She was lifting a forge alone. He pulled over and never left. Elise Thibodaux has spent three years building a farrier circuit from nothing-no shop, no partner, no safety net. Just a portable forge, her dead uncle's anvil, and a route across three counties she earned one ranch at a time. When a crew of illegal dumpers shoves her forge off the tailgate and tells her to find a different road, she puts a rasp through a man's arm and keeps driving. He didn't offer protection.
He offered a war. Swamp hasn't called anything home since the state stole his family's swamp land and sold it to developers. The club gave him a machete and a purpose, and he's never needed anything else. But when Elise rolls past him on a county road with a cracked forge and steel in her spine, something shifts. She's his. And the men who touched her tools are already dead-they just don't know it yet. Her circuit was poisoned.
His roads were violated. Boyd Hauser built a dumping empire across Raider territory without asking permission. Now his crew is contaminating the ranches where Elise shoes horses-and hunting the woman who found his barrels. As the Raiders tear Hauser's operation apart lieutenant by lieutenant, Elise discovers that the most dangerous thing on the Florida backroads isn't the men trying to destroy her livelihood. It's the one man who'd drag their bodies into the swamp to keep her.
She was lifting a forge alone. He pulled over and never left. Elise Thibodaux has spent three years building a farrier circuit from nothing-no shop, no partner, no safety net. Just a portable forge, her dead uncle's anvil, and a route across three counties she earned one ranch at a time. When a crew of illegal dumpers shoves her forge off the tailgate and tells her to find a different road, she puts a rasp through a man's arm and keeps driving. He didn't offer protection.
He offered a war. Swamp hasn't called anything home since the state stole his family's swamp land and sold it to developers. The club gave him a machete and a purpose, and he's never needed anything else. But when Elise rolls past him on a county road with a cracked forge and steel in her spine, something shifts. She's his. And the men who touched her tools are already dead-they just don't know it yet. Her circuit was poisoned.
His roads were violated. Boyd Hauser built a dumping empire across Raider territory without asking permission. Now his crew is contaminating the ranches where Elise shoes horses-and hunting the woman who found his barrels. As the Raiders tear Hauser's operation apart lieutenant by lieutenant, Elise discovers that the most dangerous thing on the Florida backroads isn't the men trying to destroy her livelihood. It's the one man who'd drag their bodies into the swamp to keep her.