Coded Truths

"I've been watching you. For four years."

Victoria Omstadt has spent fourteen years disappearing in shadows. New name. New life. New face in the mirror every morning. On stage, she becomes whoever the role demands. Off stage, she's no one; just another Broadway actress trying to make it in New York City.

But someone sees her. Her shadow. Her stalker. Her phantom. The man who sends her a bouquet of her favorite flowers and a note after every performance. Someone who also stays out of the light, watching her movements in cameras across the city and in her apartment. Someone who knows her real name. The name she buried all those years ago when she went into witness protection.

And when a nightmarish figure from her past attacks her, he is the one who comes to her rescue.

Penn Levine isn't a stranger though. He's the brilliant, awkward boy Victoria befriended in high school. The lonely kid she saw when everyone else looked away. The boy she left behind without goodbye when her world shattered. Now he's a tech billionaire who's memorized every routine, every performance, every moment of her reconstructed life.

Now that he's stepped into the light, he wants her heart. And Victoria, who's spent years becoming no one, battles with the addiction that being claimed by the man who refused to forget her feels like finally being found. His obsession is devotion. His surveillance is worship. When Penn touches her, she isn't Victoria the actress or Vanessa the girl in witness protection. She's just the woman he's loved from the shadows for years. Falling for her stalker should be wrong... yet it feels like the only truth she's ever known.

However, Victoria's past won't stay buried. Someone is hunting her... someone who knows her real name and wants to make sure Vanessa Jordan disappears permanently. Penn's obsession might be the only thing keeping her alive. Or it might be the thing that gets them both killed.

*For fans of Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton, God of Malice by Rina Kent, and anyone who loves a dark romance where the stalker gets the girl.