Hey Passionistas,

The countdown is ON.

In the next few days Grudge will roar into your e-reader and break your heart in all the best ways… then piece it back together with filthy hands and a lifetime promise.

This man is primal, protective, and the new MC president. He’s got revenge on his mind and a second shot at the only woman he ever loved — his ex-wife.

If your romance jam includes:

Second chance, high-heat slow burn
Enemies-to-lovers with an emotional punch
“I hate you but I’ll kill for you” energy
A possessive MC alpha who calls her Bug...
You’re gonna want to preorder now.

Pre-order it here: https://books2read.com/thetrustwebroke

Why? Because this book will be wide for only 48 hours starting next Monday before it goes into Amazon Kindle Unlimited on Thursday — and this is your chance to grab it anywhere you read.

And just because I love you, here’s a never-before-seen exclusive sneak peek — where Lucy falls (literally) into the arms of the man she swore she’d never love again.

Scroll down to read what happens next.

xo,

Scarlett



“Pull your skirt down,” I say when I notice it’s ridden up her legs to reveal the top of the sexiest lace stocking ever wrapped around her tan thighs.

“Shit,” she says, glancing down to see what I’m staring at. She shimmies it down, so it covers what it’s supposed to, but I’m not going to get the image of Ms. Counselor wearing sexy lace shit beneath her please-take-me-seriously suit out of my mind.

I glance up at the top shelf to see what she was trying to reach, and putting what’s up there, with the bananas and whipped cream in her basket, I know she’s about to make sundaes.

They were always her comfort food, and it takes me a moment to bite down on the immediate need to ask her what’s going on, if she’s doing okay.

Because she’s none of my goddamn business anymore.

“Cherries?” I ask. Juicy red maraschino ones.

“I can get them myself.” She folds her arms and pouts.

“Don’t make me pretend I want to pass you what you can’t reach,” I say, grabbing the jar from the top shelf with ease. I reach down to the floor and see her basket, and something about the two pitiful bananas and whipped cream makes me angry.

If she hadn’t divorced me, maybe we’d be here together. Maybe we’d have talked over dinner about what was bothering her tonight. Hell, maybe I’d have come to the store to get her the things for her sundae while she put our kids to bed, or perhaps made it for her when she called me from the office to say she was on her way home.

But no.

Here we are.

Hating each other.

And yet, I still want her, which is infuriating.

I grab the basket from the ground and throw the cherries in it. I just want to do my grocery shopping, get home, and eat some food. Three days ago, I got the shock of my life. Butcher stepped down and announced me as his replacement. The president patch on my cut is so new, I can still smell it. The first twenty-four hours were spent drinking and then recovering from the world’s worst hangover.

Today was spent meeting with people Butcher used to manage our relationships with. A judge in our back pocket. A detective paid to turn the other cheek.

They all know who I am and my record as vice president. Hopefully, my behavior in the past will reassure them that I’m the right person for the president job. Big Daddy shook my hand and slapped my back and said, while he thought the world of Butcher, he was looking forward to the change.

Change I still haven’t gotten my head around.

But Butcher was much more of a people person than I am. Hell, so was Lucy. She was gregarious and funny and could find a way to engage with every single person she talked to.

She’d meet them where they are and would leave the conversation knowing twenty-eight different things about them.

If I want to get my shopping done in peace without bumping into Lucy in every single aisle, I need her to get out of here quick.

And the best way to make that happen…?

I step to the other side of the aisle and grab a box of the fan-shaped waffle wafer things she liked. But instead of handing the basket back to her, I take off down the aisle.

“Grudge,” she shouts when she realizes what I’m doing. I almost stop walking when I hear my road name spill over her lips. Some nights, as we lay in bed after railing each other into the mattress, she’d offer up suggestions about what she thought my road name would be once I finally patched in.

Hawk, because I notice the shit other people don’t.

Chorizo, because I love that stuff.

Eight, because she came eight times that day and decided it was notable.

She was full of suggestions. I wonder if she even considers how deeply she plays a role in my actual name. A brief glance behind me sees her bending to pick up the large purse she had over her shoulder.

Then, I hear the tap, tap, tap of her heels on the store tiles as she runs after me.

It was a long-standing joke between us that she had to take four steps to keep up with one of mine.

Yeah, well, catch me now, Lucy De Bose.

I lose her as I turn into the aisle two over from where she is. There’s a wall of potential toppings. I almost give myself a headache as I scan the shelves at high speed, looking for everything else Lucy puts on her sundae.

Maybe she’s changed; maybe she doesn’t like them anymore. But I’m too pissed to care.

I toss in a packet of marshmallows and some sprinkles.

Farther up the aisle, I find fudge sauce and chocolate sauce. Lucy never combined them, always said they should be kept separated and treated as two different, distinct tastes and desserts.

Not willing to face her as she finally nears me, I grab both and toss them in.

“I didn’t want both of those,” she says, her breath coming thick and fast.

“Too bad,” I say.

I scan the aisle signs and find what I’m looking for in aisle thirteen: chopped nuts.

“Grudge!” Her voice snaps down the aisle. “Just get back here with my basket.”

My eyes whip to hers. “No.”

I stride to the frozen food aisle and head straight for the ice cream. Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry.

It’s the poor man’s Neapolitan ice cream, made especially for the American market because the original ice creams mirrored the colors of the Italian flag, usually pistachio, vanilla, and cherry or raspberry.

We were in bed, exhausted after a bout of lovemaking. She’d grabbed a container of it, and we both dug in with spoons. She told me I was eating too much of the chocolate, making it uneven. I’d smeared some across her breast and licked it off, and by the time I was done, she didn’t care about the history of ice cream or the flavor ratios.

There isn’t a container of Neapolitan, so I do the next best thing: I throw a container of each flavor into the basket.

“Grudge, stop. I don’t need three.”

I turn around and snarl at her: “You find a container of Neapolitan in there; you come find me at the register.”

Her cheeks are pink, and her tits beneath that silk blouse are heaving. I’m not naturally a cruel person. In fact, there’s a piece of me wondering what it would feel like to sit down and share the sundae with her.

But the truth is, the past is irrelevant, at this point. I got over her.

And by kicking her out of the store, you are going to stay over her.

I resist the urge to call myself a liar.

“Plus, if you buy three, you won’t have to come back to the store for a while, which will reduce the number of times I have to see your face.”

I see the way my words slice through her. Lucy’s always worn her emotions on her sleeve when it came to me. I told her once that I believed she had the brains for law, but not the face. She’d gotten mad until I explained I meant poker face, not looks.

Even then, it took her a couple of days to forgive me.

I turn from her and march to the self-checkout and scan things out at such speed, I could consider an alternate career as a cashier. I launch each one into a grocery bag with the precision of a basketball player in the conference final.

“I mean it. Give. Me. My. Things.” She tries to tug the ice cream out of my hands. People are watching the two of us, but I just keep tossing stuff into bags.

When the total appears on the screen, I grab my phone to pull up my card, but Lucy elbows me in the ribs.

“That’s assault, Lucy. You know better than that.”

The sound she makes is one of fury. She throws her shoulder into me, pushing with all her might.

Her heels go from beneath her, and she sinks to the floor with a thud.

I put my phone down, slip my hands under both her arms, and put her onto her feet before swiping her ass to get the dust off it. The curve is as perfect as I remember. Maybe a few more squats have been done over the years, made it a little rounder. Makes me want to drop to my knees and bite it so hard, she thinks of me every time she sits down for the next week.

“Zach,” she says, my real name passing her lips for the first time. It’s worse than hearing my road name. She could have just stabbed me through the fucking heart, and it would have hurt less. “Stop.”

She shakes out of my hands.

“Everything okay here?” The man wears a badge declaring that his name is Andrew and he’s the store manager. His brow sweats, and he clasps his hands in front of him.

“Yes,” I say.

“No,” Lucy says in parallel.

“Erm,” Andrew says.

I tap his name badge as I pull myself up to my full height in front of him. “Just getting her groceries, then we’ll be out of your hair, Andrew.”

His shoulders drop in relief. “Well, I’ll be…watching…from over there.”

“Yeah,” I say sardonically. “You do that. Oh, and if I see you reach for that phone, I can’t be held responsible for what I do next.”

“Understood,” Andrew mutters, and I want to punch the fucker in the face.

The hypocrisy isn’t lost on me that I wish Andrew were doing a better job looking out for my wife.

Ex-wife.

Ex with a capital E.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Lucy says. “Why did I even follow you around the store? I should have just grabbed a second basket.”

I huff. “Once upon a time, you’d have…” I shake my head instead of finishing the sentence. She used to jump onto my back, and I’d carry her while she laughed.

While she reaches for her purse, I assume to dig out her own means of payment, I use my phone to make the payment for her.

“No, Grudge. Please. Why are you doing this?”

I remember I don’t want her here. I force myself to forget how good her ass felt, how warm my soul felt just from being close to her.

Instead, I grab the bags in both hands.

I don’t tell her I spotted that fancy truck of her father’s, with the even fancier plate that lets the world know who’s driving, when I pulled into the lot.

Nor do I tell her that I took the tracker the club put on my bike and put it onto the truck. And then how, instead of trying to do my grocery shopping, I spied around the aisles like a peeping Tom to get a glance of her.

But, if I can just get her out of my store, out of my town, and out of my state, I’ll be happy.

“What are you doing now?” she asks.

“Just helping a friend,” I say, the words dropping with so much sarcasm, it’s impossible to miss.

I walk out of the store and stride to her father’s truck before putting the bags down by the passenger door.

“You shouldn’t have threatened the store manager,” she says. “You seem to forget you were once a boy who hated spiders and cried the first time he saw the movie Wall-E. You aren’t as big and tough to me as you are to them.”

“Go home,” I say as I walk by her.

Her curls dance around her face in the breeze. “Headed there now,” she shouts.

I turn around and nail her with a glare. “Home to New York, Luce. You aren’t welcome around here anymore.”