Romance and other things

Three years ago, Carl Ragar turned on the mob. His conscience couldn’t handle the murder of an innocent bystander, and he had to turn his back on his mentor, Petroc “Pete” Barbu, a man he’d admired and lusted after. Pete made no apologies for his job as an enforcer, but he’d never planned to get himself or Carl involved in the murder of a reporter. When Carl turned state’s evidence, Pete couldn’t even pretend to be surprised. Now Pete’s still on the run, and Carl is unceremoniously dumped out of witness protection. Two men tangled in their own pasts, they will have to face the shifting moral lines in the sand that drove them to make disastrous choices. Once Pete and Carl were partners who trusted each other with their lives—now they’re struggling to save their souls.

Review:

Dear Lyn Gala,

This was a second story I read from you and the one I really enjoyed before Ondry and Liam became my favorite couple from your books. I reread it right before starting this review and it hold up quite well for me. I do have to say however that I had to work harder at suspending my overall disbelief this time around and that made me wonder whether I still liked it so much only because quite a few things in this story are my catnip, or because it truly has good characterizations and strong plot.

I mean, of course every review is just a subjective opinion of one person who wrote it, but I always try to give a good grade to the story which worked for me  *and*  I liked as opposed to the story which hit my happy buttons, but which I do not consider well executed. I guess all I can do is try and identify the things which I was drawn to so it will be easier for the readers to decide it the story appeals to them or not .

So, what we have here as a set – up is what blurb describes. Redemption! REDEMPTION! I am drawn to the stories which have redemption themes, always was, always will be. And I thought it was done in a nuanced, thoughtful way, and the characters at the end do not become white fluffy bunnies, but they approach the idea of them killing anybody with much more caution and unwillingness than before. In other words, what seems like a small step, in actuality was a really big step for Pete.

I suppose where redemption was concerned Carl made a major step already when he turned his former comrades in three years ago and went to witness protection and sat through trial where he got to witness some of the consequences of their crimes to stare him in the face. So Pete is the one who gets to have some major growth where the redemption is concerned and he is starting from a very low stage and does not have anywhere to go but up.

Carl gets to experience some growth too, but his is mostly about figuring out the relationship with Pete. They were in lust with each other and they were in the mafia together where Pete killed people, or beat them up as the boss ordered, or gave orders to beat them up and made no apologies for that. Carl fixed cars and helped Pete and his other guys bury bodies. They were both such “wonderful people” see, but it made so much sense to me that in our mind we can always master justifications for the awful things we do. Pete was just killing bad people after all, so who cared? The only guilt he felt was to get Carl a job in the gang, because he knew Carl was not a killer. However as I said, Carl’s line in the sands apparently only crumbled when Pete’s employee accidentally killed an innocent bystander and he could not deal with it and went to police.

“And that was the crux of the matter. Carl had been trying to do the right thing by turning them all in. Pete had been trying to do the right thing by working for Lomik, a man who promised to keep other criminals out of the neighborhood. They couldn’t both be right. Of course, Pete had long ago come to terms with the fact that he’d been the idiot."

Only Carl had very strange idea of what to tell the police about Pete. He told them about involvement with the murder but nothing about where Pete can go and more importantly where Pete kept his money. Pete managed to get away; his boss and many other people went to prison.

Carl went to prison for six months and then to the witness protection. And now three years later he is not in a witness protection anymore (?!). Or maybe he was? This was so weird that I gave up trying to understand - they could not find him a job with the cars, so he came back to his neighborhood to fix cars where it is super dangerous for him and police either does not check on him at all or checks rarely.

Till one day Pete comes back, tells Carl to get in the car, figures out that Carl really has no back – up plan to stay alive and takes him to Mexico where Pete hides and runs car shop and tells Carl he has a mechanic position open and Carl better take it. Carl at first thinks Pete came to kill him in revenge, but Pete apparently is truly interested in protecting Carl rather than killing him, so off to Mexico they go.

Carl apparently is bad with reading people, specifically Pete and couple of times he jumps to the assumptions as to what Pete wants and does not want. But I was surprised and pleased as to how this was resolved and thought that it moved their relationship forward very nicely.

“I’m sorry,” Carl said softly, and he was. He was sorry he couldn’t hold his tequila, he was sorry he’d propositioned Pete, he was sorry he’d stolen the car, and he was really sorry he’d got caught. “You make a habit out of assuming the worst, don’t you?” Pete asked, his eyes on the road, but he had that tight expression on his face and his knuckles were white from gripping the wheel. “What?” “Why’d you run?” Carl didn’t even bother answering that, it was so obvious. “So, either you thought I’d beat the shit out of you or you’ve really lost your mind and you thought I’d kill you over some stupid, drunken comment.

“Beat the shit out of,” Carl admitted softly. Pete snorted. “At least you didn’t assume I’d track your sorry ass down just to kill you.” Pete didn’t say anything after that, and Carl settled on watching the landscape. They passed a grouping of brightly colored houses, and Pete took an exit and got on the northbound lane of the highway. Carl looked at him, but Pete just kept driving, his face grim."

Besides finding the story very romantic, I also found it incredibly hot (which does not happen often at all) – but this is where my previous warning very much applies. The guys engage in dominance/ submission games. There are no toys of any kind (actually handcuffs make appearance once, but that’s it) and it all felt very organic to me, but beware if you don’t like it.

Why did I have to work harder at suspending disbelief? Well, I just don’t usually buy the redemption of hired mafia killers, but in this story I went along with it.

Also this is not something that required suspending disbelief but Pete’s comments about why he preferred men to women were kind of misogynistic, however once again Pete is not a good person when story begins so from his mouth I actually did not have a problem hearing those comments ( it was not that awful to me , just annoying – women are too much work, talk too much, etc).

Grade B