Clean Break

Oliver Watts has long settled for the safe, predictable path laid out by his aunt and sister: a modest veterinary practice in sleepy Landsdale, Florida, and a future with the practical Miss Orella Simms. Though his childhood dream of training exotic jungle beasts still flickers behind his cowlick, he dutifully nurses household pets and mends livestock, keeping his ambitions quietly under wraps. His routine world is jolted when a reclusive, eccentric millionaire arrives with a desperate request—one of his newly acquired circus animals is violently ill, and only Oliver’s steady hands can help.

The urgent call drags Oliver out of his clinic and into the shadowy gates of a former gangster’s winter retreat, where the strange pet’s condition hints at mysteries far beyond routine care. As he tends the creature, he finds himself edged toward a larger, untamed adventure that could finally let him taste the wilderness he has always imagined, while still wrestling with family expectations and his own lingering doubts.