Rust and Ruin

Nova Hayes has three dollars to her name, a dead car, and bruises she's still learning not to flinch at.When her Corolla dies at the gates of Cross Iron & Salvage—a sprawling, isolated junkyard forty miles from civilization—she has no choice but to beg for work from the man behind the chain-link fence.Gideon Cross doesn't talk. He doesn't smile. He doesn't explain.He's six-foot-five, two hundred and sixty pounds of tattooed muscle, scarred knuckles, and hands permanently stained with engine grease. He runs his scrapyard like a kingdom—alone, locked behind razor wire, patrolled by three dogs that answer only to him.He hires Nova without a word. Feeds her without being asked. Watches her with a focus that never blinks.Then he crushes her car in the compactor.Builds her a home at the center of his junkyard—a restored trailer surrounded by twelve-foot walls of crushed steel.Welds the gate shut.And makes it clear, in every way that doesn't require language, that she belongs to him now.Nova should run. She knows the signs. She survived one possessive man already—she knows what cages look like.But Gideon's cage has a lock that faces inward. His hands have never hurt her. His silence is the first peace she's known in years. And the longer she stays behind his walls, sorting scrap metal and learning to rebuild engines, the harder it becomes to remember why the outside world was worth returning to.He doesn't ask permission. He doesn't apologize. He builds walls and breaks anyone who tries to climb them.And when the debt Nova thought she'd escaped follows her to the scrapyard gates, Gideon Cross will show her exactly what a man made of iron does to protect what's his.