The Blackridge Countervow

by Vivian Cross

Heat 5 / 5 · 21+Novella · 12 chapters32,534 words2h 21m read~3h 37m listen

The clearance report lands on the painted centerline before Sidra Alden does—her signature already on it, her words already twisted into something she never wrote. She steps off the Blackridge jet into a sleet-hammered Chicago hangar and finds two armed crews, two idling planes, and a man named Viktor Dunne standing over the paper with a gun in his hand and every reason to believe she put a target on his back.

She didn’t. But proving it means choosing between the Manhattan tower that owns her credentials and her apartment, and the morally grey enforcer who is the only one in this hangar who seems to know the difference between a lie and a vow.

As the standoff tightens and the sodium lights buzz overhead, Sidra and Viktor are forced into the narrow strip of no-man’s-land between the jets—parsing forged metadata, trading confessions sharper than gunfire, and fighting an attraction neither of them can afford. The longer she stays on that line, the more she understands: Blackridge didn’t send her here to keep the peace. They sent her here to be the weapon.

MafiaEnemies To LoversMorally Grey