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Chapter 16: The Scorpion
publish date:
2026-08-22 12:00:00
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ROUGH TRADE # Author's Note
Hi, reader.If you made it all the way to this page, thank you. Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart — you spent your time with characters I built out of nothing but stubbornness and a laptop, and that is not a small thing to give someone. I don't take it for granted, ever.A quick note for anyone who wandered in without the warning up front: this book is adult romance, explicit, and entirely fictional. Everything in these pages — the heat, the tension, the messier feelings, all of it — exists to entertain consenting adult readers who want a story that doesn't fade to black at the good part. If that's you, welcome. You're exactly who I'm writing for.Writing romance — the steamy, unapologetic, adult kind — is genuinely the thing I love most. I love slow burns that make you yell at your screen. I love the moment two characters stop pretending they don't want each other. I love writing the tension right up until it snaps, and then writing what happens after. This genre gets dismissed
ROUGH TRADE Chapter 30: Blue Shutters
Three months later.The house was small, white, with blue shutters and a garden that grew wild because neither of them had a talent for plants. It sat on a street in a town that neither of them had heard of before they’d moved there, a town on the coast of a country that wasn’t theirs, where the language wasn’t theirs, where the life they were building was strange and new and imperfect and theirs.Isabella was three months old, and she was the center of everything. She slept in a crib beside the bed, and Nina woke at every sound, every shift, every breath, the hypervigilance of a cop turned to the purpose of a mother. Cruz made bottles and changed diapers and walked the floor at three in the morning when Isabella cried, and he did it with the same intensity he’d once brought to running an empire, and Nina watched him and felt her heart break open a little more every day.The deal Marsh had cut was complicated. Cruz had cooperated fully, turning over e
ROUGH TRADE Chapter 29: The Airstrip
The dawn came gray and slow, the jungle mist rising off the trees, the ocean turning from black to steel to the pale gold of early morning. The firefight had stopped at first light, Damián's men pulling back to regroup, to tend to their wounded, to plan their next move. The cave entrance was dark with powder burns, the rock chipped where bullets had struck. Emilio was out of shotgun shells. Mateo had three rounds left in the Glock. Cruz had one magazine for the SIG.Nina sat in the back of the cave with Isabella against her chest, the baby sleeping, her small fist curled around Nina's finger, and she watched the three men at the cave entrance and thought about what came next.They couldn't stay. The cave was defensible but not impregnable, and when Damián's men came again, they'd come with more, and with grenades, and the cave would become a tomb. They needed to move. But move where? The island was small, the jungle thick, the beach controlled by Damián's boat
ROUGH TRADE Chapter 28: The Cave
The baby came at three in the morning.Not from the assault, not from the fear, not from the running. From time. From biology. From the simple fact that the baby had been ready for days, and the stress and the running and the cliff paths and the gunshots had finally pushed her body over the edge.Nina felt the first contraction in the cave, a wave of pain that gripped her abdomen and squeezed, and she gasped and doubled over and grabbed the wall, and the SIG nearly slipped from her fingers."Cruz," she gasped. "The baby. It's coming."He was at her side in an instant, his face going white, the gun forgotten. "Now? Here?""Now." Another contraction, harder, and she felt something give, a warmth between her legs, her water breaking, and she knew there was no stopping this."We can't do this here," Mateo said, his eyes on the cave entrance where Emilio was still positioned, listening to the jungle. "We need to move her somewher
ROUGH TRADE Chapter 27: The Island
The shot cracked through the jungle like a whip, and Nina's head snapped up from the porch where she'd been checking the trip wires."That's not ours," she said to Emilio, who was already on his feet, the shotgun up, his eyes scanning the ridge."Someone's out there," Emilio said. "One shot. From the east ridge. That's not Damián's style. They don't use handguns."Nina's mind raced. One shot, from a handgun, from the ridge. Not Damián's men, who would come from the sea, not the land, and who would use rifles, not pistols. Someone else was on the island."Cruz," she called into the house. "Someone's on the east ridge. One shot. Handgun."Cruz appeared in the doorway, the SIG in his hand, his face hard. "Damián?""I don't think so. Wrong weapon, wrong position. Damián's coming by sea.""Then who?"Before either of them could answer, a voice came from the jungle, calling in Spanish. "Cruz. Cruz, it's Mateo. Do
ROUGH TRADE Chapter 26: Run
Mateo Navarro had never been to Colombia. He'd never been south of Tijuana, in fact, his entire career and life contained within the borders of Los Angeles County and the occasional trip to Vegas. But he'd been a narcotics detective for eight years, and he spoke Spanish like a native, and he knew how to find people who didn't want to be found, and he'd spent the last month doing exactly that.He'd landed in Cartagena two days ago, a tourist with a backpack and a smile, and he'd started asking questions. The island wasn't secret. It was known to the locals, a small place off the coast, a place where rich Americans owned property and locals fished and nobody asked questions. Mateo had hired a boat, a fisherman named Jorge who took tourists to the island for diving and didn't care about the backstory of the man paying him double.The boat left at dawn, and Mateo sat in the bow and watched the coast of Colombia fall away behind him, and he thought about his brothe
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