High stakes

Logan Tanner is a world-class poker player, that rare breed of gambler whose challenges come from men with shady pasts and uncertain futures. He typically plays for off-shore bank accounts and rare vintage roadsters, but when a mutual friend ropes him into a game with a different kind of prize, Tanner sees a chance to settle a long-overdue score. Since childhood, Lara, a Russian piano prodigy, has been the plaything of her father, Anton, and his sadistic boss, notoriously violent mobster Volkov. The two men taunt her with escalating trials of strength, cunning, and endurance that have nothing to do with music and everything to do with staying alive and pleasing Volkov. Freeing Lara from this increasingly dangerous predicament provides Tanner with an irresistible opportunity to play for the ultimate stakes, life or death for Lara and justice for Tanner's closest friend, one of Volkov's earliest victims. The prolific Johansen launches a new series with new characters, relying on her trademark conflicts involving tests of will between adversaries and lovers alike.