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had ended in his and her mother’s deaths.
    She should have returned sooner, she thought as she stared around the ballroom, took in the bright colors of the evening dresses, the dark tuxedos. This was Aspen’s winter finest, and mixed with them were six families who were part of a very elite group of powerful men. The richest of the rich. The most powerful. The most corrupt. She should have returned years ago and learned the secrets she was only nowbeginning to realize. Secrets that would avenge her parents’ deaths.
    There were reasons she had left home at eighteen, and turned her back on a fortune that would take four lifetimes to even put a dent in. She had walked away from her parents and everything she had ever known in her life because of the corruption and deceit she had seen here.
    There were reasons why she was back now. One was to find the man responsible for the death of her parents. The man who had paid an international assassin known as Orion to kill them.
    She couldn’t ask Orion himself; he was dead. Taken out by an unknown group of soldiers or agents and killed in his bed. A shadowy force that didn’t even have a name. The same group that had kidnapped her in Atlanta.
    There were layers upon dark layers here, and she meant to uncover each of them. She would uncover them and learn Warbucks’s identity. When she did, then she would have her revenge. As she hadn’t had on Orion.
    The thought sent a chill up her back as she forced it away from her. She’d walked away from Orion, knowing, even as she fought the knowledge, that she didn’t have a chance of taking him on her own. She would never get the information she needed without returning here. She just hadn’t expected exactly what she had found once she came home.
    “John Vincent. What the hell are you doing in Aspen?”
    Bailey swung around at the male exclamation. Ian Richards and his wife, Kira, were in Colorado for vacation. The ex–Navy SEAL had married one of the nation’s most sought-after heiresses, Kira Porter, giving him entrée into some of the most exclusive parties.
    And there, shaking hands with the burly ex-SEAL, was John Vincent. Every background check she had done on him had shown him as shady in his dealings as well as his business. He was a suspected hardware, information, and arms broker to terrorists and drug cartels. A middleman who ensured a smooth and honest transaction among thieves.With that cover, it was only fitting that he would know Richards, whose father had been one of the most notorious drug cartel rulers alive until he was killed several years before.
    Ian was accepted here because he was a SEAL, because drugs were as prevalent as the champagne that flowed like water, and because his wife was one very rich heiress.
    “It’s been too long, John.” Kira was accepting a kiss on her cheek from lips that Bailey dreamed about much too often. “Where have you been hiding?”
    Bailey watched as John’s head lifted, glimpsed his laughing gray eyes, and ate every detail with her senses. The strong slope of his brow, the bridge of his nose, those kissable lips and broad cheekbones. Sun-bronzed flesh stretched over the broad planes and angles of his face as a dark overnight growth of beard shadowed his jaw.
    He looked like a pirate. Like a man who took what he wanted and laughed at the opposition. He looked like exactly what he was supposed to be. Dangerously charming.
    “Bailey, there you are.” Ian turned his head to her, a smile lighting his handsome features as she moved toward them. “Come meet a friend of mine.”
    Meet a friend of his. Ian had been part of the Atlanta operation, though Bailey had glimpsed him only once or twice in the operation itself. Kira had been there as well, but Bailey had always suspected that the other woman was much more than she had ever presented herself as being. So many layers, and they were all converging here.
    “Ian.” She accepted his hand as she drew closer. “I’m so glad