Inspector Evelyn Laurent is used to being underestimated. At twenty-seven, she is young, brilliant, highly skilled and looks nothing like what people expect from a homicide officer. With her doll-like beauty, long brown hair and polished appearance, most people assume she belongs anywhere but a police station. They usually change their minds after working with her. After rejecting a powerful superior's proposal, Evelyn is transferred to a city with a higher crime rate, heavier workload and a homicide team she has never met. What begins as an obvious punishment quickly becomes something else. Murders. Cartel operations. Late-night arrests. Chaotic investigations. Department rivalries. Officers who slowly become more than coworkers. A station that never seems to sleep. And somewhere between crime scenes, midnight meals and a prosecutor who knows exactly how to test her temper, Evelyn begins finding her place in a city she never planned to stay in. They call her Barbie. She doesn't mind. Underestimating her, however, might be a mistake.

The first time Aurelian Whitmore meets his biological father, he falls at his feet. Literally. Eighteen-year-old Aurelian once had everything: a powerful family name, devoted parents, loyal friends, wealth, talent, and a future planned so carefully he never had to open his own car door. Then one medical check-up exposes an impossible blood type, one hospital mistake reveals he was switched at birth, and one car crash takes away the only parents he has ever known. By the time Aurelian is called back from summer camp, the funeral is already over. His relatives have read the truth. The media has found the scandal. His friends have abandoned him. His school has erased him. And the family who raised him leaves him outside the mansion gates with three bags, an envelope of cash, and the address of strangers in the countryside. Aurelian does not believe the documents. But he has nowhere else to go. His journey ends on a dark country road, where a police officer mistakes him for a suspicious runaway, a quiet farmer and his wife learn that the youngest son they buried eighteen years ago may still be alive, and two much-older brothers are not sure whether to protect him, question him, or report him for being impossible. The Rowans call him their son. Aurelian does not know how to answer. He arrived as a stranger. Staying might make him something far more frightening: Their youngest.