HE’S BEEN WATCHING HER FOR FIVE YEARS. SHE’S THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS HIS SECRET.NOW HER TRUTH IS THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE OR DESTROY THEM BOTH.

Cole Barrett has been obsessed with investigative journalist Sienna Cross since she witnessed him at a Gray Council massacre five years ago. She kept his secret then, but her relentless investigation into Seattle’s vigilante murders keeps getting closer to the truth. He’s eliminated five of her boyfriends—making each death look accidental—but her current lover, Instagram-famous photographer Connor Lewis, is too visible to kill. So Cole watches, and waits, and seethes.

Sienna knows someone is hunting the men in her life. The pattern is too perfect to be coincidence. But she can’t prove it, can’t stop it, and part of her wonders if her mysterious protector is the same masked vigilante she let walk away five years ago. When Connor is framed for drug trafficking and she’s arrested as an accomplice, the enigmatic lawyer who appears to defend her feels dangerously familiar.

As Cole manipulates the legal system to bind Sienna to him through contracts she can’t break, she discovers the horrifying truth: he’s been orchestrating her isolation for years, killing anyone who dared touch her. But when her investigation threatens to expose both the Gray Council and the Syndicate’s child trafficking network, she must choose between the Pulitzer-worthy story that will destroy him, or the morally gray monster who’s been killing for her since the night she lowered her camera instead of taking the shot.

Because Sienna has a secret too—she’s known it was Cole all along. And she’s been getting closer to other men just to watch him react.

BEHIND THE BENCH is the second book in the Gray Council series. This dark romance features a possessive lawyer who uses legal manipulation as foreplay, an investigative journalist whose search for truth becomes her downfall, courtroom power games, and a guaranteed HEA earned through blood and betrayal. While each Gray Council book features a different couple and can be read as a standalone romance, reading in order enhances the experience as the war between the Council and Syndicate unfolds across all five books.

Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, stalker romance, forced proximity, legal manipulation, blackmail, vigilante justice, morally gray hero, touch her and die, obsessive protector.

Some truths are worth killing for.