the debt of desperation

In the dead-end town of Maple Grove, Missouri, sixteen-year-old Lily is a ghost in plain sight. At 4'11" and 117 pounds, with her innocent blue eyes and blonde hair, she's used to being overlooked. But survival isn't a choice. With her parents lost to their addictions, Lily's world is a desperate balancing act: navigating the hallways of her public high school by day and the lurid, neon glow of a strip club by night. She guards two secrets fiercely-her body, and the fragile hope that there must be something more.

He is that something more. And he is watching.

He calls himself raffaele. He is everything her world is not: darkly handsome, impossibly tall, with piercing green eyes and a wealth that seems limitless. From the shadows of the club to the periphery of her life, his presence is a constant, unsettling thrill. He is her stalker, a phantom of terrifying desire and obsession.

Lily should be terrified. And part of her is. But another part is dangerously captivated. How can someone so beautiful, so powerful, be so fixated on her? The line between fear and fascination blurs when he approaches her not with a threat, but with a proposition-an offer of a sum of money that could change her life, in exchange for the one thing she has left to sell: her virginity.

Now, Lily is caught in a gilded trap. Is Raffaele a savior in a sinister guise, offering a way out of her nightmare? Or is he the most dangerous predator of all, drawn to her very vulnerability? In a story as dark as it is seductive, Lily must decide if the price of her freedom is worth the cost of her soul.

the debt of desperation is a contemporary New Adult romance that explores the dangerous allure of obsession, the fight for survival, and the terrifying question: Can you truly love the monster in the dark?