Facet & Fire
He’s the only man who can cut the world’s most dangerous diamond, and she’s the only woman skilled enough to steal his heart—and his stone.
Eamon Thorne is the 'Ghost Cutter,' a man of monastic discipline hidden within the brutalist walls of The Geode. Tasked with faceting the volatile Star of Meridian—a diamond so dangerous it has destroyed previous masters—he trusts no one and touches nothing but stone. But when Cleo Raine manipulates her way into his vault as his new apprentice, the silence he’s spent years cultivating is replaced by a dangerous, magnetic chaos.
Cleo is a woman living on borrowed time, forced by a ruthless syndicate to steal the multi-billion dollar diamond to buy her neurodivergent sister’s freedom. As a blizzard traps them in isolated Swiss Alps fortress, the lines between teacher and student blur into a raw, intense connection. Cleo expected a fragile artist, but she found a man of sharp angles and protective power—one who makes her question the heist that could save her family.
When the ultimate betrayal shatters Eamon’s hard-won trust, Cleo must execute a desperate reverse-heist to save the man she was sent to ruin. In a high-stakes game of shadows and steel, the cutter and the thief must fuse their lethal skills to survive the fracture or be crushed by the weight of their own lies.
The Blurb
Eamon Thorne is the 'Ghost Cutter,' a man of monastic discipline hidden within the brutalist walls of The Geode. Tasked with faceting the volatile Star of Meridian—a diamond so dangerous it has destroyed previous masters—he trusts no one and touches nothing but stone. But when Cleo Raine manipulates her way into his vault as his new apprentice, the silence he’s spent years cultivating is replaced by a dangerous, magnetic chaos.
Cleo is a woman living on borrowed time, forced by a ruthless syndicate to steal the multi-billion dollar diamond to buy her neurodivergent sister’s freedom. As a blizzard traps them in isolated Swiss Alps fortress, the lines between teacher and student blur into a raw, intense connection. Cleo expected a fragile artist, but she found a man of sharp angles and protective power—one who makes her question the heist that could save her family.
When the ultimate betrayal shatters Eamon’s hard-won trust, Cleo must execute a desperate reverse-heist to save the man she was sent to ruin. In a high-stakes game of shadows and steel, the cutter and the thief must fuse their lethal skills to survive the fracture or be crushed by the weight of their own lies.
"Ellis Hale has absolutely mastered the 'competence kink' in this installment! The tension between Eamon and Cleo is so thick you could cut it with one of Eamon's diamond saws. I loved the unique setting of the Geode and how the high-stakes heist elements kept me on the edge of my seat until the very last page."— BookishVibeReviews