He grew up inside his father’s empire. Now the family he lost has become part of the job.
At five, Alejandro Whitmore Santiago was torn from his mother and siblings during El Salvador’s civil war. Sixteen years later, he studies art in Florida while serving as a reluctant asset to Jared Whitmore—the American father whose consulting firm conceals a transnational smuggling empire.
When an anti-narcotics crackdown threatens Jared’s Salvadoran routes, he sends Alejandro home with an offer difficult to refuse: power, wealth, and reunion with the family Alejandro has mourned since childhood.
The price is Maria.
To protect his father’s operation, Alejandro must help compromise the anti-narcotics officer married to the adopted sister who once protected him.
Back in El Salvador, his revolutionary mother has ambitions for him that reach far beyond Jared’s empire. His older brother sees him as a rival. And Moni—the lover Alejandro cannot trust or release—may be connected to the FBI operation closing around them.
Alejandro has spent his life caught between people who confuse love with loyalty and protection with possession. Now each of them is asking him to choose—and every choice binds him more tightly to someone else's purpose.
As old loyalties become instruments of power, Alejandro must decide what he is willing to betray for family, and how much of himself he is willing to surrender for a place within it.
Blood Gilt is a dark literary crime novel about inherited violence, criminal power, obsessive attachment, political ambition, and the survival strategies that may become instruments of control.
The empire profits. Blood pays.
"Memorable, brilliant, and dark crime fiction."
- Reader's Favorite, 5-Stars
"Blood Gilt moves with the force of a crime epic but cuts like a family tragedy. Every act of love comes with a demand, and every attempt Alejandro makes to free himself from his family's designs draws him deeper into their power struggles."
- Catherine Lanigan, author Romancing the Stone
"A dark, sprawling crime novel about inheritance in the ugliest sense."
- Literary Titan, 5-stars
