She came to St. Francisville looking for a fresh start. She found a preacher.
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Mercy Evangeline has spent her whole life learning what faith looks like when it's used as a weapon. So when a job posting at a small Louisiana church comes her way, she takes it — because she still believes in signs.
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Judah Beaumont is everything a pastor should be. The town loves him. His sermons make two hundred people forget to breathe. He sits with the grieving, feeds the hungry, and buries the dead with genuine grace.
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He is also the most dangerous man in three parishes.
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And he decided Mercy was his before she learned his last name.
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What follows is not a love story but rather a study in obsession. It gets hands on you slowly, in the heat of a Louisiana summer, between scripture and sin and all the locked doors you tell yourself you don't want to open.
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Mercy knows something is wrong. The question isn't whether she'll find out the truth about the man she's falling for.
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The question is what she'll do when she realizes she wants him more than she wants clarity.
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Some mercy has a price. Some prices you pay willingly.
In the humid bayou heat of St. Francisville, Louisiana, Billy Arceneaux is the charming, trigger-happy fixer for a trafficking network hidden behind Grace Eternal Church. He runs errands with a gun and a grin, cleaning up messes no one else will touch — until the complications start piling up.
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Emily “Dice” Dumont has been in his bed (and under his skin) for years. Sharp-tongued bartender by night, future lawyer by day, she’s the only one who can make Billy kneel. Literally and figuratively. Their relationship is raw, addictive, and filthy.
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But when a mysterious Texan arrives asking questions about “belief,” old secrets from the church’s dark underbelly threaten to drag everything into the light. Billy’s world of blood and numbers is cracking, and what’s worse — he gets a text message from an unknown number. A name and a price. Judah Beaumont, 350K.
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There are no easy answers in this. In St. Francisville — love isn’t sweet. Life isn’t simple. It’s a loaded gun, a knife at the throat, and a bounty on a best friend’s head.