She recorded every word of his murder trial. He never said a thing?until the jury set him free.

For nineteen days, court reporter Mara Sokol felt Calder Brennan watching her from the defendant's table. When he finally speaks to her, it isn't a thank-you. It's a warning: Don't go home tonight.

Mara should stay away from him. Instead, she finds a damaged door, an off-the-record recording, and a question that could unravel everything the court decided. A detective wants to know what she heard. Someone else wants to make certain no one ever hears it again. And the man who was just acquitted seems to know far more than he will say.

Calder has no intention of leaving Mara unprotected. He waits outside her building. He notices threats before she does. He crosses lines that a safer man would never approach. Mara can feel the pull between them, but she knows protection can become another way to take away a woman's choices. She refuses to hand him hers.

The closer they get to the truth, the harder it becomes to separate desire from danger. Calder will do almost anything to keep Mara safe. Mara will risk almost anything to preserve the record. But when she discovers what he has done to the very evidence she trusted him with, wanting him will no longer be enough.

Some truths can be buried. Mara Sokol knows how to make them permanent.

VERBATIM is a standalone dark stalker romance told in dual POV, featuring an obsessive morally gray hero, a heroine determined to keep her agency, explicit intimacy, and a murder case that threatens everything between them. Intended for adult readers; content guidance appears inside the book.