Truce Line
A Cataldo Dynasty prequel · A Harrow Bay Novel
He was paid to stand across the street from her shop.
She was the one who crossed it.
For four days a man in a gray jacket stood on the corner opposite Reyes Flowers and watched the door. He didn’t come in. He didn’t buy anything. On the fourth day Paloma Reyes quit waiting for him to leave and carried him out a coffee.
Franco Trapani has one job, and it is not a complicated one: watch the flower shop on the seam between two territories, and report what comes near it. When Paloma asks him straight out what he is doing on her corner, he tells her the truth, badly, and far sooner than he was supposed to.
So she sets her own terms. Every evening, before he goes, he tells her everything he saw. Her street, her shop, her information. It is the only part of the arrangement that belongs to her, and she means to keep it.
Neither of them thinks about what a rule like that can be used for. By the time either of them does, the war has four weeks left to run, and the cost of four honest months has already come due.
Truce Line is a standalone prequel novella to The Cataldo Dynasty, set in the last six months of the Harrow Bay war. It is free, it is complete, and it ends with its own happily-ever-after. You do not need to have read anything else first.
The Harrow Bay letter
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The Harrow Bay letter
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Before you download
This one is dark
Truce Line is a dark contemporary mafia romance for readers 18+. It contains organized-crime violence including one on-page death, economic extortion of the heroine’s business, a sustained power imbalance between an armed operative on a paid assignment and an unprotected civilian, and one explicit sexual scene. Information the heroine shares in trust is later used by others in ways that cause real harm. Complete HEA, no cliffhanger.