A FREE STORY
Before the funeral, there was one last good day.
Join the reader list and I’ll send you The Last Good Day, a free short story from the world of The Devil’s Terms: the afternoon it all began, told by the one person the novel never lets you meet.
What You Get
The Last Good Day
A free short story from the world of The Devil’s Terms, yours as soon as you confirm your email.
First Word on Book Two
You’ll know the day The Devil’s Door arrives, and see its cover before anyone else.
Letters from the Coast
About once a month: news, the stories behind the books and the occasional reader-only extra.
BOOK ONE · OUT NOW
The Devil’s Terms
Some debts are paid in skin and salt.
Eight months ago, Mwelu Mutuku was the best forensic accountant at her Nairobi firm. Then she found nine billion shillings that were not supposed to exist, said so out loud, and was blacklisted in nine days. Now she has no work, no salary, sixty million shillings of her brother’s debt, and a brother whose death the police, the mortuary and the insurer have all agreed to find unremarkable.
People who cross Taariq Athman don’t get hurt. They get unwound. And he has a use for her.
Free to read with Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback too.
CHAPTER ONE · THE INHERITANCE
Read the Opening
The debt collector came to Kyalo’s funeral, and that was how Mwelu learned her brother had died owing the most dangerous man on the coast more than money.
He stood apart in a charcoal suit that had been cut for him and only him, hands folded, and watched the priest with the patience of men watching a market open: unhurried, certain that the number would come to him in the end. He did not pray. He did not pretend to. When the others bent their heads he kept his level, and once, just once, his eyes moved to Mwelu across the open grave and stayed a beat too long, and she felt it like a hand laid flat against a closed door from the other side. Her skin answered before her mind did, a slow current climbing the back of her neck, every fine hair lifting as if the air over the grave had changed its charge; and she looked away first, and hated that she had, and felt his gaze stay on her as if it had asked no permission and did not appear to need any.
Before You Begin
This is a dark, slow-burn romantic suspense for adult readers: sensual, open-door intimacy without explicit detail, a morally grey hero, violence, organised crime, death and bereavement on the page, and a heroine who is never less than the equal of the man across the table. It is also, at heart, a story about telling the truth when the truth costs everything. Welcome to the coast.
For readers 18 and over.
About the Author
Muthiani Nzioki Mutua writes dark, slow-burn romantic suspense set on the Kenyan coast and beyond, where the money never balances and the love is always dangerous. The Devil’s Terms is his debut novel and the first book of the Skin & Salt Trilogy. He lives in Nairobi.
For two decades his working life ran through boardrooms and site visits, departure lounges and long-haul flights, and dinners that went well past their purpose. Most of it was listening. He learned to read a room: who held the power, what was said, and what was really being agreed underneath. Somewhere along the way he noticed that the most interesting debts are never the ones written down. He writes them down now.
The Skin & Salt Trilogy
BOOK ONE · OUT NOW
The Devil’s Terms
Some debts are paid in skin and salt.
BOOK TWO · COMING SOON
The Devil’s Door
Some loyalties are paid in ash.
BOOK THREE · COMING SOON
The Devil’s Ledger
Some legacies are paid in gold.
Join the reader list to hear first when each one arrives.
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© 2026 Muthiani Nzioki Mutua · TikTok @skin.and.salt · [email protected]
