A Reckless Wager for Her Virtue

The story

In the tide-locked shadows of the Black Spire, Louisa Carmichael moves like a ghost with a lethal objective. Wagered by her own father to a depraved baron, the mathematical prodigy has no intention of walking down that aisle. Her plan is elegant: enter the Spire's gaming floors, run the numbers no one else can see, and bankrupt her fiancé before the wedding bells toll. Escape by arithmetic.

But the citadel has a king. Lazarus Cole is an untouchable kingpin who treats every soul that enters his fortress as a debt waiting to be collected — and to him, the brilliant little schemer counting cards in his house is simply a "Little Mouse" caught in a labyrinth of his own design. When her scheme falters, Louisa's flawless logic becomes her cage, and Lazarus offers the only door: a midnight bargain in which the stakes are nothing less than her own surrender.

Then the tide rises, the causeway drowns, and the fortress seals itself away from the world. In the dark of the Spire, Louisa's cold equations begin to melt under Lazarus's possessive scrutiny — and the game stops being about the baron at all. She came to win back her life. She may lose her soul to the man determined to claim it, in the darkest, most dangerous bargain of the whole collection.

Tropes in this book

Arranged marriage escape Dark kingpin hero Gambling bargain Tide-locked fortress

A heroine fleeing the altar, a kingpin who deals in souls, and a wager where the house always wins — until she changes the game.

Spice level

Steamy — a full 4 out of 5. Dark, possessive, and simmering with tension from the first hand dealt — while still delivering a true, earned happily-ever-after.