The Xiphos Protocol

In 2010, a nation gripped by recession and war is no place for a man with nothing left to lose. Jason Kontos was no special-operations ghost; he was just a regular U.S. Army soldier, a man trained for a battlefield he barely saw. Then a tragic accident stole his fiancée and his future, leaving him adrift and haunted. A year later, he finds an unexpected anchor in Sofia Ramos, a fierce, vulnerable woman on the run from a nightmare of her own. Two broken souls, they forged a connection that was as fast and fierce as it was fleeting-a brief light in Jason's encroaching darkness. But when Sofia is brutally murdered and the case vanishes into a bureaucratic black hole, Jason's grief hardens into a cold, singular purpose: vengeance. Now, he must take the skills of a common soldier and forge himself into a weapon the shadows have never seen.His only ally is his old neighbor, Donovan Muller, a grizzled spy at the helm of Presidion Risk Management, his private security company. He took on the role of Jason's father figure after the death of his parents, but the ever-growing demands of the CIA left the two estranged. With a debt to pay, Donovan gives Jason a new name, a new mission, and a target: Regimental Directives Group, a private military company acting as the enforcement arm for a sadistic conspiracy of power. At its head is Isador Blackwood, a philanthropist billionaire who uses his fortune and influence to hunt human beings for sport.The only person who can expose the truth is Rachel Bell, a sharp and ambitious student journalist at Georgetown. As Jason wages a one-man war in the shadows-leaving a trail of bodies from the streets of D.C. to the Mojave desert-Rachel follows the trail of secrets, inching closer to a truth that could get her killed. Bound by a shared cause…