What Claire Bailey thought was a career-saving business trip to the Calabrian coast turns out to be something far more deliberate.
Arik Medici has lived for centuries in the shadows of the region his family was cursed to protect. Charming, controlled, and dangerously patient, he has been patiently waiting for Claire's arrival.
He let her live her life. He waited. And now she's finally here.
As bodies surface and the truth closes in, Claire begins to understand that nothing has been a coincidence. Not the canceled flights, not the closed roads, and certainly not the extended hotel stay at Vigneto Riserva del Regale.
Neither was falling in love with him.
But Arik is not a man. And love, for something like him, looks a lot like possession.
RUIN is a lush, atmospheric, dual-POV slow burn that reads more like a mystery-thriller than a traditional romance—immersive, layered, and built for attentive readers. The first half draws you into a deeply felt, slow-building romance set against rich European backdrops, with emotionally complex characters and a narrative that drops breadcrumbs you won't fully understand until it's too late. At the midpoint, everything you thought you knew gets turned on its head, and the story reveals itself as something far darker and more paranormal than it first appeared.
Content Warnings:
RUIN contains mature and potentially distressing themes, including graphic violence and gore (murder, physical assault, and bodily harm), explicit sexual content and power dynamics, attempted sexual assault, terminal illness of a parent, death and grief, kidnapping and captivity, supernatural horror (vampirism and transformation), mental health struggles, medical trauma, and elements of stalking, possessiveness, obsessive behavior, and emotional coercion.
