Pitch:

SHONDALAND reimagines SPARTACUS

After enemies attack her arms-dealing family, doctoral candidate Tehya Ryker secures protection by agreeing to marry the brutal leader of an underground fight-ring in the Andes. Except secrets lurk in The Compound, and soon Tehya is desperate to flee. One complication: her intense bond with assigned bodyguard, champion fighter, Lucas. When the pair is separated from The Compound during a mudslide, Tehya’s chance at freedom becomes a reality. But as their forbidden love grows, and life for one means death for the other, a sacrifice must be made.

Excerpt:

She died years ago during a cutthroat ambush on her family. 

At least that’s what people outside of their inner circle thought, and her parents preferred to keep it that way. “For her safety,” they’d said.  So when Tehya Ryker sat beside her personal guard in the last pew of the sanctuary, her leather gloves off and cell phone silenced, she pulled her hood forward to shadow her face. Still, too many people turned and looked at them, curious heads on swivels. And heat, too hot, blasted from the furnace battling against the freezing Boston night in March.

The whole thing was wrong from the beginning.

Her father’s men patrolled the aisles, clashing with the candles, the chalices, and the intricately etched archways. She studied the stained-glass window above the rail. It portrayed a woman with Medusa-like hair, her eyes purple and piercing, watchful, and a shiver trickled down Tehya’s spine.

Holding her brother Cayson’s Keepers initiation in a church? Kind of blasphemous. Then again, that was her family.

Her father insisted on calling the family business a “corporation,” not a “syndicate.” He hated that word. Don’t even mention “mafia.” Not only was it beneath him, he considered the word offensively antiquated.