Phantom

Scarlett Day studies music in New Orleans while she rebuilds her life after her father's murder and manages bipolar disorder. For a year, a masked man named Sol Bordeaux has watched over her from the shadows beneath the opera house he commands. He leaves her letters, roses and music she cannot trace back to anyone, and he runs the city's underworld from that same hidden theater.

An old feud between the Bordeaux and Chatelain families has put Scarlett within reach of an enemy from Sol's past. A severe panic attack forces him out of hiding to save her. Once he steps into the light, he refuses to go back to watching from a distance.

This is a dark romance retelling of Phantom of the Opera, told in close third person around Scarlett and Sol. It sits at the explicit end of mafia romance, and it treats Scarlett's bipolar disorder as part of who she is rather than a twist. The story runs hot and tense once Sol reveals himself, closer to a thriller's pressure than a courtship's.

Phantom opens the Tattered Curtain series and reads as a complete standalone with a happy ending.