Six weeks. One deal. Everything she knew about staying safe—wrong.

Orla Quinn is a Dublin tattoo artist with a contested studio, a cleared debt, and a strict no-complications policy. When the city's most feared Bratva Pakhan offers to fix everything if she plays his partner for six weeks, she says yes. It's just a performance.

Cormac Shea inherited blood, power, and a city that runs on fear. He hasn't let anyone past his walls in seven years. Then a sharp-tongued woman with ink on her hands shows up—and refuses to leave his head.

Six weeks of pretending turns dangerous when a dying man's secret threatens everything Cormac built, and something unexpected changes all the rules.

But when his world decides she was never real and sends her away without the one word she'd come to know as hers, Orla must choose: walk away with the truth, or fight for the man who called her Thorn.

A steamy standalone dark romance.