Cruel Pledge

She was never supposed to be anyones collateral.

Saskia Brozović pours drinks in a Lawrenceville dive and hasnt spoken to her family in fourteen months. Then a black Cadillac pulls up at one in the morning, and her father tells her what the truce costs: a living pledge, held under the roof of the Lazarević family, for one year.

Vuk Lazarević is the familys underboss. Hes cold, precise and thirty-four, and he hasnt slept properly since the Brozovićs buried his cousins godson. He doesnt want a hostage. He especially doesnt want one who swears at breakfast, throws War and Peace at his walls, and looks at him as if shes already read the last page.

One shared bathroom. One cruel word too many. One drunk kiss in a candlelit hallway, and one snowed-in night that Vuk calls a mistake before the sun is up.

But somebody inside the house is feeding information to the Brozovićs worst. Somebody has a ledger, and a gold ring, and a plan that needs a Brozović girl locked in a room. And the man who swore to protect her may be the one who turns the key.

She can forgive a lot. She cant forgive being a thing he put down.

Broken Salt is a dark, slow-burn enemies-to-lovers mafia romance with a sharp-tongued heroine, an icy hero who has to earn it, forced proximity, jealousy on both sides, and heat that builds from the first chapter. Book One of a standalone-ending series.