Long Game

A disgraced soccer exec reluctantly enlists the help of a retired soccer star in coaching a children's team in this smalltown love story in the vein of Ted Lasso and It Happened One Summer, from the New York Times bestselling author of “The Spanish Love Deception”. Adalyn Reyes has spent years perfecting her daily routine: wake up at dawn, drive to the Miami Flames FC offices, try her hardest to leave a mark, go home, and repeat. But her routine is disrupted when a video of her in an altercation with the team's mascot goes viral. Rather than fire her, the team's owner, who happens to be her father, sends Adalyn to middle-of-nowhere North Carolina, where she's tasked with turning around the struggling local soccer team, the Green Warriors, as a way to redeem herself. Her plans crumble upon discovering that the players wear tutus to practice (impractical), keep pet goats (messy), and are terrified of Adalyn (counterproductive), and are nine-year-old kids. To make things worse, also in town is Cameron Caldani, goalkeeping prodigy whose presence is somewhat of a mystery. Cam is the perfect candidate to help Adalyn, but after one very unfortunate first encounter involving a rooster, Cam's leg, and Adalyn's bumper, he's also set on running her out of town. But banishment is not an option for Adalyn. Not again. Helping this ragtag children's team is her road to redemption, and she is playing the long game. With or without Cam's help.

The final confrontation begins beneath the streets of Manhattan.The Meridian Syndicate has thirty days before federal elimination-but Colonel James Patrick Webb has uncovered something far more dangerous than any heist. Deep within the Federal Reserve's gold vaults lies evidence of systematic corruption that connects America's highest officials with foreign intelligence networks threatening the nation's sovereignty.As FBI Agent Marcus Webb closes in on the syndicate, he doesn't know he's hunting his own brother-a soldier presumed dead who's been operating undercover to expose institutional betrayal. Lieutenant Sarah Chen must choose between her federal assignment and constitutional principles when she discovers the task force's true mission: eliminate evidence, not gather it.In seventy-two hours, the syndicate will attempt the impossible: steal federal gold reserves while transmitting proof of treason to the world. But when brothers reunite five hundred feet below New York's financial district, they'll discover that some truths are worth more than survival-and that exposing corruption may require the ultimate sacrifice.From the abandoned steel works of Queens to the bedrock vaults of the Federal Reserve, The Reckoning delivers a pulse-pounding finale where family loyalty collides with institutional power, and where the price of constitutional accountability may be paid in blood. The long game ends here-but will American democracy survive the truth?Perfect for readers who crave: High-stakes heists with moral complexity, conspiracy thrillers grounded in financial realism, and action-packed finales that challenge assumptions about government, justice, and the cost of truth in a world where institutions protect their secrets at any price.