Loving in my stepuncle's bed

" Never search for secrets in a killer's bed"

I came to Blackwood Isle with a single objective: uncover the financial trail linking my supposedly dead father to the Sterling empire. I expected a cold corporate audit. I didn't expect to be trapped in an ocean-locked fortress with Nikolai Sterling, my ruthless, towering, and forbidden stepuncle. Nikolai is an ex-intelligence operative turned private security kingpin. He is thirty-nine, calculating, and carved out of Maine granite. For five years, he has hunted the shadow syndicate that murdered his younger brother, trusting no one and answering to nobody. He made his rules crystal clear the second my boots touched his dock: Don't wander the corridors alone. Don't look into files you weren't hired to see. And don't look at me like you want to be ruined. Then the storm cuts the power. A body drops in the east wing. A sniper’s bullet shatters my bedroom window. And to keep me breathing, Nikolai drags me into his reinforced master suite. One secure room. One bed. Two enemies bound by five years of blood, grief, and a lethal mutual obsession. He claims I'm just an assignment he has to keep alive. But every rough demand, every possessive touch against my bare skin, and every breathless kiss in the firelight tells another story: he would burn his family’s empire to the bedrock before he lets anyone take me from his arms. When the secrets unravel and the island turns into a war zone, the math is terrifyingly simple: Falling into his sheets was never part of the audit. Surviving him might cost me my heart.