Author and Publisher: BL Jones
Cover Artist: Art Lynx Covers
Book Release Date: March 30, 2023
Genres: MM Mafia Romance, Dark comedy
CONTENT WARNING: This book contains explicit sexual content between consenting adults. It also includes mentions of dead parents, mentions of dead spouses, violence, panic attacks, trauma, grief over past loss, mentions of child abuse, mentions of prior homelessness, mentions of past animal abuse, visit to prison to see an incarcerated relative. Also note this book has a HFN ending.
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Length: 338 pages 96,000 words
It is part of a duology and does not end on a cliffhanger
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Can two British gangsters who grew up archenemies find light in their shared darkness?
Blurb
The daylight between us, and the darkness we share.
Danger City has been ruled by the bloody iron fists of the Winters crime family for decades.
When the Summers family waged war on the Winters in an attempt to take their power, violence reigned, taking no mercy on both sides of the conflict. The Summers were eventually defeated and as a result Max Summers lost everything.
Flash forward sixteen years, Max is a new man, no longer a gangster, but a simple primary school teacher still grieving the loss of his first love and trying his best to raise his children as a single father.
Cue his old rival Sam Winters re-entering his life when their oldest sons meet at school and become best friends.
During their time apart, Sam continued on the path laid out for him, climbing the organisation's ranks right to the top. He has become every inch the mighty and lethal crime boss he was born to be.
After their unplanned reunification, both men are forced to confront the nightmares of their joint past and the burgeoning desire which seems to be developing between them.
Can Max allow himself to fall in love with anyone again, let alone the man who was once his greatest enemy?
Excerpt
I never asked for this life.
In all honesty, if someone had told me when I was a child that one day I would be working as a primary school teacher, then I would have been horri!ed. I would have said my father—my father—wouldn't allow that to happen.
When I was a boy, I thought my father was the strong‐ est, bravest, most important man in the world. I don't think that's particularly odd within itself, many sons look to their fathers.
It was just unfortunate for me that mine was a violent criminal. Worse, he was a violent criminal who failed to be the best violent criminal in Danger City. When he tried to take down the behemoth that is the Winters family, they ground out my father’s rebellion like King Arthur and his knights ferociously beat down the Saxons.
I often used to wonder what would have been different if I'd just tried harder to !ght my fate. At the time it had seemed inescapable. But now I look back on my choices and realise all the times when I could have been stronger, taken more control of my own life. I have to tell myself over and over again that I was young and scared and I just wanted to please my father. To please him and survive him, a task many before me had failed to accomplish.
I've learnt the hard way that people can do strange and terrible things out of desperation. I don't believe anyone who hasn’t grown up as I did could understand what it’s like to live a life surrounded by different doors, and yet still know you’ll only ever have the key to one of them.
My father trapped me with his choices, his mistakes. I felt like I couldn't be anyone other than who he wanted me to be. Of course, now I know that wasn't true. But hindsight is, as ever, mostly useless.
I've tried very hard not to trap my children in the same way. I want them to have every choice. I want them to feel free to be themselves, even if the world disagrees. I want them to !ght back when someone tries to force them into a corner.
My son, Rory, started secondary school this year, and he’s made some interesting new friends. A best friend in particular who has caused me a great deal of anxiety.
When Rory asked if he could go over to his new best friend’s house after school on the last day of term before the Christmas holidays, I couldn't think of a reason to say no. Not that I would particularly want to. But the thought of facing the father of my son's new best mate is somewhat daunting.
When Rory first told me that he'd made a friend named Elijah Winters, I was only mildly alarmed. I told myself that Danger is a large city. There could be plenty of people running around with that name. It didn’t mean anything. Elijah could very well not be his son.
But another part of me knew. As soon as Rory said that name. Part of me knew there was no chance he could be anyone else’s son. I’d already accepted that fact, had let the sense of inevitability take over and the resignation sink in.
It made sense to me in a strange way that another one of the changes in my life had been invaded or in!uenced by Sam Winters.
About the Author
BL Jones is a twentysomething British author who spends all her free time reading and writing and taming her three little brothers. She lives in Bristol with a temperamental bunny named Pepsi. She’s been writing stories since she was five, rarely sharing them with anyone except her numerous stuffed animals. BL has had a difficult journey into discovering and accepting her own queerness, and therefore believes that positive, honest, and authentic stories about queer people are very important. She hopes to contribute her own stories for people to have fun with and enjoy.
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