Storms, sand, surf, and romance

Salem Crossing must rebuild after a devastating hurricane leaves the seaside community in ruin. Nevada Noble works to rebuild her life after the storm nearly destroyed her future with her one true love. The people of SX must find ways to work together if they want a future along the Florida coastline. The locals believe they have survived the worst the world has to offer, but new dangers lurk on the horizon. Even as Neve looks forward to her first yuletide season along sandy beaches with her loved ones, a new threat lurks in the shadows of SX—the holidays are coming.

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Release Date: November 24, 2025
Genre: Contemporary Romance

~ A Red Satin Romance ~

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Prologue
Juliet Zhang

Juliet Zhang woke up on the beach.

She had been dreaming of her wife. Juliet was beside her in the sand, tanning topless. Any other method was a sin in her book. Sunglasses covered her dreamy blue eyes, and a smirk curled the edges of her luscious lips. Men slowed and stared as they passed, but Juliet Zhang wasn’t jealous.

Those dicks could look as much as they wanted because Juliet Salem was going home with her tonight.

The occasional female companions of the ogling males became envious and wandered by with a scowl, unsuccessfully attempting to avert the eyes of their companions. The husbands and boyfriends are unable to avoid gawking at the perfect pair of tits. The Juliets were tanning on a restricted stretch on private Salem property with no rules about proper beach attire. Trespassing tourists passed along the shore at their own risk. Sharks and riptides might pose a danger in the water, but the female tourists worried more about the maneater sunbathing in the sand. Disgruntled wives and girlfriends simply picked up the pace, speeding through the surf as their men soaked up the sight of the beautiful topless blonde on the beach.

Juliet Zhang, out in public with Juliet Salem. Years ago, as teens, the Caesars could sneak around together, and the beach was a popular destination. Although bold as a teen, Juliet Salem had become less brazen as an adult. But this afternoon, nothing bothered her. Let them see. Let them look. No one could do a thing to stop her.

“Wouldn’t this be nice,” Juliet Salem asked, sliding her shades down her perfect, pert nose and giving her wife a wink, “if this wasn’t a dream?”

Juliet Zhang sprang to an upright position. She wasn’t wearing beach attire, but a strange, mustard-colored jumpsuit that resembled a prison uniform. The smell of Juliet Salem’s coconut lotion transformed into the dank stench of rotting seaweed. The soft, elegant sands of Salem Shores turned hard and rough. As Juliet watched her wife, now asleep beside her, she grew older and grayer, her skin darkening, and her features changed. She mimicked a mirror image of Juliet Zhang. Soon, she was staring not at a beautiful blonde Salem, but an aged ancestor Juliet had long thought dead.

“Grandmother,” Juliet whispered.

The older woman in the sand beside Juliet stirred. Her eyes fluttered open. Gray brows furrowed over dark eyes. She struggled to get herself up on her knees. “Where are we?” her grandmother asked in a tired, hopeless tone.

Juliet stood. She ached all over. She scoured the beach in both directions and found only the sea in either direction, trying to figure out where they were. Staring at the ocean, she attempted to mark something to reference their location, but all she saw was the endless expanse of the Atlantic. The sun peeked over the lip of the liquid world. Brilliant pools of orange and bright red striations painted the coastal waters. It would’ve been beautiful if Juliet hadn’t feared for her and her grandmother’s lives.

From the lack of any sign of civilization, discernible watercraft moving along the horizon, or even a jet contrail in the distance, Juliet decided they’d washed up on one of the islands along the chain far offshore the Florida peninsula. They hadn’t made it back to the mainland. Juliet didn’t know the islands around Salem Crossing like her pseudo-sister/sister-in-law, Naomi, who made these waters more of a home than the opulent Salem compound where she grew up.

“I don’t think we made it home,” Juliet said, cursing under her breath.

Juliet recounted the events of the previous night. She’d plotted the daring escape for days. She broke herself and her grandmother out of the cells located on the deserted island where her backstabbing fellow Caesar, Delilah Ryan, held them captive. Her grandmother had been presumed dead and stuck in that prison for ten years. After releasing them from their adjacent cells, Juliet stopped by the third prisoner’s cell, offering him escape. The other prisoner sat in the darkness, unmoving. He did not reply. Juliet pleaded for a minute, to no avail. Finally, her grandmother advised her to leave him behind.

“We can send the authorities back for him,” her grandmother said. “He’s been here longer than I. He’s too afraid to try.”

“You’re not staying behind, though,” Juliet stated, searching her grandmother’s face for signs of giving up.

Her grandmother put a thin hand on her shoulder. “I have something to live for right in front of me, Juliet.”

They commandeered a canoe in a small bay, a little boat likely used to paddle across the quarter-mile expanse of the cove. Instead, Juliet pushed off and paddled out to sea, hoping she had chosen the right direction. A chance at freedom was worth the uncertainty of success. The possibility of death didn’t dissuade Juliet from trying to get back to her wife and friends. Juliet Zhang would never give up.

Juliet paddled through the night and was spent by the time the silhouette of land appeared, framed by an endless starry sky. Her grandmother had passed out from exhaustion. Juliet dragged their craft ashore and managed to get her grandmother into the sand, covering her with a couple of blankets she’d brought from the prison cell. Juliet promptly passed out, not remembering snuggling beside her grandmother on the beach.

“Let’s move inland,” Juliet said as the bright morning sun offered hope. “Maybe the island is big enough to show signs of civilization.”

Some islands along the coast, like the resort where Alistair Salem constructed an expensive hotel and vacation destination, were sporadically occupied. Maybe they could find someone who could be of help or have a way to communicate with the mainland. She headed inland, navigating thick vegetation slowly enough to allow her grandmother to keep pace.

The overgrown foliage proved nearly unnavigable. No one had been through this bramble since the dawn of humanity. Juliet started feeling disheartened when they came across a clearing under a high canopy of trees. Something didn’t belong. A clue like one of those Agatha Christie mysteries she’d watch with her grandmother on occasional afternoons when Juliet and her brothers needed a sitter. She glanced at her grandmother to see if it elicited the same response. But the woman Juliet remembered from her youth seemed to have vanished. A shell remained. Her grandmother’s spirit was broken and lost.

A tarp piled with firewood lay in the clearing. Someone had left it behind. It was the first sign that the island may be inhabited. Juliet looked closer. The standing water from the recent downpours left shallow puddles in the shape of shoeprints in the muddy soil. All the puddles pointed in one direction. She followed, keeping her pace slow enough for her grandmother to keep up. Cancer and captivity had left her a weak and withered shadow of her former self.

The directions of the footprints led to a cold campfire at the center of another clearing, which appeared to have been recently used. The hurricane had scrubbed the area of most evidence, but near the campsite was a wet, gray char and a couple of soggy cigarette butts. In the distance, empty crates as ominous as a pool of blood on a kitchen floor. One of the wooden pens appeared refurbished, while the others were rotted and broken. In one tangle of brush, a yellow ribbon of police tape fluttered in the soft breeze.

“Hahkv Island,” Juliet whispered under her breath.

“The Dark Summer?” Her grandmother swept her eyes across the scene. “It looks like someone was here more recently.”

“I heard about it in Iowa,” Juliet said. “Acindina Álvarez kept an eye on things in SX for me. She said the original abductor tricked Dalton and the other survivors into returning to Nightmare Island.”

“Dalton got abducted? Again?”

“He’s okay,” Juliet said, walking among the rotted crates where the devil had once corralled her brother like a pig for weeks and weeks. “Neil Halloweather happened to be in the right place at the right time and rescued them, killing the kidnapper in the process.”

“That’s a bullshit story. No way in Hell those boys would ever let someone wrangle them back here ever again,” her grandmother muttered. “Dalton would rather die than be dragged back here.”

“Yeah,” Juliet agreed. She thought the same thing when Acindina reported the story. Carver Montgomery was big as fuck, and Ram Álvarez was larger still. No old man could force any of those men, or Anna Álvarez either, for that matter, back to Nightmare Island.

“So, now we’re stuck in this godforsaken place,” her grandmother said. “Out of the shark tank into the gator pond.”

Juliet leaned against one of the wooden crates. She imagined her brother stuck in the small box made of sun-bleached planks, captive here for weeks and weeks. Juliet recalled the Dark Summer when the whole town banded together in search of the seven missing kids in SX, Dalton Zhang, Carver Montgomery, Angelo and Ram Álvarez, Sean and Micah Salem, and Rob Ryan. Those kids had endured agony. Juliet had been captive for only about a week so far. Her moxie consisted of sterner stuff than Dalton’s, and he woke up and faced every day, although usually drunk and depressed. Juliet would survive this situation. She would get back to SX and reunite with her wife.

Juliet stopped at the eighth crate, which no one had ever occupied. Most people believed that Andre Mascolo intended Bryce Graham to be his next victim. Bryce was more of a brother to her than Dalton ever was. How would a summer in captivity have affected Bryce if the kidnapper had abducted him? Would Bryce have met the same fate as Sean? Sean Salem was the sole fatality of the Dark Summer. One kid out of the seven never woke up from the nightmare.

His murderer was dead. Neil Halloweather had gunned down the man responsible for the terror that horrific summer.

Or had he? Acindina’s last report before Juliet’s abduction suggested something about the whole story stunk like rotten fish.

Naomi Salem had found the captives fifteen years ago. She had sailed the routes along the outer islands countless times through the summer. One day, Naomi spotted signs of movement on Hahkv Island. She reported suspicious activity and saved the lives of six kids. And she probably prevented Bryce from becoming the next victim.

“It took a whole town searching for those kids the entire summer to find them the last time.” No one would accuse Lula Zhang of acting optimistically after ten years of captivity. “No one is even looking for us. I’m presumed dead, and they probably think you are, too.”

“Juliet wouldn’t give up on me,” Juliet Zhang said. She had updated her grandmother on many events over the last decade since everyone believed Lula had died. They’d had a week to discuss many different things as the hurricane locked down the island, and recovery efforts had directed their captors’ attention elsewhere. “She’s looking for me.”

“We wanted to find those missing kids. We thought we had turned over every rock and checked every corner of SX. And yet, we never looked here.”

Lula Zhang was co-mayor at the time and instrumental in the search and rescue mission. Careful planning ended up being upstaged by pure luck.

“Juliet might not consider searching Nightmare Island, but Naomi thought of it once before. We’re Caesar sisters, Grandmother. The Salem twins won’t rest until they find me.”

“That hurricane made a direct hit on SX. The last thing anyone will be thinking about is a woman who was hiding in Iowa, and someone who died ten years ago. Who knows what sort of devastation SX is currently dealing with? I’m afraid we’re not at the top of the list of concerns, Juliet.”

She was right, damn it. Juliet couldn’t accept escaping one prison to simply become marooned somewhere else, where she couldn’t escape. She needed to get to SX and warn everyone that Delilah Ryan was an evil bitch. That was a twist she never saw coming. Her Caesar sister was as crazy as the mad hatter, but she never struck Juliet as an evil mastermind. Now, if it had been Ariel, then Juliet would understand. In fact, as they were growing up, Delilah had always said the logical, cool, and calculating Juliet Zhang was the one who reminded her of a James Bond villain.

“Then we find our own way off this cursed island,” Juliet said, scouring the area for…what? A helicopter with a full tank that somehow survived the hurricane? She didn’t know how to fly a chopper. A discarded cell phone with a full battery? Deus ex machina was a foolish fantasy, and the practical Juliet Zhang wouldn’t put her faith in phony miracles. Her grandmother had been a woman of faith before she disappeared ten years ago, and Juliet hadn’t seen her praying since her unexpected resurrection.

“You still believe in God, Grandmother?”

“Faith is finite, Juliet, and my tank ran dry years ago.”

“Yeah.” Juliet looked at the sky, empty and endless, no sign of a miracle, neither a search drone nor divine intervention. “God helps those who help themselves, right?”

Her grandmother stared at her feet, not even glancing up. “Not in my experience. We’re damned no matter what.”

How had it come to this? Juliet had followed in her grandmother’s footsteps. Lula had been the mayor when she disappeared. How had such a strong leader turned into a hopeless mess? Juliet had also served in City Hall. Was she destined to lose faith eventually?

Juliet glared at her grandmother, “I’m not going to give up so easily.”

“Neither did I for the first few years. Then, for a few more years, I would occasionally get a flash of hope. Now, it’s a good day when I don’t wish the cancer would finish the job someone started ten years ago.”

Who was that someone? Juliet’s captors had primarily remained masked. Only Delilah had revealed herself, throwing it in her pseudo-sister’s face. Who was the mastermind behind the prison on the remote island off Salem Shores? Delilah Ryan didn’t have the financial means or the architectural intellect to construct an evil lair. Why did someone kidnap Juliet and her grandmother? Who was the guy in the end cell? Her grandmother said she’d seen an Álvarez in the clinic before they transported her back to her cell. Which Álvarez? Juliet was fighting not only for her freedom but to rescue all of them.

“We still have the canoe,” Juliet said, unconvinced the small raft could make it across the open ocean between Hahkv Island and Salem Shores.

“Sea’s too rough,” her grandmother said. “The waves will capsize us.”

Juliet turned and started walking to the shore they’d washed up on. “I’ll swim back to SX if I have to.”

“You won’t have to swim, Juliet,” came a voice from within the tangled undergrowth. “We’ve got a boat.”

Britney Halloweather emerged from the thick foliage. Contrary to her usual glamorous, designer outfits, she wore a fashionable khaki ensemble that resembled what a wealthy person would wear on safari. Britney had been her sister-in-law until lately, the mother of Juliet’s nephews, and first lady of SX for many years while Juliet and Owen Zhang served as co-mayors. They’d spent holidays and a hundred other family functions together. Juliet knew her as well as she knew anyone outside her own Caesar siblings.

“Thank God, Britney,” Juliet said, stumbling toward her unexpected rescuer. “We were kidna—”

She came close enough to see that Britney wasn’t alone. Britney’s brother stood at her elbow. Damien Halloweather aimed a pistol at the Zhangs. The look on his face didn’t suggest he intended to help reunite the Juliets. She thought about the man in the mask who’d brought them food and water through the hurricane. His build and posture matched Damien’s.

The Halloweathers were in cahoots with Delilah Ryan.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Brit,” Juliet said.

“Have you ever known me to have a sense of humor, Juliet?”

“Hell, no,” Juliet said, turning to her grandmother. “This bitch has been keeping you locked up, Grandmother?”

Juliet’s grandmother squinted, as if trying to focus on a blurry image. “Is this the slutty little Britney who used to run around with Owen? I never imagined she was smart enough to be involved with a criminal mastermind. I haven’t seen her on the island before. The other one usually wears a mask. I never guessed he was a Halloweather.”

“We’re not Halloweathers,” Britney said.

“Well, you’re fucking certainly not a Zhang anymore, either,” Juliet snapped.

“We’re descended from one of the original settlers of SX, Ebrahim Iblīs. We are going to take back what’s ours.”

“Ibli-wha?” Juliet muttered. “What are you talking about, Brit?”

Britney approached with Damien in lockstep like a loyal pet. “Your grandmother knows. She’ll have plenty of time to fill you in. Come with us.”

Damien jabbed his gun at the Zhangs. Juliet considered running, preferring a chance at escape to further incarceration, willing to chance a bullet in the back before she started to suffer the slow descent into hopelessness like her grandmother. But Juliet realized by the evil in Damien’s eye that he wouldn’t shoot Juliet first. He’d aim for her grandmother. He’d make Juliet lose her again.

She couldn’t go through the pain.

There had to be another way.

Juliet followed the Hallowe—the Iblīs sibs. They had a boat waiting. Somehow, the psycho siblings had tracked Juliet’s escape from the prison to Nightmare Island. They were going to take Juliet and Lula Zhang back. Juliet made herself a solemn promise: she would find a way back to her wife or die trying. She couldn’t let ten years go by until another prisoner arrived and explained how Juliet Salem found a new love, not long after Juliet Zhang went missing, and everyone presumed her dead.

No.

That wasn’t how this story ended.

 

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