She wants that booty, and she’s not gonna stop until it’s hers.

Meet Gwen Lee: former antique dealer, current treasure hunter. She keeps in prime shape, moisturizes like hell, and better not hear anyone saying she looks a day over 45. She’s world renowned and her expeditions create one helluva stir on the black market. Because Gwen is all about dollars, and living the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed.

Luxe.

When she learns that finding the Trident of Poseidon would make for one monster pay day, Gwen decides to pursue it. There’s just one little problem–no one knows if it’s even real.

Together with her sister Lainey, Gwen sets a course for Siren’s Bay, a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean. They set up base at a dodgy rent-a-cabin business on the beach, despite obvious interest in their operation from the owner Jack, a sexy Scottish beach bum.

It soon becomes apparent that the shark-infested turquoise waters of Siren’s bay hold a secret… or several.

Not only does Gwen discover the Trident is breathtakingly real, she’s not the only one trying to get it. She finds herself caught between Jack and Maris, the polished Italian who runs the local Visitor Center. Both men are determined, hot as hell, and willing to broker deals with her. But Gwen isn’t sure who she can trust in her quest for the Trident. Maybe not even herself.

Ready to meet Gwen Lee? Read Chapter 1 of Gwen Lee and the Trident of Poseidon now 👇🏼

Please note: This series is not cozy and contains heavy language and spicy, open-door descriptive sex.

Chapter 1

The crisp blue Mediterranean Sea was whipped away beneath the hum of the Money, Honey’s dual engines. Twin streams of foamy whitewash ribboned across the turquoise surface. The sleek white boat causing the ruckus flew across the water, hopping from wave to wave playfully as it frolicked in the scorching mid-morning sun. The resulting wind whipped strands of pewter hair into the face of a woman who was desperately trying to read the flapping weathered pages of a leather-bound journal. As the boat crested a wave and then took a particularly sharp curve, sea mist invaded the deck.

She frowned and snapped the book closed. “Do you have to do that?”

“Do what?”

The much younger woman beside her was perched on the edge of the white leather skipper’s chair, wearing an obnoxious gold bikini that would have been more at home in Palm Beach than on an expedition. Her thick black hair was twisted into a messy side braid and an impish half grin on her face said she knew exactly what she was doing.

A stalwart brow hitched up as the first woman tucked the journal protectively into the pocket on the side of her own seat. “Lainey.”

“It’s been a while, Gwennie. She needs to blow off the cobwebs. Besides…” Lainey shrugged a shoulder, her grin widening. “It’s fun.” She opened up the throttle as the swell dropped off, sending the boat zooming across the flat, deeper water.

Murder wasn’t something Gwen regularly contemplated. Wait. Correction. Committing murder wasn’t something she regularly contemplated. Being a treasure hunter, murder in a historical sense was part of the job. People generally didn’t part with their treasures during a nice picnic on a sunny afternoon in their own backyard. But contemplating committing murder happened less frequently. Fitting, though, that it should happen now in the presence of her baby sister. She wisely chose to say nothing and preserve the remaining shreds of her sanity.

On the surface, the Lee sisters were stunningly alike. They both had their mother’s gorgeous bone structure, and their father’s kind eyes. Both girls were blessed with straight dark hair, thanks to their Chinese heritage, and had grown up as coordinated, sporty creatures who seemed to thrive under the heat of the Florida sunshine. But that was where the similarities ended.

Gwen had been spoiled rotten from an early age, attending the best school her immigrant parents could afford to send her to. She’d gone on to study a B.A. in History at the University of Miami, graduating summa cum laude before working long and tedious hours as an antique dealer to save enough money to pay off her student loans and start her own treasure hunting business. She took no prisoners and was willing to do whatever was needed to further her interests. And she sure as hell didn’t apologize for it.

Her sister had been spoiled rotten from an early age, too. The only problem was that she’d stayed that way ever since. Gwen had been seventeen and largely self-sufficient when her baby sister was born, leaving their parents plenty of space to dote on their new princess. Lainey had grown up charming, extremely social, and completely entitled, graduating from high school, dropping out of community college, and skipping from one bad relationship to another.

Lainey had been living at home with their parents until Gwen had received a call begging her to take Lainey under her wing so they could move to a retirement community on the Central Gulf Coast. It was a conundrum she hadn’t needed. Gwen likedliving and working and being alone, and having Lainey tagging along was a complication she could have easily lived without. But in the end, the only reason Gwen had agreed was because she knew their parents deserved a pay-off for all their hard work.

Slipping from her seat with casual athleticism, Gwen hauled a heavy oxygen tank out of storage and slotted it into the rack by the side of the boat. She swiped at a drip of sweat dampening her hairline and began her routine preparation as Lainey guided the Money, Honey to their charted location, glad to have her own boat and gear with her even if it had cost her a fortune to have it all piloted over from the US.

Oxygen levels of the tanks? Check. Weight belt attached? Check. She debated whether to change into her wetsuit once more but given the coastal waters of the Mediterranean rarely became cool enough to cause cramping, and since this was her first dive on location, she was tempted to do things a little more casually. Get to know the water. Get to know the coast.

Gwen paused to hold on to the polished steel frame of the canopy, squinting at the glare from the water as they began to slow down.

They glided to a stop a couple of miles offshore by a huge rocky pillar that jutted up out of the water like a splintered bone. The pitted black surface of the stone was quite intimidating. Gwen tilted her angular jaw upwards as she took it all in, right up to the sharp point that seemed to pierce the sky. Seabirds squawked endlessly, circling the pinnacle or perched in well-hidden nests on the rocks. The pillar was the visual marker for Ribcage Reef, a network of coral beds that sprawled for over half a mile here across the sandy floor of the ocean.

“Oh, wow.”

When she was really impressed with something, Lainey’s voice took on the unmistakable drone of a Valley Girl accent despite both women being born and bred in Miami. The younger Lee woman whipped her huge phone out of the holder in her chair and angled it upwards to capture the formidable spear of an exposed ‘rib’. As soon as she lowered her device, she fixed her sister with a pointed look.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

Gwen rolled her eyes, turning to start getting ready. “You had a bad feeling about the sushi last week too, but that didn’t stop you from having seconds.”

“This is different,” Lainey complained defensively. A concerned frown crossed her feminine features, lending her the look of a Disney princess about to embark on a dangerous expedition. “This place… it has an aura.”

Gwen raised a brow, slipping her dive knife into the scabbard belted to her bare thigh. Her simple black one-piece was a complete one-eighty from Lainey’s showy swimsuit—practical, understated, and sleek. Her hair was respectably silvering and her eyes were framed by hints of crow’s feet, while Lainey wasn’t even close to having her first hot flash. Gwen often wondered why her parents had decided to have children so far apart in age, and her best theory to date was that they hoped to personally punish Gwen for her adamant decision to not ever have children herself.

“You’re right,” she nodded, gazing appraisingly at their surroundings. “Can you smell that?”

“The ocean?” Lainey asked, with a confused head tilt.

“Millions,” Gwen clarified. A gleam of excitement lit up her dark eyes, the way it always did when her ambitious nature came into play. “Which is exactly what this piece will sell for on the open market.”

“Yeah, if you can find it,” her sister scoffed, plopping back onto the skipper’s chair. She reached into the pocket, retrieving a pamphlet she’d collected at the marina on their way out. “It says here that Siren’s Bay is known for,” her voice changed as though she was now reading directly from the pamphlet, “numerous partial shipwrecks from many points in history.”

Like a rotating mister fan in an Orlando theme park in the dead of July, her sister sporadically spewed barely relevant tidbits about their dive location. Gwen listened to her sister’s babble with the hint of a smile, alternating between making her final preparations and consulting the leather field journal she took with her everywhere.

She’d spent months researching this trip. Plugging coordinates into her GPS system, delving into information on the location, the culture, the lore. Some of the material she’d bought from dubious characters off the dark web. Some she had translated from ancient texts she kept in her private collection. It amused her that Lainey thought a tri-fold pamphlet she’d picked up at the marina on their way out would give them the edge they needed.

“While most of the wrecks have been scavenged over the years and are believed devoid of significant cultural or monetary discoveries, others believe the wrecks may still hold important artifacts protected in part by the coast’s reputation as a breeding ground for great white sharks. Territorial female white sharks staking out locations to spawn have impeded recovery efforts and kept treasure hunters at bay.”

Gwen and Lainey snorted at the same time. “At bay,” they both said with matching smirks, meeting each other’s gazes.

Gwen straightened from where she was bent over her equipment and swiped away the sweat forming on the back of her neck. The actual temperature on the deck of the Money, Honey was fairly mild, but that didn’t stop the sun from burning into everything it could touch. The smooth sea lapped gently against the side of the boat, the surface of the blue-green water sparkling with reflections from a cloudless sky. A cool sea breeze competed with the baking sunlight, promising that under the waves, at least, the sun wouldn’t be such a concern.

“Should you be diving on your own with sharks around?” Lainey asked, peering over the top of her cat-eye sunglasses to watch Gwen pull her diving vest on.

Gwen felt a spike of alarm at the idea of someone intruding on her diving time. Part of the wonder of diving was the silence. She wasn’t sure she wanted anyone else coming along, even if it was ‘best practice’.

Honestly? She’d rather take her chances with the sharks.

“I’ll be fine,” she reassured her sister as she clipped and tied all her various apparatus into place. She habitually checked her equipment once more from the side of the boat. She flicked her pressure gauge to be sure the needle was moving, tried to move her tank to be sure everything was tightened properly, and took a breath from her regulator to ensure it was flowing. When she reached back to spit-wash her goggles, she noticed Lainey was still looking at her with concern.

She took a deep breath. “Look. If it’ll make you feel better, you can watch the fish finder and let me know if anything big shows up.”

Lainey crooked an eyebrow. “How?”

It was an excellent point, but Gwen was only appeasing her anyway so she shrugged. “Dynamite?”

She stuffed the regulator into her mouth and took another breath, effectively ending the conversation. She held up a thumb to indicate her readiness to fall over the side of the boat, and Lainey responded in kind. Gwen lifted her feet into the air and slid off the boat into the water.

***

Cool weightlessness enveloped her as soon as she plunged under the water’s surface. The sound of seabirds, the crashing of waves against nearby rocks, and the ambient sounds of wind across the surface of the ocean instantly disappeared. Under the waves, it was all replaced by the rhythmic sound of her breath through the regulator and the bubbles from her exhalation, a sound that was so normal to her that it practically faded from her consciousness as she adjusted herself to being underwater.

She flicked her flippers to turn out of her fall and orient herself more naturally in the water. In the shade of the Money, Honey, the water cooled her skin, a stark relief from the scorching sun overhead. Fish coasted here and there before her, either so used to divers or so little disturbed by predators, they didn’t bother to dart away. She might have reached out to touch them but knew from experience that if she did, they would evade her.

The sandy white seafloor peeked out between the dark, craggy coastal rocks that dotted the ocean bed. Mosslike seaweed cushioned the sun-exposed shelves of the rock, softening their appearance. Here and there, larger plants of varying colors swayed against the seafloor like serene weathervanes heralding smooth seas.

Man, if they found anything of value here, it would be so easy to recover. Bonus!

She kicked powerfully, propelling herself through the water. She explored the rocks along the seafloor, growing larger and larger as they headed back toward shore, like a row of teeth jutting out of the sand. Bubbles floated to the surface as she made her way through the water, coming around a particularly large boulder to find a large cave looming over her, at least three times as far across as she was tall.

This is it, she thought as she looked up at the maw of the cave. Fish swam lazily in and out of the shade it provided, as though unperturbed by the ominous name given to the caves by locals. Poseidon’s Trap. A cave system so long and labyrinthian, it even claimed the lives of explorers with high-tech diving equipment. She had no desire to tempt fate by diving the caves on her first expedition, but she wouldn’t mind peeking her head in to see just how big the first chamber really was.

Gwen kicked into the giant opening. Fish hung quietly in small schools near the top of the cave. Very little grew here due to the sun being blocked, but farther in, at the back of the large first chamber, she spotted a few plants and more of the mossy seaweed. At certain times of day, there must be sunlight filtering through blowholes above that allowed light. Then they would disappear as the sun continued across the sky, leaving divers without their benchmarks or confusing them entirely with new ones.

Swimming farther into the back of the cave, she saw the ceiling sloped down and divided the large space into several smaller chambers. Down one of them, a filtered beam of sunlight danced in the dark seawater. Red plants bloomed like tiny flowers in the sunbeam, tempting her to take a closer look. If they found nothing else during their exploration of Siren’s Bay, at least she could take a few pictures to sell.

The water surged to her right, just like the feeling of something big moving past her. A flurry of surprise gave her a shot of adrenaline and she turned, but only the serene shade of the cave winked back at her. The sensation must have been an underwater wave rushing through the portal in the cave wall. Mentally shrugging off the strange feeling, Gwen propelled herself forward, deciding to cut her impromptu photoshoot short. If she could grab one of the red plants now, she could identify the plant on the boat and find out if any publications were looking for pictures of it.

She pushed into the smaller cave that led to the sunbeam. Tiny fish within the space fled past her and out of the cave to avoid her noisy breathing and gentle paddling. Some ten or twelve feet into the smaller cave, she hovered in the water above the red sea flowers. If she had her camera now, she’d just take a picture, but in the absence of a harm-free way to identify the plant, she wasn’t about to let scruples get in the way of making money. She let herself sink slowly toward the bottom of the cave and dug her fingers into the sand around one of the plants.

Something darted through the water to her right.

She barely caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of her eye, but she heard and felt it in the water that rushed past her face. She jerked, turning back toward the entrance of the cave. Though her eyes were wide open this time and she was sure something was down there with her, she still could see nothing out of the ordinary.

Gwen didn’t know what she’d spooked, but she didn’t want to be trapped in a cave with a jumpy animal. She pulled her dive knife just to be safe. If nothing else, she could quickly cut it out and then head out of the cave.

But she didn’t. When she turned, something large and shadowy had pinned itself between her and the red plants. Black fins, glowing green eyes, and iridescent scales looked like something out of a deep-sea exploration mission.

She screamed, so shocked by the appearance of something as big as she was in such a small space, and her regulator almost fell out of her mouth.

Pushing off from the cave floor, Gwen darted back down the cave. She grabbed at the rock and coral as she kicked to help speed herself along, hoping whatever was in there with her was as afraid of her as she was of it. Not that she actually believed that about any terrifying creatures, really. But for the duration of this harrowing experience, she was willing to believe just about anything that would reduce her panic.

She kicked hard to propel herself forward. A piece of the rock wall broke off in her hand as she scrabbled along, slowing her down and sending a cloud of silt into the water around her. She felt something—something like a hand—grab her ankle in the cloud of murk.

Gwen turned, focusing on the anchor of the animal in the water, and slashed at it with her dive knife. She hit the thing so hard, and she was so panicked, that her grip on the knife failed and it went careening through the water away from her. But her attacker let go as blood joined the dark sand in the cloudy water.

She turned back to her escape, trying not to think about blood in shark-infested waters. The sunlight from the giant cave entrance beckoned. And beyond that, she saw the bottom of the Money, Honey, fish gathering underneath it to make use of its shade. If she could just make it to the boat, she would be safe. If she could just make it to the light, whatever was chasing her would likely turn back.

As soon as the filtered, rippling sunlight touched her skin, relief washed over her.

Despite herself, she turned in the water to look behind her, back into the gaping maw of the cave. She breathed more quickly than she would have through her regulator, sucking breaths through the mouthpiece like she was trying to gobble a too-thick milkshake. Her eyes darted around the cave.

But nothing was there.

Truthfully, she couldn’t imagine what it would have been, anyway. A raging, enormous octopus with a vise-like grip? A melanistic nurse shark that just happened to be able to fit her entire foot and flipper in its mouth? Did she just get caught on rocks and freak herself out? None of that sounded like her, or what she’d encountered. But she wasn’t about to sit around in the same water as whatever that was and try to figure it out. Moments later, she hauled herself out of the water and onto the deck on the back of the boat. She spat out her mouthpiece and pulled off her goggles in record time.

“Were you watching the fish finder?” she asked her sister breathlessly.

Lainey was leaning against the side of the boat, under the shade, fanning herself with the pamphlet from earlier.

“No. I forgot how to turn it on.”

Gwen lay back on the deck and winced up into the glinting Mediterranean sky.

Great. Now she was either delusional or she’d discovered a sea monster.

Probably less trouble to be delusional.