Counting The Cost

​“One night, one price. After that, you are mine until the debt is paid.” ​Ava Williams was the “No-Extras” girl at the Velvet Room Spa...until the $180,000 bill for her grandmother’s life-saving surgery landed on her desk. Desperate and out of options, she walks into the lion’s den: the penthouse of Nico Jordan. ​Nico is the city’s most ruthless billionaire, a man with a heart of stone and a back covered in scars he allows no one to see. Their first meeting ended with Ava’s hand across his face and a fire in her eyes that Nico hasn’t been able to forget. He doesn’t want her apology. He wants a contract. ​ The Rules are simple: ​She lives in his home. ​She obeys his commands. ​She must never fall in love. ​But as the "contract" unfolds, the cold transaction turns into a burning obsession. Ava discovers that the dominant man who "bought" her is the same broken boy she saved from a horrific fire years ago. Just as she begins to see the man behind the monster, the billionaire's elite world conspires to tear her down. ​Between a jealous socialite ex-fiancée determined to humiliate the "spa girl" and the sudden return of Ava’s first love…now a wealthy rival out for Nico’s blood. Ava is caught in a web of betrayal. ​But Nico Jordan and his enemies have made one fatal mistake: they think Ava is just a pawn. They don’t know about the secret bloodline running through her veins or the inheritance that is about to make her the most powerful woman in New York. ​He bought her for a night. He’ll have to crawl to keep her for a lifetime. WARNING!!! FOR MATURE READERS ONLY.

Finals were over, my class started planning a graduation trip, and I offered to have my family's travel agency put the itinerary together. Ten days and nine nights across five countries in Aurelia, for $999. Everyone was scrambling to sign up until the prettiest girl in class spoke up. "We're all classmates here. Isn't it a little gross to gouge us like this? "I found an agency online. All of Aurelia for five sixty-nine. There are forty of us. How big a kickback are you taking off that?" Forty hands stopped halfway through sending their deposits. "Four hundred bucks buys a lot." "Yeah, let's not." The whole class turned around and booked with her agency instead. I shrugged and let them go. At $999 all-inclusive, with airfare alone running over seven hundred, my family was already eating the difference. I knew the company behind that $569 offer. All I could do was wish them a safe trip.

Antonio has ruled the underworld for decades. A feared mafia boss with a trillion dollar empire, he operates between legitimacy and bloodshed, respected by allies and hunted by enemies. Violence is his language. Control is his law. Love has never been part of the equation except for his nine year old daughter, Ava, the only weakness he allows himself. When Ava is injured in a simple accident, Antonio brings her to a hospital in the States where he meets Dr. Minah Williams. Minah is everything his world isn’t: calm, brilliant, compassionate. A doctor in the middle of a brutal divorce, she’s spent years surviving an abusive marriage to a powerful AI specialist who discarded her for a famous model only to become dangerously obsessed when she finally begins to move on. Unlike everyone else, Minah speaks to Antonio without fear. And unlike anyone before her, Antonio listens. As an instant yet restrained connection forms, two dangerous worlds collide. Antonio’s enemies begin to circle. Minah’s ex hires investigators, stalking her from the shadows, unable to accept that another man one far more powerful has entered her life. Protection turns possessive. Desire turns deadly. And Minah is forced to confront the truth: Surrendering to Antonio may cost her the life she built… but refusing him could cost her everything. Because loving a demon always comes with a price.

Five years ago, Genevieve Winslow vanished without a word, shattering Leander Montclair's heart and leaving behind nothing but unanswered questions. Now, Leander is no longer the man she left behind. A world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon and the newly appointed CEO of Montclair Medical Group, he has built an empire with one rule—never let anyone get close enough to break him again. But fate has other plans. When Genevieve's consulting firm wins the multimillion-dollar contract to restructure Montclair Medical Group through a blind bidding process, she's forced to work side by side with the only man she's never stopped loving. Every meeting becomes a battle of pride, resentment, and undeniable attraction. While Genevieve fights to keep their relationship strictly professional, she hides the heartbreaking secret that forced her to leave five years ago—a sacrifice she made to protect Leander at the cost of her own happiness. Leander, however, refuses to let history repeat itself. This time, he won't settle for silence. He'll uncover the truth behind her disappearance, no matter how many walls she builds between them. As old wounds reopen and long-buried feelings refuse to fade, one question remains: Can love survive five years of lies and sacrifice... or will the truth destroy their last chance at forever?

Isla Bennett survives on poverty math and a meagre $14.22 bank balance until Gabriel Hunt, the ruthless, intelligent CEO known as The Debt Collector, acquires her $250,847.36 inheritance debt and forces her into a clinical, eighteen-month contract marriage. Told through an alternating first-person POV, this dark romance and financial thriller exposes the cold utility assessment behind a billionaire’s search for an asset chosen specifically for maximum compliance. In a world where finance is a weapon and boardrooms are battlefields, Isla is dragged into a thirty-year revenge plot against the Black Swan, a price-fixing syndicate that murdered her father in 1988. As Gabriel deploys mafia-style tactical teams and extraction protocols to protect his interests, Isla begins a weak-to-strong transformation. She evolves from a waitress who feels like breathing, walking furniture, into an interim CEO capable of executing the hostile absorption of forty-seven companies to dismantle her enemies. Behind the silk dresses and staged performances of a perfect couple lies a lethal game of medical hostage taking and manufactured stress tests designed to prove whether she is Option Zero, the only variable that will not break. From the glass towers of Manhattan to the remote Morrison Estate, the bought variable must choose between the $4.7 billion profit of a ghost and her own sovereignty.

Just one night — born from long hesitation and an unusual decision — changes their lives forever. Are they ready to face the consequences of a passion so wild… and so bought? Amidst fateful coincidences and the twisted games of destiny, can they still recognize love when it finally appears?