A Beautiful Flaw

To twenty-four-year-old Rhea Croft, the world is a system of predictable lines, cold server rooms, and clean code. She doesn't care that her high-paying corporate employer is actually the most ruthless mafia syndicate in Scotland. As long as she can wear her noise-canceling headphones, keep her basement core at exactly sixty-one degrees, and avoid human interaction, she can pretend she's just running a normal database.

She has one rule: Never let the chaos in.

Then there is Cassian Vance. The head of the syndicate. He looks like a tech billionaire, wears immaculate cream suits, and smiles with a bright, relentless "golden retriever" warmth that drives Rhea absolutely crazy. He's charming, incredibly polite, and remembers her coffee order.

He is also a monster. He orders executions with the same cheerful grin he uses to buy her blueberry muffins.

When a highly sophisticated internal coup frames Rhea as a federal mole, the syndicate issues a terminate-on-sight order. Paralyzed by the sensory nightmare of blaring sirens and approaching enforcers, Rhea prepares for the end.

But Cassian doesn't pull the trigger. Instead, he executes his own men to save her, declaring her code "too neat" to be this sloppy.

With the entire family hunting them, Cassian drags Rhea out of Edinburgh and flees north into the wild, rain-slicked Scottish Highlands. Trapped in a remote, off-grid safe house with a man who is both her greatest threat and her only shield, Rhea's black-and-white world begins to violently fracture.

She always thought human emotion was a design flaw. But as the freezing Highland storms roll in, she realizes Cassian Vance might just be the most beautiful flaw she's ever encountered.