Forty-one stairs. One open door. A stranger with scarred hands.
Forensic accountant Lily Yuri has spent her life trusting numbers. They behave. They confess. They never lie.
But her father has vanished, accused of embezzling twenty-three million dollars, and the only clue he left behind is a voicemail telling her to count the stairs.
When she reaches the top, her apartment has been dismantled by someone patient. Someone professional. And a man with a silenced pistol is waiting in the dark.
Then Douglas Vasto steps out of the shadows.
He's broad, still, scarred a private security operative with seven rules written on the back of a funeral program. Rule Four: Maintain professional distance. Rule One: The client's life comes first.
He was hired to keep her alive. He was not hired to want her.
But as they run from Boston to a frozen lake in Vermont, from a burned cabin to a bank vault in Burlington, Lily discovers her father left more than a cipher. He left a warning.
And the man she's falling for may be the one her father feared most.
Some rules protect. Some rules destroy. And some rules were never meant to be kept.