Slag

She holds dying people's hands. He makes sure they're not dying alone.

Christine Hill has spent ten years as a hospice nurse in the Mon Valley—driving empty roads, caring for patients the world forgot, watching good people get robbed while they're too sick to fight back. When she starts asking questions about the thefts, a predator with a cigarette smile tells her silence is healthier than courage.

She stays silent. Until she can't.

He's the club's darkest weapon. She's about to become the only thing that makes him feel human.

Slag handles the work nobody else wants—interrogation, elimination, the jobs that make even his brothers keep their distance. He's been cold for so long he's forgotten what warmth feels like. Then a hospice nurse with steady hands walks into his grandmother's bedroom, looks at him without flinching, and refuses to see the monster everyone else does.

When the men terrorizing Christine come for his grandmother, Slag doesn't just protect what's his.

He erases them.

She's not afraid of what he is. He's terrified of what she makes him feel.

As the Mon Valley war escalates, Christine discovers that the most dangerous man in Pittsburgh is also the gentlest—a man who kills with precision and holds dying hands with tenderness. But loving Slag means accepting both versions: the weapon and the man who makes tea for his grandmother and fixes her neighbors' steps.

Ten years of holding people who leave taught her what matters.

Now she's found someone worth staying for.