chai for two (wlw)

As the cruel, uncompromising, and terrifyingly brilliant CEO of Bloom Press, Roman Alvarez terrifies everyone-including her new assistant editor, Kaalia Amoretta.

But on a work trip to the tropical coast of South Asia, under Kerala's storm-soaked skies, professional distance dissolves into something more dangerous. What should have stayed strictly business becomes intimate, charged, and impossible to forget.

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[LONGER VERSION]

Roman Alvarez is infamous in the publishing world: cruel, uncompromising, and brilliant enough to get away with it. As the first Black and female CEO of Bloom Press, she has built her career on steel walls and impossible standards.

Kaalia Amoretta, the new assistant editor hired to support her, expects a tyrant. What she doesn't expect is the quiet softness beneath Roman's sharp edges ... or the spark that flares every time their eyes meet.

When Bloom's newest release hinges on securing a reclusive poet's anthology, Roman and Kaalia go on a "working vacation" to India. But what should have been a straightforward business trip unravels into something far more dangerous: monsoon-soaked nights, shared secrets, and a slow-burning tension neither woman can ignore.

Under tropical skies and an old woman's poetry on love and colonialism, their professional boundaries blur, their walls crack, and a tender, terrifying love begins to take shape.

But as they return to New York-with media storms rising, a billion-dollar lawsuit looming, and family expectations closing in-the real question emerges: Can a love born far from reality survive the world waiting for them?

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A sweeping, sapphic, slow-burn romance and the kind of love worth risking everything.