Matthew Scura
Freedom has a price, and Isla intends to steal it.Seventeen-year-old Isla Brode knows exactly what every merchant ship in Port Glory is worth-and exactly how much money could be made by stealing it.As one of the port’s best insurance agents, Isla spends her days calculating the value of cargo, ships and human risk. But when her abusive adopted parents begin taking every coin she earns, Isla decides she’s done waiting for freedom.So she invents a way to buy it.Wanted pirate Captain Boz Hakken needs profitable ships to raid. Isla knows where to find them. She’ll slip him her clients’ shipping manifests, he’ll take the cargo, and they’ll split the proceeds. No guessing. No wasted raids.It’s dishonest. Dangerous. Potentially catastrophic.But it works.Gold begins piling up faster than Isla imagined, and for the first time in her life, escape feels inevitable. A few more successful raids and she’ll have enough to buy her own tall ship and leave Port Glory behind forever.Then other pirates notice.A vicious captain arrives looking to turn Isla’s clever little operation into something far bloodier. As merchant sailors begin dying, and Boz is driven from the port, Isla’s perfect scheme becomes something she can no longer fix on paper.Isla wanted enough money to escape her old life.Instead, she may have created something capable of destroying everyone in it.She built this mess with a quill, and to fix it, she’ll have to finish with a sword.
