Crude Intentions

Before the suits, there was just the dirt. Ten years ago, Cade Mercer was nobody—just another roughneck's son with too much ambition and a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. He was hustling low-level land leases, desperate to claw his way out of the poverty that killed his father. Sterling Cross was the golden Prince of the Permian, fresh out of the Ivy League and suffocating under the thumb of his tyrannical father, "Big Daddy" Cross. Sterling wanted out of the corrupt family empire, but he was trapped by legacy and secrets. They were from different worlds, destined to be enemies. Until "Black Sunday." When an illegal, off-the-books drilling operation goes catastrophically wrong, threatening to expose the darkest secrets of the Cross empire, Sterling is given an impossible task by his father: fix it by sunrise, or face disownment. Desperate and out of his depth in the gritty reality of the field, Sterling crosses paths with Cade, the only man crazy enough to help him. Over the course of one explosive, adrenaline-fueled night, the scion and the hustler must forge an unlikely alliance. To survive the oil patch, they have to learn that sometimes, the only way to do the right thing is to do the wrong thing perfectly. This is the night Mercer & Cross was born.