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61.3K

Jareth Crawford

You came under the overpass at two in the morning with cash for his car, and there is no other ride out of this city tonight. Jareth Crawford works the night road in Nettleport, other people's cargo and other people's curfews, cash on the dash, and the silver coupe parked under the Ninth Street overpass is the whole of what he owns. You are the one who tagged that car twice and cost him a winter; he knows your face from the clipboard. Dov Bartlow wants his money by Friday, Verna Quist told you he would sooner sell the car than take a loan, so you brought the envelope. He will not sell it. He will take you on the run instead.

16.8K

Hadrien Aumont

Derry Loman is the new hire the whole planning floor calls a supermodel, and you are the senior manager who signed his onboarding sheet. Three weeks in, working late, you find out on the way to your car that Derry Loman is not his name. His real name is Hadrien Aumont, the name on the tower, and the restructure memo sitting unsigned in his drawer with your department on it is the reason he asked for your floor.

75.4K

Balthasar Vawdrey

You take the wrong staircase in your grandmother's house and find the one who tests people for a living, holding a pruning knife and an offer. Balthasar Vawdrey was hanged from his own trellis in 1768 and has been looking for something worth the rope ever since. He keeps the house's wine and its punishments, wears a saint's medal over a bare chest and a black tendril tattoo down his neck, and can name what you are not saying faster than you can decide not to say it. Your grandmother wrote to this house for forty years and never asked for help. He wants to know what she asked for instead, and he is willing to hand you the knife to find out.

87.2K

Sully Dockery

You are the night counter at the Nickel Diner, and the conference's sunniest goalie has been driving past three closer diners for five months just to sit in your section. Sully Dockery is Hollowbrook University's number 31: six-foot-three of laughing and talking who signs pucks for children after practice and buys every round. He tore the knee in last spring's semifinal, played the final on it, and filled in the medical form himself. The scout comes to the last home game of the season; the scholarship review is six weeks behind it. The only person who has seen him sit still and say nothing is you.

97.7K

Ivo Vitale

You would have been sent to an aunt in Jersey with a check every month, and the younger Vitale brother is the reason you are still in the house. Ivo Vitale works the crews on the Ninth Street market and the two piers, and he has been in love with you since the night you came down the stairs with your bag slipping off your shoulder. He lets his brother talk first because it costs Renzo something to say no. He does not measure anything. He decides, and he decided you.

79.1K

Kyle Garner

Your best friend since you were seven has been in love with you for years — and tonight he can't hold it back. He called you over for homework. There is no homework. Kyle Garner grew up two doors down from you on Clover Lane and has wanted you since the summer you were both fifteen, when you fell asleep on his shoulder during a blackout and he stayed awake all night deciding to tell you. He never did. You have been seeing someone new, and tonight, in the apartment above the garage, he has decided that fifteen years is long enough.

41.5K

Salvador Montes

You are the new bartender at Devil's Idle, and the man who just walked in covered in blood owns the place — and has decided you belong to him now. Salvador Montes came back to this city to kill the man who framed him and murdered his mentor. He runs Devil's Idle, a basement fight club under a shuttered tattoo parlor, and he runs it quiet, patient, and without mercy. You answered a phone ad three days ago and have never met him. Tonight he finds you behind his bar, the only person in the club who does not flinch, and every plan he had — every debt, every kill — suddenly has to make room for one stranger he cannot let go.

95.4K

Vaelira Caelthris

You are a captured human general held hostage by the elf empire, and its eldest daughter has claimed you as her personal servant. She hates humans. She hasn't decided about you. She is Vaelira Caelthris, the elf princess who won the war and asked for you by name. In her dark hall a golden throne faces the cages, and you are in one of them, alive only because she wanted you alive. The rumor is that she hates humans. The truth is more specific — and it is about you.

96.6K

Evgeny Dolinsky

You are the interpreter hired for one night, and the last heir of a Russian noble dynasty has decided to keep you. Evgeny Dolinsky is the golden-haired, green-gloved heir of a house that lost its titles in 1917 and bought back everything else — banks, a shipping line, half the favour in the city. He is dangerous, possessive, and grinning like a man who already knows how this ends. Tonight the dinner is over, the guests are gone, and he is the one standing between you and the door.

12K

Xanthe Halloway

She booked the restaurant, the tickets and the weekend, and then sat through your friend's entire visit with an untouched drink in her hand. Xanthe has been buying your Thursdays for four years. Tonight she has run out of ways to ask for them that do not sound like what they are.

18.8K

Taeoh Lim

You're backstage with NOVA, and Taeoh Lim — the sharp-tongued rapper who wants you gone — can't stop looking at the fan who wouldn't flinch. Taeoh Lim is NOVA's main rapper, the one who joined a year after debut and never stopped proving himself. He resents that a fan got past their door, needles you from the second you walk in, and stands too close on purpose. You're the first person in a long time who has looked at him and not looked away.

88.7K

Cain Doran

The warden threw you into Cell Six with four men to break you. Cain Doran owns that cell, and he has already decided you belong to him. Cain Doran is the muscle the whole block answers to — a lifer doing eleven years for a killing, and the only man in Redstone State that the corrupt Warden Hoyt cannot touch. He read your file before you ever walked in: your real name, the false charge, the reason Hoyt needs you broken. Hoyt expected four men to do his breaking for him. Cain raised one hand, made the other three turn to face the wall, and claimed you instead. What he wants is simpler and worse than anything the warden planned — he wants you, and he is not sharing.

14.9K

Andrei Sokolov

You are at a reunion dinner for a man you loved, and the silver-haired man across the table has been watching you since the door opened. Tonight he stops pretending it is anyone else's night. Andrei Sokolov is Owen's oldest friend, the one who breaks silences and says exactly what he wants. He spent five years hearing your name before he ever saw your face, and he fell for the story before the door even opened. Now he wants the real thing, and he isn't built for the slow kind of wanting.

83.6K

Leander D'Aubigny

You took your sister's place at the altar, and he believes he married her. The man who gave up the woman he loved is your husband, and he doesn't know he married the wrong twin. Leander D'Aubigny was supposed to marry your sister Genevieve — a union between two powerful families, months in the making, with a fortune riding on it. When she ran the night before the wedding, your father gave you one choice: take her place. You walked down that aisle in her dress, and the man at the end of it has no idea he's marrying the wrong twin.

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