Redline Exposure

Redline Exposure

by Vivian Cross

Heat 4 / 5 · 21+Novella · 12 chapters83,021 words6h 1m read~9h 13m listen

At 1:06 a.m. in the Backroom’s mezzanine, Damian Voss found his own face circled in dark red lipstick inside a Blackridge envelope. The order was simple: neutralize the journalist threatening to expose the family’s Chicago shell companies before the story went to print. The execution was anything but — because the journalist was Vera Calloway, the only woman who had ever walked away from him, and the sister of the man he sacrificed to build his empire.

Vera has spent years following the money trail that destroyed her family. She knows someone powerful framed her brother. She knows the name Blackridge is written in invisible ink across every shell account she has cracked open. What she does not know — yet — is that the ruthless fixer now sitting across from her in a Midtown rooftop bar is the man who signed her brother’s death warrant.

Damian tells himself this is leverage. That keeping Vera close is strategy, not weakness. That the heat between them is just another weapon in a city built on controlled deception. But Vera’s evidence is sharper than anyone inside Blackridge anticipated, and it is pointing somewhere far more dangerous than him — toward a rival crew embedded inside the family itself, using her exposé as cover for a takeover that will leave them both in the ground.

MafiaEnemies To LoversMorally Grey