She names her price. He pays it. Neither of them planned to survive the morning.By day, she's an investigative reporter chasing a prayer-line fraud that's bleeding the desert dry - fourteen thousand dollars from a dead man who thought someone was praying over him by name. By night, behind a locked side door and three unlit candles, she reads cards for strangers who pay for the truth they can't ask for anywhere else.She keeps the names separate. The byline. The reader. The woman underneath both. Three doors, three rates, and a rule she has never broken: never turn the card for herself.Then a client walks in who counts the exits before he sits down - a man who says her name like he's paid for the right - and the cards stop lying to be kind. What she sees in his spread isn't a fortune. It's a warning. And the closer she lets him get, the harder it is to tell where the reading ends and the wanting begins.Some truths you investigate. Some you pay for. And some burn everything on their way out.A standalone erotic thriller - high heat, dark themes, and a slow burn that earns its name. Explicit content, intended for adult readers. Read more