Genre: Crime Fiction

Just released from prison, Julian Serrano is determined to get his life back by reconnecting with his son, maintaining a legit job, and steering clear of the life of crime that led him to prison in the first place. All while under the watchful eye of his parole officer, Diana Rivera. But while Julian fights to stay out of the life that cost him everything he loved, Diana struggles with her own heartache and loss.

Thrust back in the life when things don’t go as planned, Julian must decide who to trust and what plays to make. All while trying to keep Diana believing he’s staying on the straight and narrow. In an untangling web of betrayal, lies, and old debts come due, Julian and Diana must come together to save each other from the ghosts of their pasts.

Excerpt

Diana thought about the day he’d left. She remembered lying face up in their bedroom and being exhausted after two hours of crying and yelling. She had gone home early after Chloe, their neighbor from two houses down, had called to ask her about the moving truck that was parked in their driveway. Diana had made the mistake of confiding in her about her rocky marriage, so Chloe had turned the dial on the nosey neighbor routine up to ten and was always on the lookout.

Diana remembered arriving just in time to watch him load the last few boxes. Although she had been expecting something like this—things had been different between them after they’d lost Isabel—she’d asked questions anyway. She’d thought if she forced Derek to stand and speak, they could somehow work through the heartache together. She slowly realized there would be no conversation, at least not the one she envisioned.

Diana realized Derek was inherently a coward. He took some exhaustive measures to avoid speaking with her and to avoid any confrontation. He took a sick day from work and used a credit card she hadn’t known about to hire the movers. Like the antagonist in a crime film, he’d been planning this heist for months.

She remembered following him around their house. Diana watched as he double-checked for things he didn’t want to leave behind. She didn’t yell at him, and even though she was dying inside, Diana did not cry. She did not want to give him the satisfaction.

He eventually spoke to her. Derek stopped, faced her, and laid it all out. He told her he wasn’t happy anymore, that something had died inside him after Isabel died.

Derek reminded her, as if she had somehow forgotten, that it had been almost a year since their baby died and she wasn’t getting any better. He’d told her he’d only stayed after Isabel died because he thought she was weak and incapable, but he couldn’t waste his life taking care of her.

And she must have been standing too straight because he added the final gut-punch of telling her he just didn’t love her anymore, at least not in the way a husband is supposed to love their wife.

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About the Author

J.J. Hernandez was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Brooklyn and Miami, Florida. He is a graduate of Sam Houston State University and has been a law enforcement officer in Central Texas for twenty years. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and two daughters.

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