Sabotage

Sabotage is a dark romance that follows the volatile relationship between stepsiblings Colton and Raylee Lexington Adams as their years-long cycle of hatred, sexual obsession, and sabotage escalates toward a dangerous breaking point.

The novel opens with Colton orchestrating a graphic sexual encounter with Raylee in the formal dining room of the Pennsylvania mansion he shares with his three best friends: Finn, Alex, and Jenks. He has Raylee restrained while his friends watch, then offers her body to them while forbidding her from climaxing. Colton maintains total control, carrying her semi-conscious body upstairs afterward. Crucially, he signals Jenks to record the entire scene.

Raylee's narration reveals the backstory. Her mother, Tiffany, married Colton's billionaire father, Cliff, when Raylee was sixteen and Colton seventeen. After high school, Colton used his trust fund to buy the mansion, and Raylee moved in at her mother's encouragement when she enrolled at Barrington University, an elite college for wealthy students. Though the stepsiblings publicly despise each other, they have been sleeping together in secret for years. Colton has systematically destroyed every romantic relationship Raylee has attempted, ensuring she always returns to him.

The central conflict ignites when Colton releases the recorded encounter online. The video goes viral, accumulating over a million views. Raylee retaliates by smashing the window of his Lamborghini with a baseball bat, dousing the interior with gasoline, and setting it ablaze during a party. Colton watches from the porch, seething but calculating, and resolves to delay his revenge.

That same night, Raylee's boyfriend of five weeks, Nate, arrives looking for his missing cell phone, which Raylee had stolen to prevent him from seeing the video. Colton finds the phone, charges it, and returns it to Nate. The next morning, Nate discovers the video and confronts Raylee. Colton goads the situation by revealing that Raylee slept with him the previous night while Nate was asleep in her bed. Nate storms out. Raylee slaps Colton, realizing the video was released specifically to destroy her relationship.

Flashbacks fill in the origins of their dynamic. Six years earlier, Colton first saw Raylee in his father's kitchen and was overwhelmed with desire, but his father warned him never to touch her. Colton masked his obsession with hostility. Five years earlier, after Raylee lost her virginity to a classmate named Mike Williams, Colton confronted and propositioned her, initiating their first sexual encounter and the pattern that would define their relationship.

At a family lunch, Colton follows Raylee to her old bedroom and proposes a truce: They stop fighting and become exclusive sexual partners. Raylee accuses him of manipulation but, unable to resist, agrees. Afterward, Colton orders Finn to remove the video from the internet, its purpose served.

The novel also reveals that Colton and his friends work as operatives for Tyson Crawford, their boss, who commands operations for the Lords, a powerful secret society of wealthy elites. They carry out kidnappings and killings, operating out of Tyson's nightclub, Blackout, and the Cathedral, the Lords' headquarters. During their senior year, Tyson recruited them and had them branded with matching tattoos that serve as identifiers and binding contracts of silence. Raylee does not know about this part of Colton's life.

Raylee attends a party with her best friend, Tatum, who is also Alex's sister. At the party, Nate appears and grabs Raylee's arm, trying to force her to leave. She escapes, and Colton intercepts her, leading her to the property's in-law suite, where his friends have restrained Nate in a chair. Colton commands Raylee to undress and has sex with her in front of Nate, then has his friends humiliate the restrained man. Before leaving, Colton numbs Raylee's skin with ice and uses a razor blade to carve his name into her skin, branding her as his.

The next morning, Raylee discovers the brand and confronts Colton. He offers her his pocketknife, telling her to carve her name into his chest and declaring she belongs to him. Raylee refuses, suspecting manipulation. Colton calls the branding retaliation for the car fire and orders her out. She leaves with a packed bag. Finn advises Colton to fight for Raylee, warning she will leave for good after her final year of college.

While driving to her mother's house, Raylee is ambushed by Nate, who forces a collision with a truck and drags her to Mike's in-law suite. He binds and gags her with duct tape, strips her, and rapes her while recording on his phone, intending to send the footage to Colton as retribution. Mike arrives and objects but does not free Raylee, warning Nate that Colton's group kills for the Lords before leaving and promising to return in an hour. After Mike departs, Raylee fights back: She headbutts Nate, breaking his nose, kicks him away, and grabs a construction nail gun from the floor. She shoots him repeatedly, killing him. When Mike returns, she shoots him in the arm before he calls Colton.

Colton and his friends find Raylee in shock, covered in blood, still clutching the nail gun with duct tape on her wrists and around her head. Colton coaxes her to release the weapon, and Finn cuts the tape away. He orders his friends to bury Nate's body and destroy Raylee's car, then takes her to the Cathedral, where a doctor sedates and treats her. When she wakes, Raylee declines a sexual assault examination, stating she killed Nate before he could finish.

Mike is brought in, claiming innocence. Raylee exposes his lie, recounting everything she overheard: Mike told Nate she was not worth the trouble, acknowledged the danger of Colton's group, and left her alone with a man he knew intended to harm her, planning to return in an hour to figure out a plan together. Raylee attacks Mike, but Colton restrains her, and Alex knocks Mike unconscious. Tyson agrees to hold Mike until they decide his fate.

At home, Colton confirms he has ruined all her relationships and killed people, explaining he did it because he has loved her since they met. When Raylee asks if the rape changes how he sees her, he assures her nothing ever could. She initiates sex, telling him she does not want Nate to be the last man who touched her. Colton hesitates, but she accuses him of treating her as broken. He relents, and afterward she tells him she loves him before falling asleep.

The epilogue takes place one week later in the Lords' cemetery. Colton has secretly watched Nate's recording and destroyed his hand punching a wall in anguish, though he has not told Raylee. Over the past week, she has coped by provoking fights and demanding rough sex, emerging calmer after each encounter, a pattern Colton recognizes as her way of reclaiming herself. Tyson delivers Mike, gagged and bound to a tree, and Finn hands Raylee the same nail gun. She strips Mike's pants and ties his legs together to prevent him from kicking, then systematically shoots him across his body as Finn reloads twice. Mike dies. Colton gently takes the empty gun from her hands. He plans to tell their parents about their relationship, resolved never to hide her again. Raylee reflects that love is the deadliest drug and that together with Colton, they are explosive and unbeatable.