His Gilded Clockwork Snare

I didn't expect my Tuesday to begin by throwing a heavy brass wrench at a thug's head in a tavern brawl, but nobody messes with my cowardly buddy Gidgen, and nobody looks twice at a scruffy male machinist named Brez. Three years ago, I was Brezala, a doomed side-character in the novel *The Heiress of Brass and Glass*. When I realized I was pregnant with the ruthless industrial tycoon Rhovis Caldani’s child, I ran. Rhovis’s love is a suffocating, terrifying devotion, and my prickly pride refused to let my son Miro become a pawn in his dark, monopolistic empire. We were safe in the smog-choked lower city, relying entirely on my confidante Sarya to smuggle us supplies. Until Rhovis announced the Grand Caldani Exhibition - a high-stakes engineering contest with a prize I desperately need to cure Miro’s unique magical fever. Rhovis knows I can't resist the bait. Now I’m working right under his nose as a 'male' scholar. Every day is a heart-pounding game of cat-and-mouse. He stares too long at my hands. His dark side leaks out when he interrogates me about 'the runaway bride he lost'. But as his traps close in, will my trusted friend Sarya be the one to stab me in the back first?