She Fights and Plays

I was sixteen when my biological father dragged me from our Montana ranch back to his East Coast mansion. Welcome party? My half-brother Brandon pointed at my face in the cafeteria and sneered, "Trash from the farm!" I slapped him. Hard. His cheek bloomed red. "Girls can't possibly understand baseball tactics," he spat, trying to save face. "If you can even make the team, I'll do whatever you say." Deal. The day those thugs cornered me in the alley, I took down twenty-something of them solo. Lucas Winston—team captain, heir to a financial empire, top of our class—just stood there watching, eyes gleaming with something dangerous. "Would you come save me? Even in another state?" "I would. But not because you're asking like this." Grandpa Jack's voice crackled over the phone: "Your combat skills, your tactical mind—they can all translate to baseball. It's your only way out." With my grades scraping the bottom, athletic recruitment was my only shot at college. That bet? My burning bridge. But Lucas became a problem. He got too close, his control issues suffocating. After graduation, I ran. Thought I could escape him. One semester later, he showed up at my club entrance: "I turned down Yale." I swept his legs and pinned him to the mat, lips brushing his ear: "You're my prey now." **Will I win the bet? Will that empire heir learn to let go?** **And when some fool insults me on a Thai island, Lucas's eyes turn ice-cold:** **"Yacht wager. Loser jumps and feeds the sharks."**