shabbyarora

As the lead piercer at Hel’s Ink, I’ve gained skills, made friends, and accepted the chaos that is my family. Finally, good things are coming my way, and I am feeling confident, maybe a little too confident, when I post a video to my socials describing the toxicity and abuse that is all too frequent in my industry and the life I left behind. After it goes viral, I get threats that move from on-screen to real life and I’m forced to come to terms with needing help.

A new standalone novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author, Vi Keeland. The night I met Drew Jagger, he'd just broken into my new Park Avenue office. I dialed 9-1-1 before proceeding to attack him with my fancy new Krav Maga skills. He quickly restrained me, then chuckled, finding my attempted assault amusing. Of course, my intruder had to be arrogant. Only, turned out, he wasn't an intruder at all. Drew was the rightful occupant of my new office. He'd been on vacation while his posh space was renovated.

Buried deep below the everyday life of our society lives an underground world of nightmares—of violence and murder no one dares speak about. Contracts and laws weave the web of our culture together. Our Masters walk amongst us. They can be our friends, or the ones to make us disappear forever. Where I once had found peace within my existence, it all ended with the death of my cruel, yet caring owner. My world shattered and I was taken back to the one place I had hoped to never see again—the cells of Whitlock—a subterranean fortress for slaves who await their new placement.

"Who did this to you?" my enemy growls. You would think the most wanted criminal kingpin in the country would be too busy racking up bodies to care about the bruise on my cheek, but nope. Here he is, holding my chin, while I pretend his touch isn’t electric. I need to hate him. Scratch that, I will hate him again. The guy decimated my family, and I've been hunting him ever since, determined to make him pay. That one night we accidentally spent together before we discovered we were sworn enemies was great.

When four thugs show up at Evergreen Gas Station with cocked shotguns and masked faces, it could have ended in the worst night of my life. Instead, a gorgeous mystery man in leather, silver, and too many tattoos strolls into the middle of the robbery and becomes my unlikely saviour with a tarnished halo.

Rosie Belmont has been driving me wild for years. The good kind of wild. The bad kind of wild. But mostly the kind of wild that comes with wanting your best friend’s little sister and knowing you can’t have her. After living in the city, she comes blasting back into Rose Hill like a storm. Beautiful, messy, and chaotic. And one wide-eyed desperate plea for a job is all it takes for me to hire her.

Hush, little baby, don't say a word . . . Will Logan choose them? Or will we watch them burn together? It's time to f--k with their minds. It's time to finish it all. It's time to paint it all red . . . Monsters don't usually wish for happily-ever-afters.

To understand the monsters in the world, you have to get inside their heads. It's a dangerous place to be, especially when you start to empathize and lose your own sense of morality. But that's never happened to me . . . I've never felt conflicted on any case. Right is right and wrong is wrong. It's simple. Black and white. There's no such thing as a gray area. But f--k this case. I don't even know what side I'm on anymore. I don't understand how this town can continue to function without breaking under the weight of all the lies they've spun and lived.

Logan Bennett makes me want to have a future not tainted by the constant hunger for revenge. Doesn't mean I can stop. Doesn't mean I want to stop. It just means I want more . . . one day. But how do you make a good man love the monster inside you without stripping his soul away as well? He is all the best parts of me right now, resurrecting bits of my heart I forgot could even exist. He makes me feel something other than cold.

I've had tunnel vision for one main goal for so long, that I forgot there was a whole other world just outside. Until Lana. She's everything I never expected, and I love the fact I can never guess her every move or reaction. It's part of the reason I keep falling. But I also know she shuts me out, hides things from me she feels she can't share. One day, I hope she trusts me enough to share. It isn't until my job puts her at risk that I realize just how fierce she is, but it doesn't stop me from doing all I can to protect her.