Dee's twenty-fifth birthday starts with a headache-and ends with her life in ruins. She walks out of a soul-sucking legal office expecting nothing more than a quiet night. Instead, she finds her live-in boyfriend of three years in bed with the "easy" girl from her own workplace. So she leaves. No plan. No backup. Just a suitcase and the kind of anger that burns everything down. At her friend's place, what begins as wine-fueled survival turns into something far more reckless: the two of them buy a crumbling castle in Italy.
Because why not?But escape doesn't mean freedom-not yet. Back home, Dee is pulled into family chaos when her grandmother falls ill, old wounds reopen, and her estranged mother reappears with her eye on an inheritance she was never meant to have. Then there's the castle. And the man in charge of rebuilding it. Their project manager is steady, grounded, and knows what he wants-and the connection between them is anything but safe.
As heat turns to something deeper, Dee is forced to face the question she's been avoiding:Is she running from her life. or finally choosing it?A bold, emotional, and unapologetically steamy story of starting over, claiming what's yours, and building a life that actually fits.
Dee's twenty-fifth birthday starts with a headache-and ends with her life in ruins. She walks out of a soul-sucking legal office expecting nothing more than a quiet night. Instead, she finds her live-in boyfriend of three years in bed with the "easy" girl from her own workplace. So she leaves. No plan. No backup. Just a suitcase and the kind of anger that burns everything down. At her friend's place, what begins as wine-fueled survival turns into something far more reckless: the two of them buy a crumbling castle in Italy.
Because why not?But escape doesn't mean freedom-not yet. Back home, Dee is pulled into family chaos when her grandmother falls ill, old wounds reopen, and her estranged mother reappears with her eye on an inheritance she was never meant to have. Then there's the castle. And the man in charge of rebuilding it. Their project manager is steady, grounded, and knows what he wants-and the connection between them is anything but safe.
As heat turns to something deeper, Dee is forced to face the question she's been avoiding:Is she running from her life. or finally choosing it?A bold, emotional, and unapologetically steamy story of starting over, claiming what's yours, and building a life that actually fits.