ILIAM

In the neon-drenched, rain-slicked hellscape of Silverton City, survival is a business and loyalty is a myth. Julian Ash, a brutally efficient and notoriously unstable mercenary known as the "cyberpunk psycho," lives for one thing only: a meticulously planned, decade-old vendetta against the corporate powers that destroyed his family. His plans go off the rails when he pulls a half-dead man from a burning building. The man is Silas Wilde, his charismatic and cunning arch-nemesis, the one rival who has matched him blow for blow and scar for scar for the past five years. Five years ago, a 13-year-old Silas Wilde was the rich kid Julian Ash risked his life to save. Three months later, the kid was gone, leaving only a permanent, ring-shaped bite mark on Julian Ash’s finger. At 18, he returned, not with gratitude, but with a smug smile and a contract on Julian Ash’s life. Their bloody, obsessive dance of mutual destruction began.

I was supposed to marry one brother, but I ended up in bed with the other. On the night I caught my fiancé, Marcus, cheating, I was drunk and desperate for revenge. I didn’t care that the man I dragged into that hotel room was his younger brother, Damon Chase—the charming, useless, and notoriously wicked playboy of the Northville elite. It was just revenge. Just one night. But Damon wasn’t content to be a one-night stand. He wanted to be my kept man. “I’ll be good to you, Sylvia,” he’d whisper, his sinful eyes promising pleasure he always delivered. I knew it was a game. I just didn’t know I was the prize he was so carefully plotting to win. He said he was a broke nobody, a lost cause. I was the one who handed him a check for a quarter of a million dollars as his “allowance.” I was the one who believed him when he took a bullet for me. I was the fool who fell for the playboy. Then he served me divorce papers. The game was over. He’d gotten what he wanted—half my inheritance. The passionate lover was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating stranger who told me, “We were just business.” But he forgot one thing: I am Sylvia Hart. I don’t break. I don’t run. I play for keeps. Now he’s changed his mind. He doesn’t want the money. He wants me locked in his mansion, a prisoner of my own marriage. He says he’s not letting go. But he has no idea that the woman he’s holding captive is the one who’s about to tear his whole world apart.