Vietnam forged them into brothers. Dawber County made them kings. Betrayal destroyed everything they built.Twelve years after federal agents dismantled the criminal empire that once made rural Dawber County rich, seventeen-year-old Alex Gregory discovers a coded map connected to five million dollars hidden somewhere in the Everglades.The fortune may be the only inheritance left by the fathers who went to prison—and by Johnny Malone, the brilliant accountant who vanished after bringing the empire down.Alex recruits his lifelong friends: Billy Dawber, reluctant heir to the county's most powerful family, and Bones Malone, a state-champion wrestler with a violent temper and a lifetime of anger toward the father who abandoned him.Their search soon attracts corrupt prison officials, desperate criminals, old family enemies, and an ancient alligator guarding secrets beneath the black water.Inside prison, Alex's father, Kenny Gregory, is only weeks from freedom when Warden Kinder learns about the map. Outside, Pastor Bubs knows the missing fortune carries a price no struggling community should ever pay again. But Alex refuses to remain poor in a county built upon wealth that was stolen, buried, and forgotten.To find the money, the boys must first find Johnny Malone.And Johnny's return will not merely uncover the past.It will restart the Sawgrass Wars.Blood in the Water is the explosive first novella in a Southern Gothic crime saga about fathers and sons, buried fortunes, broken loyalties, and a Florida county where every legend was paid for in blood.