My Unwanted Husband Is A Lethal Boss

Holden shoved the oil-stained jacket into the battered canvas duffel bag. The cheap zipper caught on the frayed fabric, offering a slight resistance before he yanked it shut with a sharp, violent pull.

On the scratched wooden table, a military-grade encrypted communicator suddenly pulsed with a harsh, crimson light. The blinding strobe shattered the dimness of the Manhattan apartment, signaling a top-tier access override.

Holden hit the receive button.

The voice of his mentor, Vesper, filtered through the voice modulator. The raspy, metallic sound filled the room, demanding he leave for Long Island immediately to fulfill the contract.

Holden's jaw locked. His muscles coiled tight in instinctual rejection of the arranged marriage.

"No."

The cold refusal left his lips, but the moment it did, the volatile Progenitor-class genes in his blood violently rebelled.

A sudden, blinding agony tore through his chest. Holden dropped to one knee, his hand clutching his sternum as if trying to hold his ribcage together. His vision blurred into a static haze of gray, and thick beads of cold sweat instantly broke out across his forehead.

Vesper's voice remained brutally flat, pointing out that only the specific radiation emitted by the Sterling family's underground vault could stabilize his collapsing genetic structure.

Holden ground his molars together, tasting copper. He swallowed the blood and forced out a single word of compliance.

The line went dead.

Holden pushed himself off the rotting floorboards, his limbs heavy and trembling. He reached into the hidden lining of his bag and pulled out a yellowed parchment scroll.

His dark eyes scanned the name written in elegant calligraphy: Cordelia Prescott-Sterling. A mocking smirk twisted his lips before he shoved the ancient contract carelessly into his back pocket.

He kicked open the rusted iron door of his apartment. The metal shrieked against the hinges, drawing a slurred string of curses from a drunk slumped in the hallway.

Holden stopped. He turned his head and locked eyes with the man.

It was the stare of a Ghost operative-a pure, suffocating wave of physical killing intent. The drunk's throat seized. The color drained from his face, and he scrambled backward on his hands and knees, practically throwing himself into his own apartment.

Holden walked down the concrete stairs and slid into the driver's seat of a beat-up, second-hand Ford sedan. He twisted the key. The engine coughed, rattling violently like a dying asthmatic.

He slammed his foot on the gas. The Ford lurched forward over the pothole-ridden street, spitting a thick cloud of black exhaust from the tailpipe that sent two pedestrians into a fit of coughing.

The car merged into the gridlocked Manhattan traffic. Without warning, a sleek black Maybach cut aggressively into his lane, forcing Holden to slam on the brakes.

The bald tires shrieked against the asphalt. Momentum threw Holden violently forward, the cheap seatbelt biting hard into his chest.

The driver of the Maybach rolled down his tinted window and flipped him off.

Holden's pupils dilated. His right hand shot down, fingers brushing the cold, textured grip of the tactical combat knife strapped to his waist.

But logic clamped down on his predatory instinct. He forced his hand away from the blade, pasting a numb, dead-eyed expression of a bottom-tier driver onto his face, and slammed the palm of his hand against the cheap, reedy horn.

The Maybach sped off with an arrogant roar. Holden let out a low, cold laugh, spinning the steering wheel toward the highway leading to Long Island.

Two hours later, the sputtering Ford idled outside the perimeter of the Sterling estate on the Gold Coast. Massive, wrought-iron gates blocked his path.

Holden kicked his door open and stepped out. The salty ocean breeze whipped through his messy hair. He narrowed his eyes. Relying on instincts honed through years of brutal battlefield survival, he quickly calculated the sweep angles and rotation cycles of the security cameras. Within seconds, his mind constructed a mental map of the overlapping fields of view, easily identifying three distinct blind spots in the grid. A confident, razor-sharp smirk touched the corner of his mouth.

Two heavily armed security guards approached, a massive Doberman straining against its leash. They glared at the rusted Ford, a glaring eyesore against the backdrop of extreme wealth.

One guard slammed his nightstick hard against the Ford's hood, barking at Holden to get his trash off private property. The Doberman bared its teeth, letting out a vicious, guttural growl.

Holden shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. He ignored the nightstick and simply shifted his gaze, locking eyes with the dog.

The highly trained attack dog froze. It was as if it had just stared into the eyes of an apex predator. The Doberman let out a pathetic whimper, tucked its tail tightly between its legs, and cowered behind the guard's boots.

The guard noticed the dog's unnatural terror. His face flushed with embarrassment and sudden anger. He unholstered his taser and leveled it directly at Holden's chest.

Holden's eyes cooled to absolute zero. His muscles tightened, calculating the exact trajectory to disarm the guard and snap his wrist in the 0.1 seconds it would take to pull the trigger.

Before the tension could snap, the roar of a high-performance engine echoed from inside the estate.

A cherry-red Ferrari pulled up to the inside of the gates. The tinted window rolled down, revealing a bodyguard in a tailored suit and sunglasses.

The bodyguard spoke rapidly into a radio, confirming Holden's license plate. He snapped at the gate guards to stand down, stating this was a special guest expected by the patriarch.

The guard scowled, reluctantly holstering his taser, and hit the gate release button. Holden got back into the Ford, pressed the gas, and drove through the opening gates, his eyes locked dead on the massive dome of the main mansion.