Four consecutive life sentences. A metric ton of cartel meth melting on a South Texas goat farm. And the only thing more dangerous than the crime is the woman running the front.

Ten years into a sentence for crimes he took the fall for, Jax Rivera’s daily routine at Mesa Verde Unit is simple: avoid the solitary confinement hole, dodge the yard gangs, and try not to cook alive in the brutal hundred-degree heat. But when he’s pulled from gen-pop for a bizarre new work detail—tending goats on an off-site prison ranch—he quickly realizes the livestock is just a cover.

Enter Valerie Ruiz.

Sharp, connected, and ruthless, Valerie is the operations manager for a Mexican cartel. She doesn't give a damn about inmate rehabilitation; she needs a secure staging ground to recut, cool, and move hot product, and she needs convicts with nothing left to lose to do the dirty work. Jax was supposed to be just another set of hands—a disposable asset to keep in line with commissary cash and a tight leash.

Except the attraction between them is immediate, volatile, and impossible to ignore.

As a corrupt new warden plays both sides, missing inventory threatens to trigger a cartel bloodbath, and a brutal winter storm traps the ranch without guards, the line between business and survival snaps. Jax is used to having no future, but keeping Valerie alive might just cost him the only thing he has left: his life.

A gritty, high-heat romantic suspense featuring a sharp-tongued convict, a ruthless cartel boss, forced proximity, and dark Texas crime.

🌵 Gritty Romantic Suspense / Crime Romance   

⛓️ Forbidden Convict / Boss Dynamic   

🌡️ Forced Proximity in the Texas Heat   

🩹 Hurt / Comfort & Unlikely Caretaking   

🐐 Dark Humor, Prison Goats & Absurdist Chaos   

✉️ Tangled Pen-Pal Letters & Mistaken Intentions   

💥 High-Tension Slow Burn to Open-Door Heat

Reader thoughts on Dolce Vice: 

"I have never felt so stupid, and I mean it in a good way."

"I believed it. Everything. I hung on to every word in that f***ng book."

"I don’t like a simple read which can be predictable and wayyyyy to cheesy. Dolce Vice is definitely not it."