004-2020
For my readers, thank you for all of your love and support.
Gratefully yours, XOXO
Nine Months Ago
My fingers raw, my voice hoarse, I sang the last line of the song and abruptly stood from the piano bench. The applause suffocating, tears threatened. I barely bowed before making a beeline for the large open-air deck I’d been staring at all night.
Pushing out the glass door, hoping against hope that a single breath of fresh air would take even one second of this pain away, I was instead hit with the biting chill of a Manhattan autumn night, dozens of stories above the evening traffic.
Going straight for the railing, not caring who was watching, I gripped the edge and looked over.
The pull was overwhelming.
One misstep.
One move.
No pain.
Adrenaline surged unlike a high I’d ever experienced.
The deep voice came out of nowhere. “Sad song.”
Despite the gooseflesh already covering my bare arms, a new kind of chill raced up my spine, but I refused to look in the man’s direction.
“It’s a cover,” I argued pointlessly.
“I know what it is.” Suited arms ending at large hands holding a crystal tumbler leaned on the railing next to me. “It’s supposed to be a love song.” One hand lifted. Ice in the glass shifted. A hint of oak and peat breezed past. The arm returned to its perch on the railing. “But the way you sang it….” His voice trailed off.
I stupidly opened my mouth again. “Love songs are for idiots who believe in fairy tales, and I’m not a singer.”
He chuckled. “Can’t argue with your first assessment, but what do you call sitting at a piano, singing to a crowded room at a charity event?”
Money. I needed the gig, but I didn’t admit to that. “I’m a songwriter.”
His tone turned serious like he gave a shit about me. “Then why were you playing someone else’s songs?”
I stared down sixty-six stories because I wasn’t going to explain to a stranger or anyone else why the music had disappeared. “Please leave.”
“Will you jump if I do?”
My head whipped up, and I looked at him.
Gray eyes, black hair, no smile, custom suit. He looked right through me.
An entirely new and totally different flavor of adrenaline surged, mainlining through my veins. My whole body shivered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
As casually as if he knew me, he brushed my long, blonde hair away from my face and tucked it behind my ear. “I think you do.” His unwavering gaze studied me. “Bad breakup?”
The new kind of high his expensive cologne and dominating presence were feeding my broken soul stretched out across the entire balcony, and words I was not prepared to say came out. “A deat h.”
“Mm.” He nodded slowly as his gaze drifted to the cityscape. No condolences, he drank again.
I looked back down.
“Do you want to feel the grief or the guilt?”
Once again, my head lifted, and my eyes met his in a strange, intense kind of pull I wanted no part of but couldn’t bring myself to walk away from. “What are you talking about?” I couldn’t admit, even to a stranger, that there was no difference between my grief and my guilt. Intricately threaded together, they existed as one.
His gaze more focused, his scent stronger, the man moved closer without actually moving. “There’s a third option.”
“Not for me.” Distant, like the street so far below us, my lie carried away in the evening breeze.
“Maybe, maybe not, but I know jumping off this balcony is a waste of both a good voice and a beautiful woman.”
“I’m not beautiful.” I couldn’t be. Not now, not ever.
His laugh came again—deep, ironic, soulless. “But it would be a waste of a good voice?”
Navigating around the question, I foolishly gave even more information away. “I write the songs. I was never meant to sing them.” That wasn’t what I’d been about. But I hadn’t worked in months, rent was due, funeral expenses were sitting on my credit card and I didn’t have any cash to fuel the singular vice of coffee that was keeping me alive.
“You seemed to have done the opposite tonight.” The dark-haired man turned to face me. “How about you try another opposite and polarizing direction?” This time he did move when he leaned down to my ear and dropped his voice. “Let me fuck you for fifteen minutes. Then you can tell me if you still feel the grief that’s making you want to jump. Or….” His lips touched the edge of my ear a moment before his teeth bit. “Maybe you’ll feel something different.”
My head spinning, my body responding, I desperately reached for more. “Fifteen minutes?”
Standing to his full height, he took a sip of his scotch. “The time it takes for my driver to get us from here to my penthouse.”
“How high up is your penthouse?”
“Thirty-two stories.”
That was enough. “Do you have a balcony?”
“Better. I have a rooftop deck with a heated pool.”
Thirty-two stories. That could work. “Private?”
“Of course.”
Like an animal trapped in a pit, frantically clawing its way to hell, I pulled more dirt over my self-imposed grave. “How much time does it take to get down sixty-six stories?”
His predatory gaze locked on mine, he took another swallow of his drink. Then he raised one eyebrow. “I’m not entirely sure this conversation won’t come back to bite me in the ass or that I should be entertaining this line of questioning, but I admit, I’m both entranced and turned on by your complete lack of self-preservation. That said, just for clarification regarding your previous question, do you mean by elevator or jumping?”
A second surge of adrenaline, just like the first one he’d given me, flooded my system and I knew. I was going to jump.
“Elevator,” I answered.
His shrug was casual and practiced. “Depends.”
“On?”
Something close to cruelty flashed in his eyes before he masked it. “Some activities make time pass quicker.” His voice lowered. “And some make time cease altogether.”
“Like?”
“Surrender. Delayed gratification.” He paused, his eyes focused on mine like he could read me. “Pain.”
This was a test. I’d met and avoided dangerous men like him my whole life. But tonight, on this balcony, standing on a proverbial cliff, I didn’t want to avoid the danger. “I want the activity that takes away grief.”
The smile that touched his lips as his hand took mine was sinister. “Pain it is, then.”
Roark
Muscles burning, drenched in sweat, I pushed my left leg harder as I headed toward the northernmost tip of the island. The last mile of my morning beach run always the hardest, I glanced out at the ocean as the first hint of sunrise crested the horizon.
Keeping pace next to me, Missy followed my glance and barked once.
“Not yet, girl. You can swim when we’re done, but we better pick it up. Sun’s almost up.” And it’d be hot as hell once it was. “Missy, sprint,” I commanded.
My golden retriever took off ahead of me.
Feeling every pace in my left thigh, I kicked it up and sprinted after her.
As we rounded the last bank, Missy veered off course, making a beeline for the coastal sea grape hammock.
Whistling the command for her to return, I slowed, but she didn’t come back.
Five years old, meticulously trained to obey, Missy never ignored commands.
Cursing under my breath, I headed after her. “Missy!”
A single bark came from deep in the sea grapes.
“Christ.” I scanned the beach in both directions, but it was empty. “If you’re going after a deer or turtle, you’re gonna piss me off.”
Missy barked again, but with urgency.
Hearing the whine in her tone, my instincts kicked in. “Missy?”
This time she didn’t bark. She cried. Twice.
Wishing like hell I had my SIG Sauer P320 9mm on me, I scanned the shoreline again then I looked out to sea. The sun still wasn’t up, but the first rays cast enough light across the water, and I saw what I hadn’t earlier. The silhouette of a sixty-five meter long yacht. Unmoving, about two hundred yards out. Huge. Distinctive.
Fuck.
Missy cried again. Loudly.
Knowing how sound carried across the water, I glanced one more time at the yacht and dropped my voice. “Quiet, girl. I’m coming.” I pushed the sea grapes aside.
Jesus Christ.
Sitting next to a woman who was lying on her side, Missy whisper-cried.
Shaking or convulsing, in nothing but a torn yellow bikini, her hair plastered to her face, half covered in sand, I could still see the bruises and scratches all over her body.
The woman made a small mewing sound.
Missy nudged her shoulder with her muzzle.
The woman flinched, then shook harder.
“She won’t hurt you.” Crawling further into the growth, I spared Missy a quick glance. “Retreat.”
Never willfully disobeying me, my dog didn’t retreat. She lay down next to the woman and softly cried.
Nothing on me but my car keys, I hoped like fuck this woman wasn’t OD’ing. “What’s your name?” Taking in what I could see of her, I crawled closer.
“S-S-Sailor,” stuttering through chattering teeth with a raspy-as-hell voice, she fed me a fake name.
She was fucking lucky Missy had disobeyed me and was worried about her because I didn’t question her lie. Instead, I stripped off my sweat-soaked shirt. “What’d you take, woman?” Draping the shirt over her upper body, I hoped like hell I didn’t need Narcan.
“N-n-nothing,” she whispered, her voice even more hoarse. “Pl-please go.”
I scanned the length of her body again, but this time, I noticed her swollen, bruised ankle. “Not happening. You cold?” It was already in the low eighties. She wasn’t cold. She was in shock, dehydrated and who the fuck knew what else.
“Y-you sh-shouldn’t b-be here.”
“My dog’s here, I’m here.” Where I went, Missy went. And apparently, vice versa, not that it’d been tested before this morning. “Do you have any other injuries besides your ankle?” Glancing at what bruising I could see on her ribs, it was clear someone had worked her over. I only hoped like hell it wasn’t who I suspected.
Missy whined.
“Quiet,” I commanded, putting a hand on Missy when what I needed to do was roll this woman to her back and see what the fuck I was dealing with.
“S-sorry,” the woman barely whispered.
“Not you. Missy.”
“Th-that’s her name?” With a shaking hand, the woman pulled my shirt closer to herself.
“Yes. How long you been out here?” This wasn’t a popular section of beach, but it was Key West. Nowhere on the island was remote. She hadn’t been out here long, otherwise someone would’ve found her, or heat stroke would’ve gotten her.
“Sh-she’s a p-p-pretty dog,” she stuttered in that same raspy voice, evading my question.
