Kia Ora...

The world is a weird place right now... I really don't think I can describe it any better than that! I mean I've heard that Eighties fashion is supposed to be making a comeback, but we don't really need the rest of the world looking like it had back then.

They often say to write what you want to read... well, lately I've been wanting to read gritty medical based romances. Think Grey's Anatomy, or Chicago Med... you know ones where the going ons of the hospital are just as important as the romance plot. There aren't many around in MF romance, and even fewer with LGBTQ+ pairings... and I wasn't going to write one as I've already got quite a few series' to work on... But then a character popped up in my head, I don't know his name or anything about him other than he's a surgeon... so yeah, at some point this year or maybe next year I might have a Medical Series coming out...

Updates

• Rough Sketches (House of Bolton 3) is now with my proofreader! This will be an angsty story, chocolate, wine, and tissues are advised.... but in saying that, none of the angst comes from Ryland and Lucas breaking up at any point in the story. Not sure how I managed it... not going to complain either.
• I've started working on the first chapter of Nagoya Crimes Two... so far it's a lot of Suyama complaining about the snow and freezing temperature in Hakodate.

Rough Sketches - Blurb & Cover Reveal

Blurb:

An undercover cop in over his head.

A future Consigliere who falls hard.

Lucas’s undercover assignment had seemed easy. Go undercover in the Tomasi Family and expose their latest money laundering scheme. Even having to pose as a gay man didn’t faze him, it wasn’t like he’d need to actually sleep his way into the family... just catch a high-ranked members attention and string him along for a little bit. Right?

He’d never been so wrong.

Lucas never intended to catch the eye of Ryland Beltrame, a man rumoured to be the next Consigliere for the Tomasi Family.

Never intended to find himself in the man’s bed, or that he’d go there willingly... beg for it.

Never imagined how dangerous this assignment could get.

Never imagined loving someone—a man—with so much blood on their hands. Blood that could easily be Lucas’s.

Not read Tailored Heart or Stitched Together yet? Find them here!

Caught (Smoke and Shadows 1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Yoshitake gritted his teeth and plastered on his most charming smile while gesturing at the only hostess allowed in the room to refill his guest’s empty cups. The hundred-thousand-yen bottle of whiskey hadn’t last long, his guests happy to drink the premium alcohol like it was tap water since they weren’t the ones paying for it. And with every cup his guests downed, the looser their tongues, and the secrets Yoshitake wanted to learn tumbled out along with a few more he wished he’d never heard.

“You were right to go after… the heirs,” Mizawa slurred. Not much older than Yoshitake, the man had been placed in charge of the Tsurumi Ward on the eastern outskirts of Osaka by Takeshi’s father, and yet arrogantly believed he should have been handed an area within the centre of the city. It hadn’t surprised Yoshitake that Mizawa had been one of the first to seek him out. “Neither of them know… knew… no, it’s definitely know…” the man stumbled over his words. “Neither of them know how to run the organisation. Matsumoto… senior, too busy trying to buddy up to the Araki-gumi, bowing his head to the Kyoto organisation and letting them get away with taking our territory.”

“I agree with Mizawa,” Kenta replied, a man whose desire to remove Takeshi from the leadership of the Shirokawa-gumi had surprised Yoshitake. Kenta had suffered under Koijiro’s reign, relegated to a lower ranked position within the organisation despite his family having close ties with the Matusmoto’s that stretched back several generations. His fortune had changed with the elder Matsumoto’s death and Takeshi hadn’t intended to change anything his father had set in place. “In part… the young heir isn’t suitable to head up an organisation like ours. He’s far too young for starters, filled with youthful ignorance regarding our world, to easily swayed by the promises of peace, and too reluctant to get his hands dirty.”

“Yes… I can’t imagine Matsumoto would want to risk ruining his manicure,” Yoshitake lied despite the urge to tell these spineless men that Takeshi had no qualms about killing. But even if he listed off the men Takeshi had killed recently, these men would merely scoff and refuse to believe it. They hadn’t been there to witness it after all, Mizawa conveniently indisposed at the time of the last meeting while Kenta wasn’t high ranked enough to attend.

“Manicure? Really?” Kenta scoffed, knocking back the whiskey and pulling the hostess onto his lap. “Does he gossip with all the men’s wives too?”

“I wouldn’t know… I always fobbed that protection detail onto someone else.” He sniggered before wiping the mirth off his face. “But I didn’t agree to meet you here to discuss Matsumoto’s beauty regime.”

“No… you didn’t,” Mizawa said, sobering up fast. Yoshitake narrowed his eyes at the man and wondered if his drunken behaviour had been nothing more than an act. “We want to help you get rid of Matsumoto.”

“By ‘we’ do you mean the two of you? Or are you speaking on behalf of others?”  

Yoshitake suspected there were more amongst the Shirokawa-gumi who wished Takeshi dead. Men whose ambitious natures were tempered by enough smarts that they were often overlooked as threats by those higher in the ranks. Men who no one would ever suspect of conspiring together to take over the leadership of the organisation. If Mizawa and Kenta hadn’t of reached out to him, he’d never have suspected them of having such lofty ambitions despite their well-known gripes. But then again, a desire to improve their position within the organisation didn’t necessarily mean that either man wanted to lead the Shirokawa-gumi.

Kenta and Mizawa shifted uncomfortably in their seats and shared a silent exchange of words as they discussing just what information could be passed onto Yoshitake. He watched the emotions flicker across the men’s faces, the subtle twitches of muscles as the silent discussion grew heated before Mizawa cleared his throat and switched his attention back to Yoshitake, fingers gripping the glass in his hand tighter.

“We represent a select group within the Shirokawa-gumi who share the same values… and we feel that those values are somewhat aligned with your goals.”

“Somewhat aligned?” Yoshitake arched an eyebrow and flicked his confuse gaze between the pair. “Either our values and goals align, or they don’t… there is no middle ground.”

“We want to return the Shirokawa-gumi to its glory days before the organisation’s humiliating loss to the Araki-gumi and take back the territory that Kitayama took from us.”

Yoshitake leaned forward, elbows digging into his knees as he steepled his hands and tapped them against his lips. “You realise I desire the leadership position… and that I won’t be interested in working with others to rid the organisation of Matsumoto if they intend to stab in the back later.”

“Not sure if that will work for us… well, not us exactly, but the others who we represent,” Kenta answered while his fingers tapped against the side of the glass resting on his knee. Yoshitake didn’t know if it was nervousness or arrogance that had the man’s fingers in motion. Did they honestly believe he’d roll over and accept a lower position within the organisation simply because whoever was behind their opposition decreed it?

“How many do you represent?” he asked. “You come here speaking of ‘we’ and ‘us’ while expecting me to agree to your terms—not that you’ve laid them out either—and yet, I know nothing about who you are speaking on behalf of.”

Yoshitake grabbed the bottle of whiskey before the hostess could clamber out of Kenta’s lap and filled his empty cup. Swirling the whiskey, he watched as the colour of the alcohol changed the more it rose up the sides of the glass—burnt amber, honey gold, and blood red. He’d almost reached his limit tonight. Dealing with these two men that was and not the alcohol. Yoshitake was ready for this dangerous game he and Takeshi were playing to finish. Except there was only one way for it to end. Well, two he supposed, but the second option wasn’t one he cared to entertain. But for that to happen, Yoshitake first needed the names of the other men within the organisation working with Kenta and Mizawa.

“Names? I want at least one… a sign of good faith if you want to look at it that way… only fair really when it was you came and sought me out in the first place.” He leaned back in his seat. “Then again… I get the impression you need me more than I need you… so if you don’t want to share, then so be it.”

“There’s a significant number of us all eager to see the Shirokawa-gumi regain its undisputed control over Osaka, but you don’t need to know anything more than that,” Mizawa said sharply.

He chuckled and shook his head. “So, that means you’re all nobodies… men desperate power, but don’t have the balls or the leadership to grab it yourselves.” He taunted them, needling at their egos, and hoped that a crack might appear in their confident veneers. “Noisy bugs who aren’t capable of anything… easily squashed… which means,” Yoshitake sighed. “I’m better off without you.”

“We aren’t nobodies,” Mizawa roared, leaping from his seat, and towering over Yoshitake. He wanted to laugh at the man’s attempt to intimidate him, Mizawa no scarier than a moth flittering around a light, and one who’d soon find himself burnt or better yet, squashed if the man weren’t careful. “We have allies throughout the Shirokawa-gumi… including those within the executive despite having sworn their loyalty to Matsumoto.”

“Oath breakers? Why the fuck do I want to align myself with someone so untrustworthy as that?”

“He does not see himself as an oath breaker, as he doesn’t view Matsumoto as worthy of being given it. Shima—” his words faltering as the door burst open, and an uninvited guest strode through it.

Yoshitake stared at the man and cursed, ready to kill the bastard himself as Mizawa’s lips slammed shut, and the name he’d been trying to find out all night was left half finished. “How the fuck did you get past Tomu?”

Takeshi stepped further into the room and closed the door behind him while a dangerous grin spread across his face at the sight of the two men seated. “Pointed the sharp end of a knife blade at his throat,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered if he should hand Tomu over to Wu because the last person who should’ve been allowed into the room was Takeshi. “You shouldn’t fucking be here!”

**********************************

Tokyo Nights Series

Deadly Game

Deadly Gamble

Deadly Gifts