From New York Times bestselling authors Krista and Becca Ritchie comes the next in the Cobalt Empire series, perfect for fans of Elle Kennedy, Elsie Silver, and Liz Tomforde.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Silver Sweet by Krista & Becca Ritchie, which releases on August 4th 2026.
Tom Cobalt has been called a lot of things. Arrogant god. Overachiever. Demanding, uncooperative jerk. It comes with the territory of being the fifth-born of a storied family. Not even his own punk-rock band can meet his high standards. So when every member of The Carraways quits on him before finishing an album, he’s left with a bruised ego and a major dilemma.
Reviving his childhood dream comes down to one infuriating choice: pair up with a hard-edged drummer or be dropped by his music label permanently.
Phoenix St. Pierre has enough baggage to ground every plane in New York City. He’s volatile, sleep-deprived, and still carrying the fallout of imploding his own band. He should not be paired with Tom, the stuck-up trust-fund baby who pushes all his buttons—yet the second chance is impossible to walk away from.
Making music means too much to Phoenix and Tom to let this last shot slip through their fingers. But working together feels like a Shakespearean disaster ready to unfold. Especially when off-the-charts chemistry, undeniable attraction, and destructive habits threaten to make or break them.
It’s nothing personal—but they just might be the best and worst thing that ever happened to each other.
EXCERPT
ONE
TOM COBALT
I’m fucked.
Not like “my life is over” fucked.
I suffer from the extreme inability to quit on myself—even when people quit on me. I’m more afraid of my dream decaying into nothingness than I am of what I might do to keep it alive.
Which is why I’m on Craigslist right now.
I’m nearing embarrassing levels of desperation.
“Here’s one.” I stop on an ad and zoom in on my laptop so my brother behind me can see. “This guy is looking for a guitarist near Union Square. He says he plays bass and he’s a singer-songwriter.”
I need a bassist. Like by tomorrow.
I also would like a drummer. Basically, I need to reform my shattered band, and searching Craigslist for potential musicians is the only solid solution I’ve had in weeks.
Eliot peers over my shoulder, a strong hand clasped on the desk chair where I’m seated. He taps the keyboard, demagnifying the ad. “Only two sentences of information?”
“He just says to contact him if interested,” I explain. “He gives his name. Blaine Thomas.”
“I’ve never met a Blaine I liked.”
“Dude, I don’t care if he’s named Beef Hotdog right now.”
Eliot points at another ad. “Check this one.”
“I still think this Blaine guy has potential,” I say, but I go ahead and open the other ad and skim the details. “Uhh, this girl is looking for a guy to sing folk music with her in Brooklyn.” I cringe just imagining myself singing Mumford & Sons covers in a coffee shop where no one gives a fucking damn. Because why would they? They’re not there to be distracted by my life-changing, transcendent vocals. They’re there to sip their lattes, pop in earbuds, and worry about some business report due the next day.
I’m going to be ambient background noise.
Elevator music.
My face twists in a harsher cringe. I blink repeatedly, and I swallow down distaste like a four-year-old learning to eat their veggies.
It’s good for you, Tom.
I could convince her to join my band. Maybe the label would be interested in a guy-girl duo. The type of music, we could work out later.
“Maybe…” I grimace more.
“We don’t do Brooklyn, brother,” Eliot says.
We live in a luxury high-rise in Hell’s Kitchen—apartment 2166—but he’s not snubbing Brooklyn because it’s beneath us. He got in a bar brawl in a Brooklyn pub a few months ago when some drunk idiot called our oldest brother a cunt.
Charlie wasn’t even there, but that didn’t stop Eliot from defending his honor, me joining in, and our bodyguards pulling us out.
I sigh hard at the laptop. “I can’t be picky about where in New York someone is eating and sleeping. I need a viable band to present to the label in two days.” I click back into the list of ads. “And I doubt Charlie would even care that we’ve sworn off an entire portion of New York on his behalf.”
Eliot tips his head. “Vrai.” He says true in French.
After he dismisses three more potential ads—one of which was reasonable, except for the demand that the guitarist be right-handed (I am right-handed…but still)—I whirl around on my six-foot-four, towering, loyal-to-the-bone brother.
Eliot Alice Cobalt is only eleven months older than me. He’s my closest brother in more than just age. I know things about him no one else does. I tell him everything first. Between the two of us, secrets are hard to find, and out of my family—out of the Cobalt Empire—I would’ve never imagined he’d make duct-taping my band back together more difficult.
“What’s with the pushback?” I question. “I’d expect this from Charlie or Beckett. Not you. Okay, you rarely shoot down my harebrained ideas.”
“Best ideas,” he corrects.
“Exactly.” I wave a hand at him. “You think all my ideas are the best ideas. So what fucking gives?”
He threads his arms, his biceps bulging. He really needs to put down the weights. I’m starting to look scrawny next to him.
I hike my brows at his lingering silence. “What is it?”
“I’m just wondering what happened to your standards.”
My standards. I clench my jaw. “Bruised and battered, Eliot Alice.” I can’t even force a strained smile. This concerns him.
I see it in the creases of his eyes, but is it such a bad thing to lower my standards? I’ve been told they’re too high. I’ve been told I should “aspire for less” and this was coming from my own therapist.
And sure, Dr. Carlton didn’t phrase it exactly like that, but I can read between the lines and I can take a hint. I just can’t follow them. Because I’m still aiming for stars in undiscovered galaxies when I should set my expectations on planet Earth.
I’m deeply aware I’ve set unrealistic goal posts, but what is the point of life if not chasing after the thing you want and love?
The downside is that I feel like I’m on my knees, clawing at the ground just to stand back up again, but boots keep slamming on my spine. Rooting me to the dirt when all I want to do is be in the sky.
It would be so much easier if I just accepted gravity and quit.
Quit my passions. Quit my pursuit of making rock music millions listen to when they’re having a shit day, when they need to feel a connection…when they want to feel heard. I got close. I could say The Carraways had a good run before Warner left the band in dramatic fashion.
Warner.
We’d formed The Carraways together back in private school, aspiring to be like the punk-rock greats—My Chemical Romance and Green Day—all while we belted out our feelings after the Dalton Academy bell rang.
Being rich and privileged means I’ve had a head start, and I’m grateful for the boost but I don’t want to be a joke. I thought if I labored over my music, put in the time, perfected every chorus, every guitar riff, every beat, it’d show.
Instead, Warner snapped at me, “We aren’t Beethoven trying to write the next greatest symphony.”
“Maybe we could be,” I combatted. “Let’s just practice it again.”
“The second verse is fine.”
Fine never felt good enough. I couldn’t figure out how to settle with average when I knew if we pushed ourselves, we could be better than ordinary.
We never finished the album.
Now I’m the last remaining member of The Carraways, and the label already wasted funds promoting my band. Not to mention, they were constructing a national tour that’ll likely never happen.
So they gave me a timeline. I have until Monday morning to present a profitable solution. I need a viable band.
In two days.
Or else they’re dropping me for good.
Now I’m in Eliot’s bedroom with a pounding headache, trying to keep my dream alive. When really, I feel like I’m throwing chewing gum at the ceiling and seeing what’ll stick.
“It’s a Band-Aid,” I tell Eliot. “They don’t need to be the best musicians. They just need to hold a note long enough to show the label my band isn’t on life support.”
“Or…” Eliot outstretches his arms and walks backward toward his Gothic, canopied bed. “We go with Plan A.”
Plan A was Eliot’s first idea, and it was already shot down. By me. In two seconds. “I can’t go with Plan A.” I skate a hand through my shaggy hair, pushing strands out of my eyes, then I point at him as he takes out his phone. “You call your theatre friends to come pose as musicians, I’ll be telling them to go home.”
He rests his shoulder on the wooden bedpost. Not dialing anyone yet. “They’re professional actors. This is what they do. Act.”
Eliot is also a professional stage actor in New York, but this isn’t a situation that will be solved with that type of performance.
“I can’t deceive the label. If I get caught in a lie, then I’m going to be known as the Liar Liar Pants on Fire kid to maybe the whole music industry. No one will take me seriously, and it’s already an uphill battle when everyone believes my last name got me through the door.”
And maybe it did.
Maybe being a Cobalt is why the label even gave me five minutes of their time, but I’d like to believe they’ve kept me around because I have actual talent and promise.
Eliot nods, accepting. He passes his phone from hand to hand. “Another idea: we create a reality show together. You play your music on-air. Everyone hears. They love you. You’re revered. A legend is born.”
I rub at my eyes. “I have no band. I can’t even think about signing on to a trashy reality show when I am at the first stage of this crisis.”
