Knife Drop

Eidolon Avenue: Where the secretly guilty go to die. One building. Five floors. Five doors per floor. Twenty-five nightmares feeding the hunger lurking between the bricks and waiting beneath the boards. The sequel to Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast (“a great read...powerful and jarring” - Cemetery Dance) returns to the voracious Eidolon as it savors The Second Feast. A narcoleptic man in apartment 2A battles a vengeful past determined to rob him of everything as he runs from the barbaric disaster of a delusional love. A woman in 2B, reinventing herself to please a callous boyfriend, discovers the horrors that wait in the shadows of her self-renovation. The man in 2C, a teacher at the nearby Catholic girl’s school, collapses beneath the brutal consequences of his lecherous desires. An older woman in 2D, after decades dedicated to the church, is cornered at last by the grisly carnage beating at the hollow center of her faith. And a college student in 2E, hungry to escape an ignored life of invisible anonymity, finds herself captured between the pages of a ravenous book. All thrown into their own private hell as every cruel choice, every drop of spilled blood, every silent, complicit moment of cowardice is remembered, resurrected and relived to feed the ancient evil that lives on Eidolon Avenue. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

Sophia’s world shatters when her cheating boyfriend and backstabbing best friend smear her name across the city with vicious lies. Jobless, homeless, and desperate to vanish, she stumbles across a cryptic online ad: live-in tutor, remote estate, one thousand dollars an hour. She clicks apply before doubt can stop her. The mansion is breathtaking, the little girl heartbreakingly quiet, and the contract… written in blood. One crimson signature later, the gates lock behind her, and the truth claws its way out: wolves in tailored suits, monsters in the shadows, and a ruthless Alpha who orchestrated her arrival. Ethan Blackwell—billionaire, pack leader, and the stranger from her drunken one-night escape—claims her as his fated mate. He doesn’t want the bond; he’s too proud for a fragile human. But he’ll never let her leave. Worse? His two brothers circle closer, eyes glowing with the same primal hunger, ready to challenge tradition and tear the pack apart to possess her. Sophia came to hide. Now she’s the prize in a war of teeth, fate, and forbidden desire. One click. One drop of blood. No way out.

As the college entrance exams approached, I paid the top student in our class to tutor me. But the day she came over, she brought along her childhood sweetheart and insisted that he join our study sessions. I declined her request politely, and she did not press the matter further. The boy left my house in defeat and was struck by a car, suffering injuries so severe that they left him crippled. He could no longer continue his education and was forced to drop out, taking on grueling manual labor to survive. The girl continued tutoring me nonetheless. We both gained admission to the same university, grew close over time, fell in love, got married, and started a family. But on the night of our wedding anniversary, Sharon slipped poison into my soup and watched impassively as I began to convulse and vomit blood, the crimson stain spreading slowly across the floor. "This is what you owe Harry," she said with cold venom. "Taste what it's like to lose all hope." It turned out that she had harbored resentment toward me for all those years. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day she first came to my house with her friend.

The little boy I had saved when we were kids grew up to be a possessive, obsessive CEO. For ten years, he kept me by his side, using my grandmother's illness as a bargaining chip to force me into marrying him. He tried everything to win my heart, pulling every trick in the book, but no matter what he did, he could never make me love him. In a fit of rage, he found a woman who looked almost exactly like me to take my place. They flaunted their relationship for everyone to see, and people whispered that the CEO had finally found his true love. But that day, the woman, riding on his affection, barged into the villa with her entourage. She broke my fingers one by one, slashed my face with a utility knife, and removed my clothes to humiliate me. "Even though you had surgery to look like me, I'll let that slide. But you even learned to paint like me, too? You really did your homework. Let's see how you try to seduce men now!" Just as I was bleeding out and on the verge of death, the obsessive CEO finally showed up. The stand-in grabbed my hair and dragged me in front of him, smugly reporting, "Honey, this wench was hiding in the villa trying to seduce you. I've made sure she can't succeed!"

My sister-in-law, Hannah Martinez, was eight months pregnant when someone shoved her to the ground. Due to the heavy bleeding, she was rushed to the hospital. I happened to drive past, but I rolled up my window and pretended I saw nothing, pressing down on the gas pedal. In my previous life, I had immediately taken Hannah to the hospital when I saw her pass out from the blood loss. However, the situation was critical. After the severe bleeding, she developed an amniotic fluid embolism. My wife, Lauren Martinez, was the best obstetrician in the city. I called her, begging her to hurry to the hospital. Yet, she thought I was throwing a tantrum out of jealousy because she was having dinner with her first love, Isaac Poole, and his family. She believed I was using Hannah's emergency to force her to come back. By the time her family finally arrived, Hannah had already died from the failed treatment of the amniotic fluid embolism. Her entire family blamed me for Hannah's death, convinced that I had deliberately caused Lauren to misunderstand and let Hannah die. My brother-in-law, Jacob Turner, who rushed back from out of town, believed their lies. In his overwhelming grief, he hacked me to death with a knife at Hannah's funeral. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Hannah was pushed and started bleeding out.

My best friend's boyfriend was cheating, so I tagged along to bust him at a hotel. Fifteen hours until go time. Felicity Cook booked a room right next to Jake's, jaw tight. "They'll be here tonight. When the time comes, we'll catch them red-handed." Inside, I could barely keep my eyes open. She'd been a wreck since last night, and I hadn't slept a minute trying to keep her sane. Figured I had time, so I set an alarm and crashed. When I opened my eyes, a guy was lying next to me. Felicity kicked the door in and pointed at me. "Lydia Lloyd! I can't believe you betrayed me! You're my best friend! Why would you sneak around and steal my boyfriend?" I just stared, mind blank, trying to get words out. She snapped, yanked out a kitchen knife, and in front of everyone, drove it into me again and again. I hit the floor, drowning in my own blood, eyes stuck open like my body refused to let me go. I came here to catch a cheater—how did I end up the side chick? Then I blinked... and I was right back at the moment I first walked into that hotel with Felicity.

''After a few seconds of them staring at one another, Dante finally spoke. But his voice had changed; it was breathless and soft, echoing with a sweetness that Nate could have never imagined existed within him. With the knife left on his palm for Nate to grab, he cooed sheepishly, "Can you...tease me...with this?" Nate Kennedy was devastated when his parents announced their moving overseas. As for him, he was forced to move to a new city, get an apartment near his aunt and enroll in a brand new school. It all started going left when he encountered an assassin named Dante Hercules known not only in their city, but across the entire territory. But Nate didn't know he was an assassin when NAte threatened to kill him after Dante had laid a hand on his aunt. Neither did he know that Dante was into submissive sexual pleasure, relished being dominated violently and carelessly. He had been looking for someone for years and years, until now; he found Nate Kennedy. That is the deal; Nate must keep Dante sexually satisfied. If he fails, he dies, without any remorse. But that was what he thought in the beginning; what happens when emotions start to get involved? When one falls in love with the other? When the dangerous lifestyle of Dante puts Nate's life in jeopardy, which he never thought he would care for?

Alessandra Marino, 35, runs New York's most powerful criminal organization from a penthouse forty-two floors above a city she owns. She has built this empire with one purpose: to avenge her father Vittorio, murdered seventeen years ago in a warehouse on Fifth Street when Alessandra was eighteen. She has a scar above her heart from that night — a knife meant for him. She has never once questioned the direction of her war. The night she executes a traitor named Theron, she receives a call from an unknown woman who claims to know why Vittorio really died. The woman is Giuliana Torelli — daughter of the man who pulled the trigger, made to watch as a fourteen-year-old, carrying the truth for seventeen years while waiting for someone ready to hear it. What Giuliana reveals dismantles everything Alessandra believed: Vittorio wasn't killed for his power. He was killed because he was going to go federal — because his wife was pregnant with a second child and he wanted to run, to be ordinary, to give his family a life outside the empire. Thomas Accardi, the man who married Alessandra's mother after Vittorio's death, was the architect of the murder. And Accardi has always known about the second child. Her name is Mara. She is twenty-eight years old, living in Williamsburg, and completely unaware that her entire life is a lie — or that Accardi has just wired a hundred thousand dollars to a fixer named James Sullivan.

Adonis smirked, loosening his tie as he stepped closer. “Stop pretending, Zoe. Or should I say… Mrs. Walter?” His voice was low, teasing. “You’re drooling over me, admit it. I know exactly how happy you are to be married to Adonis Walter.” Zoe folded her arms, rolling her eyes. “Over my dead body.” “Oh, come on,” he said, shrugging off his tuxedo and letting it drop carelessly to the floor. “You get to have all this.” He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it aside, leaving his toned chest on full display. Defined abs, sharp collarbones, muscles that flexed with every slight movement—he looked like he walked straight out of a magazine. Zoe’s eyes betrayed her for a split second before she quickly looked away. Damn it. Even if she disliked him, she couldn’t deny the truth. This man was hot. Zoe Powers agrees to an 18-month contract marriage with Adonis Walter to save her father’s company. What starts as a deal soon turns into something real. But with Adonis’ bitter ex-girlfriend and jealous brother scheming against them, will their love survive the storm?

“You were never my true mate, Just a substitute.” Silva Coldberg believed she had it all: perfect Luna to the Alpha, respected, envied, and finally carrying the heir after three years of heartbreak. Until the night she gave birth and everything shattered. Her mate didn’t claim their son, but turned him to a sacrificial cure for his true mate. Broken, paralyzed, and left to rot in rogue territory, Silva was meant to disappear like a bad memory. But she didn’t. Rescued by her greatest enemy, Alpha David Moore of the Red Drop Pack, Silva was offered new life, marriage and power against everyone who destroyed her. No love. No mercy. Only revenge. But the longer she plays the role of his Luna, the more dangerous the lines become. His gaze lingers. His touch burns. And when her former mate comes crawling back, obsessed with the woman he doesn’t recognize, Silva must choose. Vengeance or the Alpha who might ruin her plans—and her heart. She was betrayed by her former mate, butchered by her own blood, and buried in silence. But wolves don’t stay dead. They hunt. And this time, she’s the one digging their graves.