Counterpoint by Declan Rhodes

Someone wants Dominic St. Clair dead—and they’re using music to say so.

When a handwritten funeral march appears beneath the door of his St. Charles Avenue mansion, seventy-two-year-old conductor Dominic St. Clair knows the threat is real. A fixture of New Orleans’s cultural life, Dominic has lived a long, public career shaped by legacy, loyalty, and carefully guarded truths. Now someone from his past is orchestrating a final reckoning—timed to his farewell concert series and designed to unfold in front of the entire city.
To protect him, Dominic hires The Guardians.
Former Army Ranger Thiago Reyes is used to danger—and to keeping his distance. Calm, controlled, and relentlessly professional, he’s not prepared for Dominic’s home, where music drifts through open doors and boundaries blur. Or for Luca Moreau, Dominic’s sharp-witted, fiercely loyal personal assistant, who’s been holding Dominic’s world together for years. To Luca, Dominic isn’t just a client. He’s family. And Luca doesn’t trust anyone whose job comes with an expiration date.
As the threats escalate from ominous warnings to break-ins and near-misses in the streets of New Orleans, Thiago and Luca are forced into uneasy proximity. Their chemistry is immediate—and inconvenient. While Thiago digs into a decades-old grievance tied to Dominic’s rise, Luca refuses to believe this stoic bodyguard won’t disappear once the danger passes.
Each threat arrives like a new movement in a deadly composition, building toward a public finale during Dominic’s final performance. As the city’s music swells and the danger turns unmistakably real, Thiago and Luca must learn to trust each other completely.
Because protecting Dominic may cost them everything—and choosing each other may require the courage to finally step into the light.