Cross Crossed: Hired for Slaughter - CROSS Crossed, #1

In a city where the corporate ladder is built on headstones, survival is the only promotion that matters.

Victor Cross is a man of rigid discipline and cold calculation. When he lands a role as a junior financial consultant at The Rovers, he believes his first-class degree and aggressive debt-recovery skills are his greatest assets. But he quickly discovers that at this firm, "performance" isn't measured in spreadsheets. It is measured in blood.

The Rovers is a hollowed-out empire, a bankrupt recycling front masking a darker reality. To stay afloat, employees are being systematically eliminated. As Cross is fast-tracked into a dead man's office, he realizes he hasn't been hired for his mind. He has been selected by the firm's ruthless owner, Graham, as a moral blank slate, the perfect innocent sacrifice for a terrifying occult ritual meant to wipe the company's debts clean.

Surrounded by colleagues who are as much predators as they are peers, the brilliant but desperate Flute and the enigmatic Sandie, whose warmth hides a mission of sabotage, Cross is forced into a high-stakes game of psychological warfare. From the sterile halls of a corrupt hospital to the candlelit ruins of an ancient dome, the line between ally and enemy dissolves.

When a manufactured tragedy strikes his family, the disciplined consultant abandons logic and embraces a more violent creed. With the help of the irreverent Flute, Cross must navigate a web of financial scandal and ritualistic murder to settle the ultimate debt.

The contract is signed. The sacrifice is prepared. But Victor Cross is about to prove that innocence is the most dangerous weapon of all.