Her Crumbling Kingdom

Eliora Vasquez inherited a shipping empire at twenty-six and a war at twenty-seven. When she wakes up in a lodge in the Alps with a locked door and no phone, she knows exactly whose house she's in. Nikolai Rusk has spent two years buying her debt one note at a time. He wants her ports. He wants her signature. He is fifty-three, unhurried, and completely certain she'll fold. But Eliora doesn't fold. She plays chess, she reads his ledgers, she learns his name day by day — and somewhere between the third game and the fourth, the hostage starts running the negotiation. He could keep her. He's going to have to let her go instead, and follow.