I thought I was the apex predator. I was just the monster on a leash.For two hundred years, Julian Vance has ruled the dark streets of Halcyon City with a lethal, righteous certainty. He is a vampire built around a single, unbreakable law: he only drinks the blood of the guilty. To him, the hunt isn’t just an appetite—it is divine justice.
Until the night the iron turns to poison.
Mid-feed, a flat, clinical sweetness coats his tongue, fracturing his mind and bringing the city’s greatest predator to his knees. He isn’t alone in the dark. Watching him fall is Chloe Sterling, a cold-eyed human grifter who does the math faster than Julian can crash. She offers him an anchor—a palm against his chest to pull him back from the brink of madness—but her mercy comes with a steep price.
She isn’t saving him. She’s acquiring him.
As Julian is forced into a reluctant partnership with the sharp-tongued con artist, a terrifying truth emerges from the shadows of the underworld. A brilliant, patient mastermind known as The Sommelier is curating Halcyon’s criminal underworld. He isn’t trying to kill the apex predator. He is cooking for him. Every target Julian thought he chose was a meticulously seasoned course laid out on a pre-planned schedule.
Trapped between a mastermind who knows his hunger perfectly and a partner who is learning to read his soul, Julian’s moral cathedral begins to crumble. Because when the field is salted and the whole city is poisoned, the hungriest animal in the cage has only one clean well left to drink from…
And she’s standing right next to him.
The Taste of Guilt is the blistering first book in the Veins of Justice series. A gritty, slow-burn paranormal noir perfect for fans of visceral urban fantasy, psychological tension, and dark, complex anti-heroes.
