Brighter When Broken

Lachlan Kelley-Mayer’s life is a gilded cage—inherited wealth, a charming husband, and a foundation praised for its charity. But when she wakes in a damp basement, chained to a dirty mattress, she realizes the truth: her husband Jack’s most cunning merger is her murder. The ransom demand is a farce. The bruises are staged. And the flickering bulb above her head isn’t just failing—it’s a mirror of her dying trust.

As hired kidnappers Marek and Jenna tighten their grip, Lachlan discovers Jack’s endgame: her fortune, her legacy, her life, erased in a blaze of a “tragic accident.” But Lachlan knows his secrets—the offshore accounts, the proxy signatures, the bodies he’s buried. To survive, she’ll weaponize every fracture Jack created, pitting her captors against each other and turning their blades back on the man who hired them.

Brighter When Broken is a razor-wire thriller about betrayal’s intimate violence and the scalding light of revenge. With the visceral tension of Gone Girl and the psychological ferocity of The Silent Patient, this novelette pulses with a question: When the one who vowed to love you becomes the monster under your bed, how far will you go to burn his kingdom down?