Aiden Slate. Pro hockey star. Captain of the Redville Saints. And the bane of my existence. All it takes is a little liquid courage to storm his castle. Or, in this case, a cushy five-star hotel suite. I'm supposed to give him a piece of my mind. To unleash a decade of pent-up anger. What I'm not supposed to do is sign an NDA meant for another woman. He thinks I'm here to relieve his stress. Well, he's in for a rude awakening.

In the heart of sultry New Orleans, Scarlett Prejean's life, filled with beauty and ambition, is marred by a haunting presence—her abusive husband, Joshua. As the proud owner of a cozy bookstore and a haven of coffee and literature, she seeks solace amid the unrelenting cruelty of her marriage. But fate takes a dark and unexpected turn when Joshua makes a chilling decision: he hires Bane, an assassin bound by a relentless code, to bring Scarlett's life to a tragic end. What Joshua doesn't foresee is the profound twist that awaits.

Thanks to my needy pet rat, I’m banned from working at all Florida theme parks. So what’s a person to do? Get a job as a mascot for a local hockey team, of course. I didn’t expect to get pushed into a pool on my first day by the grouchiest, hottest player on the team. Nor could I have imagined that we’d get locked into an evacuated building together and share an angry kiss that would get caught on video. Or that said video would go viral, sending ticket sales for our games through the roof.

Our pasts were a part of us. Definitively. Irrevocably. Mine hijacked my dreams every night, drowning me in guilt and staining my hands red. It wasn't just a part of me, it stole a piece of me—the piece that stopped me from letting people get too close. And I'd become pretty damn good at playing the untouchable asshole card just to keep them away. But apparently, Dakota Samuels didn't get that memo.

According to the FBI, I was considered a serial murderer after three kills. What do they call me after fifty-two? They call me the Silencer. One final bullet would have been all it took to stop me from taking another soul, and I would have been doing Meridian City a service by pulling that trigger. An angel crying for help stopped me, and that night, I took three lives for her. Then three turned into eight. Then eight turned into twenty. Twenty turned into twenty-one. Twenty-one turned into twenty-three.