The Price of the Deal - Book 1

Ben Cole has spent three years being the man no one notices.

Twenty-one. Average face. Average everything. The only reason he still has a job at Brantwed Logistics is the system he built with his own hands... the one that runs the trucks, the invoices, the entire company. No one else understands it. No one else can fix it. That knowledge is the only leverage he has ever had.

His boss is Julie Brantwed. Thirty-six. Former Miss Oregon. Blonde, sharp, and untouchable. She is the owner’s daughter. She ends careers without raising her voice. She once broke a man’s wrist for putting his hand where it did not belong, then went back to her office like nothing had happened. Ben has wanted her since his first day. He has also known better than to say it out loud.

Until the morning his car dies again.

He is already late. The raise he has earned for three years still has not come. So he does the only thing left to him. He takes the system down from the bus on the way in. When he walks through the doors, the building is already bleeding money. Julie finds him in the hallway. He tells her he can fix it. Then he asks for two things: the raise he is owed, and a kiss. A real one.

She promises both.

What follows is not a negotiation.

Something older than the company has been listening. Something that does not answer to HR, to contracts, or to the careful walls Julie has spent years building around herself. It heard a man who had nothing left ask for what he wanted instead of begging for what he could get. And it decided the price of answering him would be higher than either of them is prepared to pay.

Ben wanted a raise and a kiss.

He is about to learn what it costs when the wrong woman says yes... and what it costs when something that should have stayed in the dark decides it wants him too.