Novels by Queen's pen

Virelle Ashbourne gave Kael Hartwell four years of quiet devotion. She learned to love a man who barely looked up from his phone, who forgot her birthday twice, who called her sweet and dependable the way a man might describe a good umbrella. She told herself patience was a kind of strength. Then she found out she was pregnant, and for one golden afternoon she believed her waiting had finally paid off. That night she overheard him laughing with another woman, telling a room full of strangers that if his wife disappeared tomorrow, nothing in his life would change. She didn't scream. She didn't beg. She packed a single suitcase, signed the divorce papers he handed back without reading, and boarded a plane before he even noticed the pregnancy test box hidden under their bed. Five years later, Kael Hartwell is the most powerful man in Ravenscourt and the emptiest. He has spent half a decade searching for the wife he let walk away, never once suspecting she carried his child onto that plane. When a stubborn, sharp-tongued five year old gets lost in a shopping mall and grabs his hand, mistaking him for someone else entirely, Kael feels something crack open in his chest that he cannot name. He is looking at his own eyes staring back at him from a child's face. Virelle has rebuilt everything Kael once made her doubt. But Kael has finally learned what he lost, and a man who has lost everything has nothing left to be afraid of. He is done being careful. He is done being cold. The question is whether five years of silence can ever be forgiven, or whether some doors, once closed, are closed forever.