For five years the woman running Praya Capital has been Vivienne Ho. Five years of filings and no press. Two photographs on the fund's own site, both of the other founder. A face fixed by hand before seven each morning, and a life built so completely that it became real to the woman wearing it.

Damien Tang loses a container terminal to her on a Thursday and wants her by the weekend. His family opens a file. The file goes considerably further than courtship requires, and he lets it run, and tells himself it was the only way to begin.

Six years before that, Circe walked out of an authorised job carrying something she had never been meant to see. She has been moving it ever since, one bonded shed and one cold store at a time, and it is the reason she has been able to leave at a few days' notice for five years and has never once been able to go.

By the end of the season the name is registered dead. A house in Geneva publishes half a billion dollars for a body and engages five specialists who are not being paid for one. An American unit opens a file of its own. The man who loves her has money, no training, and no idea what he is buying.

She has carried one thing for six years that she has never been able to spend. It cannot be posted, or wired, or left with a lawyer. To use it at all she has to be standing in the room when it is read.

Circe can wear any face in the world. What her craft cannot survive is being looked at properly, at close range, by somebody who is not going to stop.

He is not going to stop.

Before you claim: 166,000 words over 63 chapters, so please only take a copy if you can give it the time. HFN, not HEA. Book one of three, stands alone, no cliffhanger. Drafting is AI-assisted; the story and initial prose are mine and I edit extensively every chapter. Honest reviews are greatly appreciated on Goodreads and Storygraph, and Amazon if you can. Thank you very much for reading!