Awakening

As studio lawyer, Lily Rhodes's job is to protect Compass Games from every threat, foreign and domestic. Luke Richardson's specialty is turning the track into an obstacle course-and for her that means live wires: the kind you don't see until you're already touching them.

A former F1 racer turned executive producer, Luke brings the same killer instincts to game development that made him unstoppable behind the wheel: high risk tolerance, split-second decisions and the ability to read a room like telemetry.

When a corporate giant moves in to swallow Compass whole, Lily and Luke are on opposite sides again. He sees the acquisition as a means to an end-one he doesn't plan to stick around for. She sees it as a crime scene waiting to happen.

What starts as professional friction becomes something neither of them has a name for: slow, inconvenient, and spectacularly bad timing-because Luke is hiding a secret that goes deeper than the deal and Lily is carrying a past that's left her in a freeze, going through every motion and present for none of it.

Until him.

Her system's coming back online. He reads her signals instinctively-and knows exactly how to hold them steady. But Luke Richardson is not exactly who he says he is. And when the truth surfaces, right as Lily finally starts to feel again, Compass isn't the only thing at risk.

Some awakenings are quiet. Some arrive like a windshield shattering at two hundred miles an hour.

This one is both.