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The Patient Knife
A woman who audits everything and a man who trusts no one build a case—and a life—out of the only currency neither can forge: being wanted.
Sabine Caron, a forensic accountant in Lyon who traces hidden money for a living, has forty minutes to flee before a fabricated concealment charge disappears her into a windowless cell.
Diego, a maritime-security operative working for Colt Hargrove, is her only way out, and the two soon realize the paper trail leads back to Hélène Roche, who inherited a dead man’s apparatus and wields frozen accounts, forged notices, and a bought journalist as weapons.
As Sabine reconstructs the evidence to reverse the notice and Diego stands watch, each must decide whether to hand the other the one thing they’ve never trusted anyone with: their own blind spot.
Tropes: framed protagonist on the run, bodyguard/protector romance, competence porn, forced proximity, safehouse intimacy, grumpy guarded hero, ice-queen heroine who thaws, he falls first, one bed / close quarters, self-sacrificing protector who plans to leave, found trust / mutual vulnerability
Story promises: Guaranteed HEA · multiple POV · past tense (what this means)
Content notes: explicit sexual content; violence; coercive institutional power dynamics; references to past bereavement/grief; threat of wrongful imprisonment (full index)
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