joaquin torres falcon and the winter soldier

In a snowbound train, Shirley flees her wedding. Under the influence of medication, she spends a night with a stranger and gets pregnant. Ten months later, she enters a marriage of convenience with the third son of the Lowe family—unaware that the family's formidable head, Henry,is the man from that fateful night. Believing himself infertile due to a misdiagnosis, Henry treads a torturous path between abstinence and longing, secretly shielding Shirley while concealing his own devotion. What began in that snowstorm is a bond he would defy any taboo to protect. He thought himself an isolated island in winter,until she became the only warmth capable of melting his ice—the one he wished to claim forever.

Gabriel Reeds returns home a war hero, the general who shattered the southern enemy and unified the nation. The homecoming lasts about five minutes. His sister has been violated, his mother left gravely wounded, and the men responsible have powerful friends in very high places. Armed with an imperial gold medallion and a fury that doesn't cool, Gabriel storms the local courthouse and keeps going, pulling at a thread that unravels a conspiracy stretching from corrupt county officials all the way to the capital,where pension funds meant for fallen soldiers have been quietly stolen. The Emperor's brother-in-law hits back hard. Gabriel hits harder.With the Empress's backing, he dismantles the rot from the bottom up, for his family, for the dead, and for every soldier who bled for a country that then abandoned their kin.