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Black Absolution: An MM Dark Mafia Romance
A dark mafia romance between two men. Rivals to lovers, forced proximity, one bed, size difference, hurt/comfort. Dual POV, open door, complete ending, no cliffhanger.
HIS POV. HIS POV. AND A CITY WITH A WIND IN IT.
For four hundred years, one house has held the private business of every family from Palermo to Odessa. The bank. The courier line. The confessional. Four centuries of other people’s secrets, and not one of them ever opened.
Nico Sarto is sent to Trieste to fold that machine up gently. Find the last twenty-two couriers, buy their silence, take back their copies, leave them all alive.
ONE WRITES EVERYTHING DOWN. THE OTHER HAS NEVER WRITTEN A WORD.
I’ve kept the pen in other men’s lives for ten years. I have beautiful penmanship and not one line of my own. I don’t ask for things. A consigliere with a man is a consigliere with a handle. I worked that out at twenty-seven, and I found it restful.
Then somebody starts reaching my couriers before I do, and leaving them in the water.
And there’s a Russian in this city who has been following me for twelve days.
Maksim Vetrov doesn’t write things down. He doesn’t need to. He has come for one page out of four hundred years of them, the page with his family’s name on it. Then he means to burn the rest. His father went up a staircase in Venice nineteen years ago and never came down, and the archive is the only thing that remembers why.
Two men arrive at the same door on the same night, for opposite reasons, and neither can do what he came to do in front of the other. So they do the only thing left. They work together. They lie to each other about everything except what they want.
And the woman who has held that line for forty-one years isn’t going to give it up. She’s right, and that’s the problem. The archive is the peace. Burn it, and you start the war it has been holding back for four centuries.
Things to know about Black Absolution
MM dark mafia romance, dual POV, first person, present tenseRivals to lovers, forced proximity, one bed, size differenceTouch starved, hurt/comfort, praise, a hero who has never asked anyone for anythingOpen door and seven scenes on the page, with consent asked for out loud every single timeComplete ending for this couple. No cheating. No cliffhanger.Book two of The Black Vatican. It reads on its own; book one follows a different couple and is a man-and-woman romance.Content organized crime; on-page violence, including a man held for questioning and a beating whose aftermath is described; the death of a loved character in an accident described as it happens; an earlier death by drowning; grief for a parent; reference to a fire, a killing and a mass drowning at sea in the past; coercion and blackmail; alcohol. No sexual violence, no dubious consent, no homophobic language or conduct on the page.
HIS POV. HIS POV. AND A CITY WITH A WIND IN IT.
For four hundred years, one house has held the private business of every family from Palermo to Odessa. The bank. The courier line. The confessional. Four centuries of other people’s secrets, and not one of them ever opened.
Nico Sarto is sent to Trieste to fold that machine up gently. Find the last twenty-two couriers, buy their silence, take back their copies, leave them all alive.
ONE WRITES EVERYTHING DOWN. THE OTHER HAS NEVER WRITTEN A WORD.
I’ve kept the pen in other men’s lives for ten years. I have beautiful penmanship and not one line of my own. I don’t ask for things. A consigliere with a man is a consigliere with a handle. I worked that out at twenty-seven, and I found it restful.
Then somebody starts reaching my couriers before I do, and leaving them in the water.
And there’s a Russian in this city who has been following me for twelve days.
Maksim Vetrov doesn’t write things down. He doesn’t need to. He has come for one page out of four hundred years of them, the page with his family’s name on it. Then he means to burn the rest. His father went up a staircase in Venice nineteen years ago and never came down, and the archive is the only thing that remembers why.
Two men arrive at the same door on the same night, for opposite reasons, and neither can do what he came to do in front of the other. So they do the only thing left. They work together. They lie to each other about everything except what they want.
And the woman who has held that line for forty-one years isn’t going to give it up. She’s right, and that’s the problem. The archive is the peace. Burn it, and you start the war it has been holding back for four centuries.
Things to know about Black Absolution
MM dark mafia romance, dual POV, first person, present tenseRivals to lovers, forced proximity, one bed, size differenceTouch starved, hurt/comfort, praise, a hero who has never asked anyone for anythingOpen door and seven scenes on the page, with consent asked for out loud every single timeComplete ending for this couple. No cheating. No cliffhanger.Book two of The Black Vatican. It reads on its own; book one follows a different couple and is a man-and-woman romance.Content organized crime; on-page violence, including a man held for questioning and a beating whose aftermath is described; the death of a loved character in an accident described as it happens; an earlier death by drowning; grief for a parent; reference to a fire, a killing and a mass drowning at sea in the past; coercion and blackmail; alcohol. No sexual violence, no dubious consent, no homophobic language or conduct on the page.
377 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 16, 2026
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