Kalen Mercer's Rules of Survival Rule #1: Don't get caught. Rule #2: Always get even. Rule #3: Trust Nobody. Survival isn't just a word to Ioney Mercer; it's a way of life. Having grown up in poverty in Chicago where some of the most ruthless gangs in the country preside, Ioney knows better than anyone what it takes to stay in the game. Or so she thought. When her older brother Kalen is brutally murdered and Ioney is left to take care of her younger siblings, she doesn't think things can get any worse. That is until in a cataclysmic turn of events, Ioney is thrown into a pit of danger her brother has left behind. Sinister people have suddenly developed an interest in her, she unwittingly falls into the middle of growing gang rivalries, and unfortunately manages to land herself under the scrutiny of Chicago Blood Kings Enforcer Justice Montoya. As things escalate rapidly, Ioney finds herself at a crossroads. Can she trust notoriously ruthless gangster Justice Montoya, or is he just another enemy she has to conquer in order to survive.

Keely Staub has grown up. At least that's what she thinks has happened. No longer a naive eighteen year old being introduced to a music industry that's equal parts grandeur and grime, she might even be considered a veteran. At just twenty six, she's lived almost too much of a life in the intervening years since she first came to New York. A great love and a great band, not to mention more than a few unsavoury addictions picked up along the way in the time honoured traditions of the rock stars before her. And she gave it all up - except the rock star part, of course. That was a different Keely Staub, a more innocent and wild one all at the same time. She's determined that person and all the things that came with her will stay in the past, and has a very clear path laid in front of her. A measured, smart, hopefully one day respected, path. The problem is the past refuses to remain the past.

In life there are things that are said, and then there are those that remain unsaid. For Keely Staub, her life mostly remained in the latter category. She kept the one true love, music, hidden from even her best friends. But when one song changed the world she lived in, shaking it to it's very core, everything she knows is about to change. Her future and a past even hidden from her collide as she wades through a world she'd never dared to dream of, allowing her half heart to maybe find an equally broken one in the unlikely source of Seth Ryan.