The Wired Garden

By Max Ashlar

Privacy is a luxury. Survival is a subscription.

Cedar Hills is the most exclusive gated community in America. Twelve smart mansions. Zero crime. And a silence so perfect it feels like a held breath.

Violet is a weapon wearing a human skin. She has infiltrated the Vanderbilt estate with a single, lethal objective: terminate the Architect, a tech-messiah who built this paradise on a foundation of rot. But her vessel is failing, leaking black ichor with every use of her power. The clock is ticking, and the house is watching.

Julian Vanderbilt is the black sheep. A nineteen-year-old hacker exiled from boarding school, he returns home to find his family acting strange and the walls listening to his heartbeat. He is the only glitch in a perfect system-and the only one who sees Violet for what she truly is.

When their paths collide, they form a jagged alliance born of desperation. But they soon discover they aren't just prisoners in a gilded cage; they are content.

Deep beneath the manicured roses, a dark feed is broadcasting their lives to an elite audience of voyeurs. The subscribers don't just watch; they pay to play.

Every flicker of the lights, every drop in temperature, every shadow that moves in the garden has a price tag attached.

Trapped in a gamified nightmare, Violet and Julian must navigate a labyrinth of bio-organic horrors and "Sleeper" agents to destroy the server that controls them all.

But in a game where pain is currency, falling in love might be the most dangerous move of all.

The Wired Garden is a standalone Gothic Tech-Noir Thriller perfect for fans of Black Mirror, Fourth Wing, and dark, high-stakes romance.

TROPES: Enemies to LoversForced ProximityMorally Grey Hacker HeroLethal Protector Heroine"Touch Her and Die"Eat the Rich

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G3GPNMCP
• ISBN13: 9798275538298
• Release Date: November 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 148 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"