Heist [ H.S ]

"Let me guess," he says, eyes gleaming. "You read somewhere that if you humanize your captor, he starts to feel sympathy. Stockholm Syndrome in reverse. Touché."

I try not to flinch as he stops directly in front of me.My breath catches, but I don't look away.

He grins darkly.

"Silly rabbit," he murmurs. "Tricks are for me."

***
She came to London to chase the story of a lifetime. He was the story all along.

When journalist Penelope Reese begins investigating a string of stolen artifacts tied to a shadowy criminal syndicate known only as The Umbra, she expects danger. What she doesn't expect is to lose herself inside it.

At Lethewood Manor, time warps. Morality bends. And the girl who once hunted monsters begins to wonder if she was always fated to become one.

Harry Styles is more than the Umbra's ruthless leader he's a mind sharpened into a weapon, a genius who swore nothing human could ever touch him. Cold, calculating, untouchable. Until her.

She's the only distraction he's ever allowed. The crack in his control. The voice he swore he didn't need, yet can't silence.

To him, she's leverage, temptation, inevitability. To her, he's both a nightmare she can't escape and the one tether that might keep her alive.

As Penelope unravels the secrets behind their operations-paintings lost to history, jewels worth empires, power hidden in plain sight. She begins unraveling something far more dangerous: the man who took her... and the truth about herself.

But they are both bound by something neither can name-an obsession threaded by fate itself.

Because some stories aren't just reported.
Some stories are inevitable.