Slag and Sinew

He came to tear it all down. She's the only thing standing in his way.Cade Voss has waited eighteen years for this.The Kessler Iron Works foundry killed his father — a molten iron spill caused by negligence, covered up by a corrupt county inspector, erased from the public record like it never happened. Cade was fourteen. His mother vanished into grief. Foster care taught him how to survive. Demolition taught him how to destroy.Now he owns the wrecking company hired to bring the foundry down. Every charge is calculated. Every timeline is locked. The Kessler name dies with the building.There's just one problem.Noa Kessler.Bernard Kessler's granddaughter returns to Harlan, Ohio, for a funeral and inherits a foundry she hasn't seen in eight years — along with a will that demands she keep it standing. A preservationist by trade, Noa sees what others call wreckage and finds reasons to save it. She files an emergency injunction. She moves into the caretaker's cottage. She puts her hand on the foundry wall and listens to what the building is still holding.Cade expected an obstacle. He didn't expect her.When a historic blizzard seals them inside the cottage for five days, the proximity becomes a pressure system neither can contain. Noa discovers the truth buried in her grandfather's locked files — the cover-up, the falsified inspections, the death that was erased. Cade discovers that the woman whose name he came to destroy is the only person who's ever made him question whether tearing things down is all he knows how to do.But Cade has a secret of his own. He didn't come to Harlan for a paycheck. He came for revenge. And the evidence Noa uncovered? He's already using it.Trust is a load-bearing structure. Once it fractures, everything built on top of it comes down.In a town forged from iron and broken promises, two people on opposite sides of a wrecking ball must decide what's worth saving — the building, the truth, or each other.SLAG AND SINEW is Book One in the Backbone series. Each book follows a different couple in the industrial towns of the Rust Belt. Different trades. Different scars. Same question: What are you willing to build from what's been broken?