In a basement thick with the stench of blood and betrayal, Lachlan Kelley-Mayer awakens to a nightmare. Chained to a rusted mattress, her body bruised and her heirloom wedding ring stolen, she realizes her husband, Jack, has orchestrated her kidnapping-a $5 million ransom for a life he's already written off. But Lachlan is no pawn. A philanthropist with a razor-sharp mind and a lifetime of parsing Jack's lies, she turns survival into a lethal game. With her captors-Marek, a mercenary with a wintermint smile, and Jenna, a reluctant accomplice-Lachlan dances on a knife's edge, unraveling Jack's web of offshore accounts and hollow vows. Flashbacks of their opulent marriage-diamond pendants, charity galas, and whispered threats-fuel her resolve. As deadlines loom and bodies pile up, Lachlan must outwit a man who taught her to play poker… and forgets she learned to cheat. A pulse-pounding thriller of marital deceit, acid pits, and the ghosts of trust, Brighter When Broken asks: How far would you go to burn the person who vowed to love you? Julie Grayson doesn't just write-she alchemizes jargon into jazz, transforming labyrinthine concepts into narratives that linger like a perfectly crafted chorus. Once a maestro of corporate manuscripts (yes, she actually made compliance articles read like cliffhanger chapters), she ditched the 9-to-5 handcuffs in 2017 to wield words on her own terms. Between drafting client magic, Julie's life unfolds in hyphenated adventures: cross-country drives fueled by diner coffee and existential musings, a DVR queue that's less a "to-watch list" and more a "monument to optimism," and hockey games where she cheers for the Washington Capitals with the fervor of a playoff commentator. She'll die on the Oxford-comma hill, texts in Commonwealth English (colour over "color," always), and considers sarcasm her native tongue-fluent, unapologetic, and sprinkled with heart. Homebase? Loveland, Colorado, where she coexists with her eternally patient husband, a shelf of bobbleheads that outnumber their furniture, and two feline critics who reign-with silent, judgmental majesty-from their fridge-top throne

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