Furqan_Khattak

When guarded bookseller Lena discovers her grandmother’s hidden diary, she uncovers a dangerous truth—one tied to architect Ryan’s father’s mysterious death. Trapped together during a hurricane, they unravel a conspiracy buried in blueprints and betrayal, while fighting an attraction as volatile as the storm outside. But the powerful Calloway family will kill to keep these secrets buried. Some legacies aren’t inherited—they’re stolen.

(The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meets Verity in this romantic suspense full of shocking twists, slow-burn tension, and a love story written in secrets.)

Whispers of heart

The first sick-light morning revealed the marina square turned into an open-air triage center. Lena stood at the observation deck in the lighthouse clutching the stolen newborn-her newborn swaddled against her with torn piece of Ryan's shirt. Below the survivors coughed neon-blue fluid onto the cobblestones. Some wept with memories flooding while others screamed, clawing at their own faces as if to peel away the years of stolen time.

Ryan slumped next to her against the railing, a thin stream of iridescent blood leaking from his bullet-grazed shoulder even as the Phase Two contamination slowed his bleeding. His pupils were already unevenly dilating. "We lost the east side," he rasped. "Matthew's antidote didn't reach the nursing home or the elementary school."

Lena tightened her grip on their daughter. The baby's skin glowed faintly blue where the umbilical stump hadn't fully healed, leftover traces of the Calloway "vaccine," she'd been injected with at birth.

Eleanor Calloway huffed herself up the last step of the lighthouse, her designer blouse crusted with Matthew's blood. "You think this is over?" she spat a glob of blackened phlegm onto the deck. "The offshore facilities have enough serum to dose a continent. And now they know the antidote formula." She cracked her lips into a smile. "Your daughter's bone marrow will make the perfect catalyst."

Ryan moved faster than his injury should've allowed. He pinned Eleanor against the foghorn, his contaminated blood dripping onto her cheek. "Where?"

"The Acheron," she gasped. "Cargo ship anchored at buoy twelve. They''ll set sail at high tide with-"

Sophie moved, her violet drone zooming past. A camera caught an image of the harbor. The vision through its tiny lens caused the knees under Lena to buckle.

A team dressed in black hazmat suits was loading cryo-tanks onto a vessel painted with Calloway Biotech's serpent emblem. And at the gangway directing the operation,

But the figure turned, revealing a face untouched by Matthew's glass shard or the floodwaters. Younger. Clean-shaven.

"Eleanor whispered triumphantly. Twin."

The baby chose that moment to wail-a sound that seemed to sync with the distant ship's horn.

The Gray Dawn