northwestbynorth
Everyone knows the story of Jim Hawkins and the map to Captain Flint's gold. What they don't know is that "Jim" is a disguise-and the real treasure belongs to a Duke's disgraced daughter.
Jamena "Jamie" Hawkins was born to high nobility, carrying the biological inheritance and fierce reputation of two grand family trees. But when her cruel, hypocritical father, the Duke, abruptly cuts off her inheritance to punish her divorced mother, Jamena is plunged into a life of brutal, manual labor at a coastal tavern called The Admiral Benbow. At twenty-eight, she is a cynical spinster facing absolute ruin. When the rowdy local fishermen mistake her for a young lad and mockingly dub her "Jim," Jamena doesn't fight it. Instead, she shears her hair, dons her younger brother's tight breeches, and takes ruthless charge of the collapsing inn. She learns to command the taproom with a sharp, aristocratic bite of authority. But the tavern's fragile stability fractures with the arrival of a mad, rum-soaked sea captain, a terrifying blind beggar named Pew, and a blood-stained scrap of paper marked with the Black Spot. The criminal underworld believes they are hunting the dead Captain's crude, hand-scrawled chart. They have no idea that Jamena is hiding a far more dangerous secret in her wardrobe: a mathematically perfect original map and the salt-bleached flag of the notorious ship Walrus. Because Captain Flint wasn't just a pirate king-he was her biological father, and he raised her in secret to be his blood-soaked, ruthless heir. Now, with the wolves closing in and a suspicious local magistrate watching her every move, Jamena must decide how far she will go to protect her family. To survive, she might just have to become the monster her father always wanted her to be