CODE NAME: GRIT

Releasing July 8, 2025

He dedicated his life to exposing corruption.
She spent her life in hiding, protected by secrets.
Neither expected their investigation of another notorious crime family to lead to an attraction that could destroy them both.

GRIT
I've spent my career taking down corrupt organizations, but protecting Chiara Castellano is testing every ounce of my control. She might be Alessandro's sister, but she's nothing like the hardened criminals I'm used to dealing with. She's brilliant, beautiful, and determined to help bring down the Belcastro family—even if it means putting herself in danger. My job is to keep her safe, not fantasize about crossing every professional line I've ever drawn. But in the shadows of a Manhattan safe house, with a hit squad closing in, those lines are starting to blur...

CHIARA

Everyone thinks they know who I am—the sheltered half-sister of a mob boss, raised in hiding, too innocent to understand the dangerous world I was born into. But they're wrong. I know exactly what I want, and right now that's helping Grit investigate the family threatening everything we've built. He thinks he needs to protect me, but I've spent my whole life being protected. What I need is for him to see me as more than just another person to guard. When we end up trapped together, all those careful barriers he's built start to crumble. Now I just have to convince him that some risks are worth taking.

Prologue
Grit

The panic room was eight feet by ten feet of reinforced steel and concrete, but with Chiara Castellano pressed against me in the darkness, it felt more confining than any space I’d ever occupied. The backup generator had kicked in when the assholes outside this room cut the power, casting everything in a dim red glow that made her olive skin look luminous.

“How long until your team realizes we’re trapped in here?” Her voice was soft, controlled despite the fear—or something else entirely—that had her pulse racing where her body almost touched mine. Her breath was warm against my neck, making it impossible to ignore how close we were.

“Could be hours.” 

When she shifted slightly, her body brushed against me in ways that tested every ounce of my self-control. I could step away, but nowhere in this room would be far enough. The small space in one of K19 Sentinel Cyber’s safe houses was designed for security, not to live in. It did have a few creature comforts in the way of furniture—two chairs, a table, and most dangerous of all, a bed.

“Anything?” she asked when I pulled out my cell to check for a signal.

“SOS only, which is all we need.”

“What do we do now, Grit?” My code name on her lips sent heat racing through my veins. For weeks, I’d been fighting this attraction, telling myself she was too young, too innocent, and worst of all, Dante Castellano’s younger sister. If my new partner had the ability to read minds and discovered the depth of my desire for her, I had no doubt he’d abandon his vow to be on the side of the good guys, so to speak, and kill me with his bare hands.

“We wait.” And pray I could maintain my resolve not to lay a hand on the woman who seemed to do everything in her power to break my will. I couldn’t stifle my groan when she pressed her full breasts against my chest and I could feel her hardened nipples through her svelte black catsuit.

When a bead of sweat ran down her neck, disappearing under her neckline, my hand twitched at my side, wanting to follow its path. She noticed—of course. Chiara never missed anything, especially not when it came to the way my body betrayed me around her.

“I see how you watch me during training,” she whispered, her voice hitting something primal in my chest. “When you think no one’s looking. When you’re teaching me how to fight, how to move.” Her body pressed harder against mine. “How to survive.”

I remembered every moment. Each time she’d pinned me on the mats, lingering a second too long. The way she’d catch my eye across the command center, that ghost of a smile playing at her lips. Six weeks of torture, watching her transform from someone I thought I could resist into a woman I couldn’t stop wanting.

The iron control I fought so hard to hang onto was slipping.

“Chiara—” Her name on my lips sounded like a warning, or more of a prayer, but she didn’t relent. Instead, she leaned in close enough for me to feel her heart hammering against my chest, matching the desperate rhythm of my own.

“I’ve never been as innocent as you think, Grit.” Her breath against my neck went from warm to scorchingly hot, and, God, how I wanted to take what she was offering. But I couldn’t. I somehow had to figure out how the hell to keep myself from crossing a line I couldn’t step back from.

And based on the way Chiara was looking at me, that line was about to disappear completely.