Book Title: Dark Justice
Author, Publisher, and Cover Artist: Janice Jarrell
Release Date: March 17, 2026
Pairing: MM
Tense/POV: Third Person
Genres: Contemporary dark/suspenseful gay romance
Tropes: Married Couple, Hurt/Comfort, Protector/Protected, Found Family, Trauma Recovery, Healing Journey
Length: 84 791 words/ 283 pages
Heat Rating: 3 flames:
It is the first book of a new series, The Unbreakable Vow.
It can be read as a standalone and does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited
The world may be burning–but here, in this moment, there is grace.
Blurb
Joshua believes love can bring Colin home. And even from across an ocean, Colin hears it calling.
Colin Campbell–Abrams went to Ireland carrying a weight his pack could never hold. Grief he couldn’t name. Guilt he couldn’t shake. A marriage he loved too much to destroy with the pieces of himself that remained.
Ireland didn’t heal him; it offered him the grace that allowed him to heal himself.
In green hills and strangers’ kindness. In ancient stones that remembered centuries of pain. In thirty seconds of unexpected sunlight breaking through gray skies. In the slow, stubborn work of putting one foot in front of the other until the man he used to be began to walk by his side.
The road taught him something Joshua had been trying to tell him from the very beginning: You don’t have to be unbreakable to be worthy of love.
Some journeys you walk alone—not to leave, but to learn how to come home.
Note: This book contains depictions of violence, injury, and the on-page death of a character.
Across town at the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, Colin sat hunched over a case file, staring at words, times, dates, places, names—but none of it registered. He searched himself for the passion he once had for this work, for the pursuit of justice. But all he found was a bitter, hollow shell.
There is no justice, he thought. It’s all a lie. A farce. Just a play we act out, and no one even cares about the script.
The longing for what he’d lost burned like a raw, open wound. But worse—far worse—was what had crept in to fill that empty space. The anger. Fierce. Constant. Terrible. It had become his solace, his armor, his refuge.
He fought it. Tried to reason with it. Push it down. But it rose again and again, a monster he couldn’t kill. And sometimes, when no one else was around, he yearned to scream. Just to make it stop.
***
Later that day, he stood before the jury box, shoulders stiff, voice low but sharp. Razor sharp.
“So, the defendant expects you to believe he just happened to be in the alley with a crowbar, just happened to run when approached by police, and just happened to have the victim’s wallet in his backpack?”
The defense attorney shifted uneasily beside her client. She opened her mouth to object—but hesitated. The judge shot a sharp glance Colin’s way, brows furrowed, uncertain of what he’d just heard.
Colin rested his hands on the railing and leaned toward the jury. “We can pretend there’s some gray area here. We can pretend this is complicated. But it’s not! It’s simple! He hurt someone! And now he wants to hide behind excuses.” His fist slammed down against the wood with a sharp crack. “Don’t let him walk away from this!”
A beat. The room fell silent. Too silent. Even the court clerk sat frozen. Then the judge cleared his throat. “Mr. Campbell-Abrams, I’ll remind you to keep your tone appropriate for a courtroom.”
Colin didn’t blink. Didn’t nod. Didn’t speak. He turned, walked to the prosecution table, and gathered his papers with surgical precision, barely acknowledging the gavel as Judge Thornton adjourned for the day. He hadn’t argued that case. He’d performed it—like a man trying to shout loud enough to drown out the scream inside his own head. And the worst part? He had almost convinced himself that he’d succeeded.
Later that afternoon, he moved through the concrete stillness of the parking garage like a ghost. The courtroom adrenaline had faded, leaving behind nothing but bone-deep weariness—and a sadness that seeped into every crack and crevice of his being.
His briefcase hung limp at his side, papers untouched within. He reached his car, unlocked it, but didn’t get in. Instead, he leaned against the driver’s side door and let his head fall back. He stared up at the ceiling. Pipes. Shadows. A flickering fluorescent bulb that buzzed like an angry memory.
He’d won the argument. Shut the defense down. Made the jury see the truth—or what passed for truth now.
And yet…
He felt nothing. Not vindication. Not satisfaction. Only the faintest flicker of regret, like a whisper at the edge of his mind.
He used to feel something. Conviction. Belief, even righteous pride, when he stood before a jury. Now, it was just performance. Blunt-force rhetoric dressed in rage.
He tried to summon the man he used to be—but he was gone. Burned out. Buried. His fist still throbbed from where it had slammed the railing, bone against wood.
He looked down at his hand. The burns had healed, sure—scars now, pale and tight. But they mocked him. Proof he’d survived when she hadn’t. He turned it over, jaw tight. The skin was whole. But he wasn’t. Underneath, he was still smoldering—still scorched in places no one else could reach. Rage covered the rest. It was easier. Safer. Grief was a trap. Anger kept him moving; kept him upright when all he wanted was to fall to his knees. He saw Joshua’s face—helpless, terrified—as their home burned. Saw Sarah’s body, still and broken. His legs worked. His heart beat. But everything inside him was on fire.
And the pain? Still there. Still with him. Maybe the only thing that was—other than the anger. Sometimes he felt like he was made of it. Like fury had replaced blood in his veins. He used to believe in justice. Now he just raised his voice and hoped it landed hard on something—on someone.
He exhaled, the breath catching in his chest, and whispered into the quiet:
“Josh… god, Josh, what’s happening to me?”
He wished it were a scream.
My name is Janice Jarrell. I’m a retired IT tech and grandmother living in Port Angeles, Washington, near the Olympic National Forest. I have two children, three grandsons, and I’ve been writing gay romance since I was twelve years old—only back then it wasn’t called “gay romance.” In the fifties, it was worth your life to admit to being gay, let alone confess to being a girl who constantly fantasized about relationships between men. I didn’t even know what a homosexual was. I just knew I loved the idea of boy-on-boy romance. I was that kid on a farm in a tiny Michigan village, watching Tom Corbett and his Space Cadets and all those guys on Combat and thinking: there’s something going on here.
I wrote slash fanfiction for about 30 years and produced over 300 stories—some a hundred-word drabble, some sprawling novel-length series. The feedback I received from readers, and the community that formed around those stories, became the creative home I’d been searching for my entire life. I still bless the internet for leading me to that artistic oasis.
Love’s Magic was my first step into creating my own original characters, and from it grew the interconnected worlds of my Revolutionary Heart and Fearless Heart series, featuring Colin, Joshua, David, Nate, Trent, Jeff, and the rest of the gang. Those books—along with collections like Trial Runs, Glory Days, Relevant Justice, Heart’s Treasure, and Rainbows Still Glow—follow these men through love stories that are messy, hard-won, and always, always worth it. I’ve also written stand-alone tales like Under the Midnight Sky and Beyond the Rainbow: Stories from Camp Pride, and I’m currently working on Dark Justice, the first book in my Unbreakable Vow series.
Many of my novels and short-story collections are available as audiobooks on Audible and other retailers, bringing my characters to life in a whole new way for listeners who love to experience stories on the go.
It’s been an amazing thing to watch the gay community’s growth over these past decades. In many ways my own journey has echoed theirs, and I’m deeply grateful to the activists who fought to win the rights and recognition the LGBTQ+ community has always deserved. I’m equally grateful to the gay romance community—readers, authors, publishers, and promoters—who are making my retirement years the most creative of my life.
When I’m not writing, I’m traveling, walking, knitting, crocheting, and generally plotting more trouble for my characters. And for the record: no matter what I put them through, I am a firm believer in HEA.
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