Graves

Zayden Graves—killer, mercenary, identical twin—bleeds out in a Seattle alley after a botched job leaves him shot three times.

Zayden Graves—killer, mercenary, identical twin—bleeds out in a Seattle alley after a botched job leaves him shot three times. Before darkness takes him, he sees her: a blonde woman with headphones drifting past, utterly unaware of the dying predator twenty feet away. He calls her his angel. His twin Dominic finds him barely alive and rushes him to their off-the-books surgeon. When Zayden wakes, the only thing he remembers is her face. Within weeks, he tracks her to a dive bar called Hooked & Sinker, memorizes her schedule, breaks into her apartment, and begins sleeping beside her while she sleeps. For three months, Blake Carlson has no idea he exists. She only feels something slightly off each morning.

Zayden's arrest sends his twin to guard Blake

Three months into his surveillance, Zayden spots a man trailing Blake home from the bar. He intercepts, gouges the man's eyes out, and stabs him—but police arrive before he can finish. He plays victim, but they cuff him anyway. From jail, he makes one demand of Dominic: go to Hooked & Sinker, find the blonde bartender, keep her safe. Dominic doesn't know what he's walking into. He only knows his brother has never asked for anything with such desperate sincerity. Zayden is denied bail, his lawyer warns the hearing is months out. Meanwhile, Zayden can barely function—not from his wounds, but from the distance between himself and the woman he's claimed as his own without ever speaking to her.

Dominic was supposed to watch her, not want her

Blake's mismatched eyes—one brown, one blue—unravel Dominic on contact. He returns to the bar nightly, silent in his corner booth, nursing untouched scotch. When a college kid slaps Blake's ass, something snaps: Dominic launches from his seat and chokes the man unconscious. Blake touches his face to pull him back to reality, and that single contact rewires everything. He walks her home. She kisses him first, but he deepens it until neither can breathe. He tells her his name—Dominic—and nothing else. He was supposed to guard his brother's obsession from safe distance. Instead, he keeps returning, falling deeper, knowing that when Zayden discovers this betrayal, blood will follow.

She trades her empty apartment for his penthouse and secrets Their relationship accelerates through lunch dates, foot massages, and sex against his mechanic shop desk—a business he owns alongside a security company, both fronts for darker work Blake doesn't suspect. They share fragments of their pasts: Blake's parents died violently when she was six, and she bounced through foster care. Dominic's parents died too, he says, and he grew…