She built her firm from nothing. Three hundred million under management. Twenty-two staff. A reputation that took fourteen years to construct.
She's not going to let a man she's never met walk into her boardroom and make her a problem.
Nikolai Zolotov is not offering her a problem.
He's offering her the only exit she has.
For four years, Valentina Cruz has been managing an exposure she didn't create — forty million dollars of someone else's money, routed through her firm's infrastructure by a network that needed exactly the kind of legitimacy she'd spent a decade building. She found it. She tried to fix it. She discovered, over fifteen months of careful attempts, that every exit route had been sealed. By someone who needed her in place.
Nikolai tells her who. He tells her why. He tells her what he needs from her: one transaction, defined scope, completely clean. In exchange — not immunity. Erasure. Her firm's name simply not in the filing.
He walks into her boardroom at ten past eleven on a Tuesday with the ease of someone who has already decided how this ends.
She decides to let him think that.
What neither of them planned for is everything that comes after.
Wild Card is a full-length dark romance built on slow-burn power negotiation, two people who are professionally excellent at reading other people, and the very specific tension of equals in a room. He arrived with a calculated advantage. She found a counter-move. Neither of them is sure anymore what game they're playing.
Reader Advisory: Adult content. Organised crime setting. Themes include financial crime, regulatory exposure, and prosecution proceedings. Intended for mature readers. Series finale — HEA.
She's not going to let a man she's never met walk into her boardroom and make her a problem.
Nikolai Zolotov is not offering her a problem.
He's offering her the only exit she has.
For four years, Valentina Cruz has been managing an exposure she didn't create — forty million dollars of someone else's money, routed through her firm's infrastructure by a network that needed exactly the kind of legitimacy she'd spent a decade building. She found it. She tried to fix it. She discovered, over fifteen months of careful attempts, that every exit route had been sealed. By someone who needed her in place.
Nikolai tells her who. He tells her why. He tells her what he needs from her: one transaction, defined scope, completely clean. In exchange — not immunity. Erasure. Her firm's name simply not in the filing.
He walks into her boardroom at ten past eleven on a Tuesday with the ease of someone who has already decided how this ends.
She decides to let him think that.
What neither of them planned for is everything that comes after.
Wild Card is a full-length dark romance built on slow-burn power negotiation, two people who are professionally excellent at reading other people, and the very specific tension of equals in a room. He arrived with a calculated advantage. She found a counter-move. Neither of them is sure anymore what game they're playing.
Reader Advisory: Adult content. Organised crime setting. Themes include financial crime, regulatory exposure, and prosecution proceedings. Intended for mature readers. Series finale — HEA.
Used availability for Danielle Kent's Wild Card