Beautiful Storm (Lightning Strikes Book 1) Read Free Page A

than to protect her life. Maybe she should think about changing that...

    * * *
     
    The sixteenth floor of a building under construction was a dangerous place to be at night, especially when there were no walls, no windows and a storm with high winds and rain blowing across downtown Miami, but Michael Cordero walked off the elevator of what would one day be the Barkley Center Office Building with not a thought to the potential hazards.
    As a project manager for Jansen Real Estate Developments, he'd become accustomed to walking through tall buildings in every stage of their development, and many of those buildings soared high into the sky. His grandfather William Jansen had built a company as big and as huge as his dreams, and his properties always reflected that same sense of grandeur.
    The Barkley Building, with its decorative scalloped balconies and floor-to-ceiling windows, would be the cornerstone of a new outdoor mall that would encompass three city blocks and would eventually house a luxury hotel, convention space, upscale condos, restaurants, and retailers, all within view of the Atlantic Ocean. It would take two years to finish, but it would change the city of Miami forever.
    Miami. He sighed as he looked out at the city where he'd been born, the city where he'd gotten into trouble—not once, but twice.
    He should have known better than to come back. But it had been eight years since he'd been home for more than a weekend, so when the project had come up, he'd decided to take over the management for at least the first phase of the project. His grandfather had told him it was a bad idea. He'd said you can't go home again, and even if you can, you shouldn't.
    He really should have listened to his grandfather, because three weeks after he'd arrived, all hell had broken loose. Not with the project. The construction of phase one was on budget and on time. His professional life was in sync, but his personal life was a mess.
    All because of Liliana .
    A gust of wind sent a chill down his spine. He'd felt restless all day, and the storm that had just ripped through the city had felt like an extension of his unsettled emotions.
    During the daytime, he could work his thoughts away, but at night they always came back. With those thoughts came the guilt, the vicious circle of unanswered questions.
    He'd tried to exercise his thoughts away, but the five-mile run he'd taken in the wind and the rain had done little to ease his tension, so he'd come here—to this tall, half-finished building that he hoped would open up his mind and ease his tension.
    Drawing in several long, deep breaths, he tried to get Liliana out of his mind, but since she'd disappeared, her image seemed to permanently reside there. Every time he saw her in his head, her dark brown eyes pleaded with him to find her, to save her. But he didn't know where the hell she was.
    He hadn't actually seen her in person in eight years—since that one and only weekend trip home after his graduation from NYU. They'd texted and emailed since then, but not on a regular basis. Their childhood friendship had been left behind a very long time ago. Which was why it was so strange that she'd sent him a dozen texts the day she'd disappeared, telling him that she needed to see him, and he needed to say yes.
    He had said yes, but he'd been late getting to the restaurant—twenty minutes late. In that time, Liliana had gotten out of her car in the parking lot of his father's restaurant and vanished.
    The police had been all over him after her disappearance, asking him dozens of times about the nature of their relationship, what she wanted to talk to him about, why she'd been so determined to see him, why he'd been late—everything. He'd had no answers that satisfied the police or even himself. He didn't know why Liliana had asked to see him after so many years apart, why her texts had felt urgent and important.
    He was thirty years old now, and Liliana was twenty-eight. A lifetime