What if the paranoia that destroyed your life turned out to be the only thing that could save it?
Gabriel Cohen spent twenty years in a basement beneath Tel Aviv, reading classified files about men who did the things he was never allowed to do. He analyzed their missions. He learned their tradecraft. He memorized the patterns of violence and deception while the Agency kept him chained to a desk, convinced he was too unstable for the field.
His doctors called it a disorder. His wife called him impossible. When he finally walked away, he swore he was done with that world.
One night in Tenerife proves him wrong.
By morning, Gabriel will have crossed lines he never imagined. The desk analyst who spent two decades watching other men take action will finally learn what happens when the only way out is through.
And he’ll have to decide what kind of man he really is.
Told in real time, A Day You Won’t Forget is a relentless thriller that twists until the final page—and ends on a day that changed history.
1
One second, the room was a sanctuary of stale air and the soft, rhythmic breathing of the woman beside me. The next, the electronic beep of a key card sliced through the silence, followed by the heavy mechanical clack of the deadbolt sliding back.
My nervous system rebooted. I snapped from sound asleep to wide awake in a heartbeat. The part of my brain that had been dormant for twenty years—the part the doctors called a disorder and the Agency called an asset—seized the controls before my eyes were fully open.
Breach.
I rolled right, shoving Chloé hard. She hit the floor with a heavy thud, breath leaving her in a squeak of shock.
“Down,” I hissed.
I was naked, off the mattress, moving before the door swung full open. The room was pitch black, but the hallway light cut a yellow wedge across the carpet, framing two silhouettes with broad shoulders encased in dark suits.
The first one raised a hand, the extended shadow the suppressed barrel of a rifle swinging into the room like the snout of a hunting dog.
Kidon.
The word flashed in my mind like a neon sign. The tip of the spear. They had sent the clean-up crew.
The realization hit me with a cold, terrifying satisfaction. They cheaped out, sending contractors to paint it as a robbery rather than sending a tactical team. They finally came for me.
A terrifying surge of relief washed over me. I wasn’t crazy. The paranoia that had cost me my marriage, my career, and my sanity wasn’t a delusion. It was a forecast.
I armed myself with a heavy glass ashtray and twenty years of repressed rage.
I lunged from the shadows of the wardrobe, swinging the crystal slab with everything I had. It connected with the side of the first man’s head—a wet, sickening crunch of bone.
The man grunted, staggering sideways. The pistol flared—phut-phut—two rounds burying themselves in the drywall inches from my hip.
I immediately reacted, stepping inside his guard, grabbing the wrist of the gun hand and driving my knee into his groin. He buckled, dead weight dropping into my arms, and I spun him around just as the second shadow in the doorway raised his weapon.