Four years after Lysander Tan destroyed him with a single conversation, Arion Smith has rebuilt his life into something harder and leaner: security chief of Tetherend, a failing outer colony on the literal end of the corporate world. He has his work, his sick sister Zaraluna, and an agreement with the Tan Family Corporation that keeps both of them alive. What he doesn't want is Lysander Tan arriving as the colony's new governor with an apology and no explanation.
Arion intends to keep things strictly professional. But Tetherend is hiding something beneath its worn-down corridors and broken train lines, and when Lysander stumbles onto evidence of a human trafficking ring threaded through the colony's own supply routes, the two men find themselves chasing the same conspiracy — one that reaches far beyond a struggling mining outpost, and straight back to the empire that controls them both.
To expose the truth, Arion will have to trust the person he's vowed never to trust again. And Lysander will have to decide whether protecting Arion from his father's reach is still worth the lie he's been living.