Book Title: Summers Power (Danger City Book 1)
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?
It made sense to me in a strange way that another one of the changes in my life had been invaded or influenced by Sam Winters.
I saw Sam at the school when I dropped Rory off last week. That day was the “rst time I’d clapped eyes on the bastard in years.
It seemed mad to me that so much time had passed, and yet I still felt a rush of defensive anger hit me when I looked at him. Sam always pissed me off simply by existing. I don’t know how he does it, and I probably never will. Being angry at Sam felt easy, like slipping on an old, well- worn coat. I was genuinely tempted to start hating him all over again, on principle.
But then I remembered I’m supposed to be an adult, and adults aren’t supposed to hate their childhood rivals.
Intellectually, I know I shouldn’t still let him get to me. I should have moved beyond the point where he was capable of it. But it would be a lie to say I felt nothing at the sight of him. There’s just something about him that sets me on edge, and always has. I can’t explain it rationally. He affects me like no one else I’ve met in my life.
Growing up, my father worked for the Winters. Our families had been tied together for generations.
Then my father tried to take over, dragging me and my mother along with him. He started a war he was ill- equipped to finish.
The Winters family are the largest and most influential crime syndicate in Danger City, one of the most powerful in the Europe. It seemed inevitable to me that the Winters would win the war. They were just too strong. Too clever. Too bloody vicious. They are wolves, unscrupulous killers.
The Winters family hold a brutal dominance over Danger. Unlike other criminal organisations, it isn’t just a 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 fight 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.
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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