A warm welcome to author Parker Williams joining us today here @Love Bytes on his blog tour for Haven’s Creed.

Parker brought along a special treat for us , an exclusive bonus scene from his new release “Haven’s Creed”!

Welcome, Parker 🙂

Author Name: Parker Williams

Book Name: Haven’s Creed

Release Date: December 14, 2015

Pages or Words: 95,000 words

Publisher: Parker Williams

Goodreads

 

Blurb:

An act of violence destroys his family and ends the life he knows. To escape his haunted past, he joins the military, where, as a sniper, he is trained to kill with precision and detachment. When a covert organization offers him a new purpose, he becomes Haven, an operative devoted to protecting the innocent when he can and avenging them when he cannot.

After ten years of battling the evil in the world, the life no longer holds the attraction or meaning it once had, and he’s ready to walk away. Then he meets Samuel, a young man forced from the age of twelve to work as a sex slave. If ever a man had a need for Haven, it is this one.

Yet nothing about this growing relationship is one-sided. Sammy gives Haven a stability he’s never known, and Haven becomes the rock upon which Sammy knows he can depend.

When Sammy reveals something about the enemy Haven has been hunting for months, Sammy fears it will destroy what they’ve built and he’ll lose his home in Haven’s heart.

Warning: This book contains violent and dark scenes

Categories: Contemporary, Gay Fiction, Thriller, some romantic elements, some dark and violent imagery

Exclusive Bonus Scene

‘Haven’s Christmas’

Colder than a witch’s tit. Seemed to be a pretty accurate description of the day. I hate the damned cold. Though what I hated worse was John Charles Hightower.

Seems Johnny had a bad habit of beating up his eight year old son, Aiden, who he deemed ‘a faggot’, because the boy liked to dance. And now it was Christmas eve and the little guy was in the hospital with internal hemorrhaging from a beating he’d received when daddy came home and found his kid in front of the television swaying to some kid’s show. The thing about it? John had money. Like God should have so much. Because of it, he bought his way out of trouble more than once. Not this time.

Rook had given me the assignment in the usual way. I received the dossier of information, then an hour later got a call from the man himself in all his Darth Vader goodness. “He’s going to live, but the thought of him going back to that man isn’t even one we’re going to entertain. I’m going to leave it up to you how to handle it.”

Which meant it was my decision if John lived or died. As was my usual standard operating procedure, I trailed John. He owned a large electronics firm, who made obscene amounts of money selling computer tech to third world countries. On the surface, he seemed to have it all—money, looks, a cute kid—but John didn’t seem to care. He was surly to his staff, rude to customers who his underpaid assistant then had to placate, and pretty much an all-around jerk. In the six days I watched him, he never visited his son at the hospital. I made sure that Kelly, my houseman, sent some gifts to the boy so when—if—he woke up, there’d be something there.

Christmas eve I decided I knew everything I needed to about John, so it was time we met. His house was a fortress. Given time, I’m sure I could have figured out a way to get in, but it was also a luxury I couldn’t afford. Instead, I caught him coming out of his office one night. I’d chosen an out of the way corner, out of the line of sight of the security cameras for our meeting. He tried calling for help, until I put the gun to his chest, then he became a lot more cooperative.

“Please,” he begged. “I’ve got money.”

“So do I,” I snarled. “And your money won’t save you either. See, it’s Christmas eve and I’m stuck with a problem, and am not sure how to proceed. I thought maybe you could help me.”

“You need a job? I can get you a job.”

“No, sunshine. I have a job. And tonight it’s you.”

“Me?”

“Okay, so listen to my story, then when I’m done, maybe you can help me figure out if this is going to be a happy holiday for anyone. Okay?”

He trembled, but nodded. It wasn’t good enough.

“Okay?” I roared.

“Yes, yes, please. Don’t hurt me.”

“How many times did Aiden say that to you, Johnny? Did he beg you to stop? Tell me how you were able to look into those baby blue eyes of his and beat and stomp him?”

John tried to scrabble away from me, but I grabbed his jacket sleeve and yanked him forward.

“Don’t even think you’ll get out of this, John. You put your son in the hospital for the fourth time this year. If you had been anyone else, you’d be in prison finding out why even hardened convicts think those people who abuse children are the lowest scum on the planet.”

John crumpled before my eyes. He dropped to the ground, trembling “I did it for him,” he whispered.

“You beat your son and could have killed him, but you did it for him?” I asked.

John nodded, and that was all I needed to hear. I took my gun and put it against his temple, then I stopped. By now most of my targets would be begging for their lives. Pleading with me to let them go. John just knelt there.

“How do you think you did it for him, John? Tell me.”

“My father told me that if you couldn’t be a man, you were destined to fail,” he said softly. “When my teacher told him what a gifted actor I had become, he went insane. He beat me, reminding me it was out of love, because he wanted me to grow up to be a man. And I did.” He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. “I did.”

A tingling sensation swept up my neck and across my face as the memory of Arnie, my mother’s shack-up job, pushed to the surface. The incessant abuse of me and Chrissy. The raging about me being a faggot. I’d lived through it, and though I had no sympathy for John, I did for Aiden. I could kill his father, but where would that leave him? Foster care? Would John’s death free Aiden, or would he perpetuate the cycle as he grew older?

“Tell me something, why haven’t you visited Aiden at the hospital? You know, the one you put him in.”

John’s head hung lower. “He has to be strong. He needs to know sentiment makes you weak and people will take advantage of that.”

Well god damn. John had been through the abuse himself and that tempered my resolve to end his life. He had grown up a victim, and then started all over again with his own child.

“Please,” John called out. “Whatever you do, I beg you, don’t send him to live with his grandfather.”

And with that, I made up my mind. I slipped my gun back into my pocket, then pulled John up next to me. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to play out, Johnny-boy. You’re not going to die, at least not today. But you’re going to do exactly what I tell you and believe me when I say I’m going to check.”

I gave him a card for Dr. Lilah McQuade. “You’re going to talk to this woman, and you’ll ask her to help you. She’s going to put you in touch with a psychologist that will work with both you and your son. Make sure you want this, John, because I guarantee you my people will be watching your progress, and if they think you’re a threat to your son, or if you do anything out of line toward him, I’m going to come back.”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Because I believe you’ve suffered, too. What you did will never be right, and Aiden might not forgive you, but I think you deserve the chance to try and make it better. Don’t make me be wrong, John.”

I didn’t go home. I had Rook set me up in a hotel room, because I wanted to see with my own eyes whether John would follow through. No surprise he called Lilah before he even left the parking garage. When I talked to her, she said she believed him when he told her he wanted to make this right. I trusted her judgment, and I knew John and Aiden wouldn’t slip through the cracks. I had no way of knowing whether or not they’d be okay, but I figured they deserved a chance to try at least. I stopped by the hospital on my way to the airport and snuck in to see Aiden. I found John asleep in a chair next to his bed, clutching Aiden’s hand. Aiden reached out with his free hand and stroked his father’s hair, and despite the abuse he’d been subjected to, the love was obvious. I swallowed hard and turned away, unable to stay any longer. As I got back to the cab, I called home. Kelly answered, and I blurted out the first thing that came into my mind. “Merry Christmas, Kelly.”

Because even if it was only the start of the holiday, I’d gotten my gift in the eyes of a young boy and the love that I hoped would bring him and his father the healing they needed.

When I was fifteen, I killed my first man. Every time Arnie, the guy my mother was shacking up with at the time, drank, he got it into his head she was cheating on him. He’d start slapping her, and that turned into full-fledged beating within a few months. When he was done, he’d start on my sister.

There were nights she’d crawl into bed with me, sobbing. For the longest of times, she wouldn’t tell me what happened, but when I found blood on her pajamas, I knew. I’d tried to stand up to him, but he beat me badly enough that I couldn’t go to school for two weeks until the bruises faded. But I got off lucky. The things he did to Chrissy gave me nightmares. I’d hear her cry out and knew there was nothing I could do but hide in my bed, my pillow covering my head. He was bigger, meaner, and stronger than me, and he reminded me of that fact constantly.

The old lady never said boo about it. She always forgave him and tried to justify what he did by telling me how much stress he was under. How he was a good man and didn’t mean it. It was just the drinking, she swore. It was more like he was a bastard and she was his meal ticket.

I came home one night and found him whaling on her, my sister’s body crumpled in a heap, her head smashed in. The son of a bitch had a gun in his hand, slick with blood, and he threatened to kill them both, screaming he wouldn’t let her leave. She slapped him. It wasn’t hard, but it shocked him enough that he dropped the gun. I picked it up. He sneered at me and called me a weak-willed fag.

I looked at the gun I held in my hand. The instrument of my revenge. The means to saving my sister.

“Give me the gun, you fuck. It’s not a dick, you wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

The bullet I put in his forehead showed him how wrong he was. He lay on the floor, blood bubbling from the wound, and his eyes locked on mine as he took his last breath. I wanted that fucker to know it was the weak-willed fag who had done this to him.

Buy the book:

Amazon eBook

AllRomance eBook

Smashwords

Paperback

Parker Williams believes that true love exists, but it always comes with a price. No happily ever after can ever be had without work, sweat, and tears that come with melding lives together.

Living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Parker held his job for nearly 28 years before he decided to retire and try new things. He enjoys his new life as a stay-at-home author and also working on Pride-Promotions, an LGBT author promotion service.

Where to find the author:

Twitter: @ParkerWAuthor

Facebook

Or you can visit his website: www.ParkerWilliamsAuthor.com

Tour Dates & Stops:

14-Dec: Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, Multitasking Mommas, Rainbow Gold Reviews, Fangirl Moments and My Two Cents, The Fuzzy, Fluffy World of Chris T. Kat, Cate Ashwood, Wake Up Your Wild Side

15-Dec: Love Bytes, MM Good Book Reviews, Book Lovers 4Ever, A.M. Leibowitz, 3 Chicks After Dark

16-Dec: Divine Magazine, Cathy Brockman Romances, Unquietly Me, Louise Lyons, KathyMac Reviews, Havan Fellows

17-Dec: Bayou Book Junkie, Inked Rainbow Reads, Happily Ever Chapter, Nephy Hart, Iyana Jenna, Lee Brazil

18-Dec: The Blogger Girls, Carly’s Book Reviews, Wicked Faerie’s Tales and Reviews, Mikky’s World of Books, Tara Lain, Emotion in Motion

19-Dec: Sinfully Addicted to All Male Romance, Book Reviews, Rants, and Raves, BFD Book Blog, Jessie G. Books

21-Dec: Joyfully Jay, Molly Lolly, Bonkers About Books, Open Skye Book Reviews

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