Red Flags

Marrying her best friend was a dream come true...until it turned into a nightmare she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy. Urban life in New York City requires hustle and grit to keep going each day, with romance often taking a back seat to survival. No one knows this better than Lydia, a single mother working two backbreaking jobs in the medical field to give her kids a better life. She's been unlucky in the love department more times than she can count and has already accepted her fate as the queen of broken hearts - after all, she got two beautiful little girls out of the deal. With her nose always to the grindstone, the last thing Lydia expects to encounter is Mark, her handsome and charmingly quirky coworker at the city's busiest hospital. He's got kids of his own and they become fast friends. The next thing she knows, Lydia has been secretly enamored with him for years. So much so that when their intense platonic bond finally turns hot and steamy and Mark eventually pops the question, the word "no" has disappeared from Lydia's vocabulary entirely. Soon after the wedding, however, Lydia learns creating with Mark the happy blended family life she craves is much easier said than done. Especially when her new husband's adorable eccentricities morph before her eyes into something so disturbing and viscerally dark it could rip their marriage apart at the seams. Raw and unflinching, Red Flags examines the lasting effects of childhood trauma and the lengths a desperate woman will go to save the man she loves from himself. Please be aware: this story contains themes of parental neglect and mental illness, as well as graphic depictions of child abuse that might be distressing to some readers.