Quotes From The Summitt

A month before the SATs, I, Jenny Reid, could see my score. Literally. It was just floating right above my head. But there was a catch. Every time I cracked open a prep book, my score would drop by ten points. But if I skipped a day of school? It jumped right back up by ten. So, I played the system. For a whole month, I barely lifted a finger. And on the day of the test, the number glowing over my head was a solid 1560. When the scores finally dropped online… I'd scored a 500. And the 1560? That was my little sister Patricia's score. My parents lost it. As punishment, they got me a grueling night-shift job at a local electronics factory. That first night, a bunch of guys I'd never seen before cornered me in the parking lot and beat me half to death. Fading in and out of consciousness, I heard my sister's voice right by my ear. "You just had to one-up me, didn't you? Thought you were so smart… but you never figured out I was the one controlling that number over your head." The truth hit me like a physical blow. The score had been her trick all along. I opened my eyes—and I was back. One month before the SATs. The number above my head read exactly 1300. "Hey," my sister said, all fake sweetness. "Want to study together tonight? We can go over the practice tests." I looked at the stack of papers in my own hands. Without a word, I pulled out my lighter and set them on fire right there in the driveway. "Exams are coming," I said, watching the flames. "I'm not studying." My score ticked up to 1310. My sister's face was this perfect mask of disappointment, but the second I turned away, I caught the sly smile she couldn't quite hide. She had no idea… the real performance, the one I'd been rehearsing just for her, was finally about to begin.

My sister Emily and I were both given a Destiny System, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to change our futures. In our first life, Emily chose the Beauty System. She thought beauty would make every powerful man fall at her feet. Instead, it only made her a pretty toy for rich heirs to admire and discard. When she failed to earn genuine love before the deadline, the system took everything back. Her beauty vanished, her admirers disappeared, and she ended up broke, abandoned, and bitter. I chose the Elite Athlete System. I trained until my body nearly broke, became America’s youngest Olympic champion, shattered records, and built a legendary career. Fame, fortune, and success were all mine. Even Ethan Walker, the heir to one of the country’s most powerful old-money families, chased after me. Emily hated me for it. So she rammed her car into mine and killed me. When I opened my eyes again, we were both sixteen, standing before the Destiny System on the very day we first made our choices. This time, Emily shouted before I could speak. “I choose the Elite Athlete System!” She looked at me with a smug smile. “Olivia, this time I’ll be the one everyone admires.” I looked at the Beauty System now drifting toward me and smiled. Emily thought she had stolen my golden future. She had no idea that every gift fate offers comes with a price.

Lena Marchetti, twenty-eight, operates on fumes. Her father Marco's cancer treatments have swallowed her savings and the final credits of her degree. She interns at Croft Industries, a glass tower engineered to diminish. She is invisible, sweat gluing her blouse to her spine, until she drops Julian Croft's Montblanc pen. The crack on marble halts breath. She scrabbles on cold stone. When she lifts her chin, Julian crouches beside her. He doesn't retrieve the pen. He waits. His gray eyes hold hers, and heat floods her neck, damp and unwelcome. "You break it, you buy it," he says. "And you can't afford it." He leaves her kneeling. At 3:17 AM, her phone blares: Croft. Office. One hour. She goes. His office smells of leather and ozone. He slides a contract across the desk. Six months. Exclusivity. Her compliance. In exchange, her father's debt dissolves. Her signature slants, barely legible. After her best friend Dani labels Julian a sociopath, Lena sobs in the service elevator. He finds her. "Come with me." He escorts her to a 24-hour diner. He orders cherry pie, slides it across formica. She is wrecked—blotched skin, swollen lids. He studies her as if memorizing the topography of her distress. He teaches her to fence. She lunges, jabs his ribs. He laughs in that rusted, startled way that travels up her calves. She registers: I manufactured that sound. Elara Vance, Julian's former mentor who sold his first deal for a board seat, resurfaces. She invites Lena to lunch, offers employment. "He'll never perceive you as an equal. Work for me. Become a threat." The words burrow. Lena's palms dampen at his touch. While Julian travels, she picks the lock of a hidden room. A library.

Blurb: As the only Omega coach in a ruthless male-dominated league, Pearl's career is hanging by a thread. Her school's basketball team hasn't won a game in months and the board is ready to replace her. Desperate to keep her job, Pearl does the unthinkable. She recruits 6 elite players from her past. 6 Alphas. 6 heartbreaks. 6 men she swore she'd never see again. But there's a catch... She has to be bonded to all 6 of them. Please note that this might not be like your usual dark romance. The male leads in this book are going to do things twisted so please proceed with caution.

At forty, Lucian Vale has everything a man is supposed to want—a billion-dollar empire, a beautiful wife, two children, and a reputation powerful enough to silence an entire boardroom. Immaculately controlled and brutally intimidating, he has spent twenty years ensuring that neither desire nor weakness could ever rule him.Then Seraphina Laurent becomes his secretary.Fresh out of college, twenty-two-year-old Seraphina appears almost painfully innocent. She is soft-spoken, unfailingly thoughtful, and quick to hide behind a shy smile whenever Lucian looks at her for too long. Yet beneath her sweetness lives a calculating young woman who learned early that innocence is most useful when other people believe in it.Raised in a broken home, betrayed by the mother who chose a predatory husband over her own daughter, Seraphina has survived by studying people, discovering what they want, and quietly becoming indispensable to them. She doesn’t join Vale International merely to answer phones and arrange meetings. She wants money, influence, security—and a life in which no one will ever have the power to hurt her again.Lucian is supposed to be another step in her carefully constructed plan.But seducing a married billionaire is easier than surviving what happens after he begins to want her.What starts with lingering glances and calculated touches becomes a dangerously consuming affair. Behind locked office doors and beneath the polished surface of Lucian’s marriage, desire turns into possession, ambition into obsession, and Seraphina’s perfect mask begins to crack. In a world where love is leverage and loyalty has a price, Seraphina must decide whether she wants Lucian’s heart, his fortune, or the power to ruin him.Because she may be his sweetest temptation—but she has always been her own most dangerous lie.

Blurb My father paid a hockey god to be my babysitter. Now he's the one I need saving from. Rule #1: Don't fall for the man your father is paying to watch you. I never was good with rules. When Coach Hartwell hired his star player, Ray Collins, to be my secret shadow, he thought he was protecting his "naive" daughter from the party scene. He didn't know Ray would become my obsession. Ray is arrogant, possessive, and everything I swore to hate. But when my picture-perfect world shatters, he's the only one who shows up. His hands are meant to report my every move. Instead, they trace secrets on my skin. This was a business transaction. Cash for protection. But you can't put a price on the way he looks at me or the way my heart races knowing every touch is a lie we're both choosing to believe.