Five Brothers

After Trace's betrayal, an unknown brother claims her in the dark

Krisjen Conroy—eighteen, broke, abandoned by her father, and pressured by her mother to marry a wealthy older man—has been hooking up with Trace Jaeger, the youngest of five brothers who run the wild settlement of Sanoa Bay across the tracks from her St.

After Trace's betrayal, an unknown brother claims her in the dark

Krisjen Conroy—eighteen, broke, abandoned by her father, and pressured by her mother to marry a wealthy older man—has been hooking up with Trace Jaeger, the youngest of five brothers who run the wild settlement of Sanoa Bay across the tracks from her St. Carmen life. When Trace reveals he used their last condoms with someone else, then parades a backup girl to his room, Krisjen walks out for good. But Aracely, a territorial Bay woman, slashes her tires, stranding her on the Jaeger couch overnight. In the dark, Krisjen pleasures herself—and realizes someone is watching. He approaches. Holds her. Speaks only in whispers, wears the family's leather bracelet, and makes love to her with an intensity none of the others matched. She never sees his face.

Iron fixes Krisjen's car, confronts her abusive ex, and offers a lifeline

The morning after the couch, Krisjen studies each brother at breakfast—Army, Iron, Dallas, Trace—searching for a tell. All wear identical bracelets on the same wrist. Iron, twenty-four and heading to prison in a week for assault, has already fixed her damaged tires and drives her home on his motorcycle. She wraps her arms around him and wishes the ride wouldn't end. Back in St. Carmen, her mother lays out the plan: Krisjen will seduce Jerome Watson, a thirty-two-year-old lawyer, and eventually marry him to rescue the family from the financial ruin her father caused by abandoning them. When Krisjen returns to the Bay despite swearing she wouldn't, Iron spots her abusive ex Milo Price at the local motel and nearly attacks him. Milo taunts about wife-swapping circles among the Saints. Army drags Iron back before the arrest.

Iron traps Krisjen in the Bay, and she starts earning her place Iron slashes the tire on Krisjen's father's old Benz to trap her in the Bay, then speeds off to work laughing while she curses him from the street. Macon—the eldest brother at thirty-one, former Marine, and the family's silent, forbidding patriarch—grudgingly agrees to fix both her cars. Army, the second eldest and a single father to infant Dex, persuades Krisjen to work at Mariette's restaurant while she waits. She discovers she's a natural—fast under pressure, warm with customers, good at multitasking on roller skates. She starts covering doubles, running food to the bar next door, and delivering meals…