The Cliff's Edge

In Baton Rouge, loving somebody is a risk nobody with sense takes twice.

Maleígha Jones has one rule: never fall for a man from the streets. She is a college freshman running her own online boutique, a girl with a walk-in closet full of inventory and a family that loves her loud enough to embarrass her. She built her peace brick by brick, and she does not hand the key to just anyone. Then a quick stop at the gas station on Scenic Highway puts her in the path of Cartier "Cartí" Banks, the youngest tycoon on the block, all designer everything and quiet arrogance, a man who raps about pulling away from women the moment they start falling in love.

Cartí owns half the city and answers to no one but his mother, his grandmother, and the code of the streets that raised him. Fresh out of a bid and richer than the men who used to step over him, he does not do love. He does late-night rides down the interstate, Sunday dinners at his mama's, and women who know exactly what they are to him. Until Maleígha hands his phone back with her number in it and a smirk that says call and see.

One night turns into a talking stage neither of them asked for. She makes him want things he never planned for, like a future with his name spelled right and somebody who checks on his soul and not his wallet. He makes her want things she swore off, like a man's time, his loyalty, his undivided attention. But his past will not stay in the past. There is the girlfriend he swears is already done, the ride-or-die who knows where all his secrets are buried, the exes who keep circling the block, and an old beef between former brothers turning the city red, a feud that keeps creeping closer to everything Cartí is trying to build.

The people who love her keep sounding the alarm. Her cousin Symone warns that a man like that comes with more baggage than she is ready to carry. Her best friend Jaía has watched Baton Rouge chew up soft-hearted girls and spit them out. Everybody in the city knows how this story is supposed to end: the streets swallow another couple whole, and the girl who wanted more is left holding less.

But Maleígha and Cartí keep choosing each other anyway. Through the arguments and the receipts, the family interference and the midnight phone calls, two guarded people keep stepping toward each other on ground everybody else calls unstable. He is standing on business. She is standing on hers. And somewhere between his world and hers, they have to decide what they are willing to pay for a love the whole city has already bet against.

Some love stories start at the cliff's edge. Theirs is about the step forward, and whether the fall turns out to be a landing.

The Cliff's Edge is book one of the Villains and Love series, a complete Baton Rouge romance about loyalty, healing, and the dangerous arithmetic of loving someone everybody warned you about. Their story continues in book two.