The Glided Cage - Lovely Strangers, #1

What if the story you told yourself about your future was a lie someone else wrote?

Remy Sot had one plan: graduate, confess his love, and begin the life he'd always imagined. Instead, he gets a front-row seat to his own humiliation when the girl of his dreams reveals she's been with someone else for months.

Mika Jabari had a different strategy: smile, charm, and avoid his father's expectations at all costs. But graduation doesn't bring freedom—it brings a mansion in Porta Valley, courtesy of two families who've been keeping secrets longer than either son has been alive.

Now Remy and Mika are stepping into a world their fathers built on buried truths and a twenty-year-old death that was never an accident. While Mika reconnects with a girl he's loved from afar, Remy finds himself across the table from Adanna—a woman whose gaze sees straight through him, whose smile promises danger, and whose family name could unravel everything.

Set against the backdrop of two warring counties and a conspiracy that spans generations, Lovely Strangers is a 90,000-word coming-of-age novel about friendship, betrayal, and the moment you realize the person you're becoming was never your choice to make. For readers who love character-driven suspense with the emotional weight of literary fiction.

Some doors aren't meant to be opened. But Remy was born on the other side.