The Enforcer's Rival

Jack Marlowe is a knife in the dark, a man who works for the other outfit, and the last person anybody should find standing behind them in a warehouse at two in the morning. A single brass key, still warm from a pocket. The lock gives. The door groans inward on salt-stiff hinges, louder than anybody would like. Inside it is cold and still, thick with damp burlap and tar. Moonlight through a grime-caked window high on the far wall, falling across a row of crates stacked three high. Canadian whiskey, if the tip was good. A hundred cases, maybe more, hijacked three nights ago and stashed here by a crew that does not share. He is not supposed to know about it. He is not supposed to be here at all. But Leo Vitale let it slip at a wake last week, grinning across a funeral parlour with that gold tooth showing, about a special shipment coming in on the late tide. *Put it down.* The voice comes from behind, low and flat, with no room in it for negotiation. *Turn around. Slow.* Jack stands in the shadow of a support beam ten feet away, a thin wicked blade held low at his hip, green eyes moving fast, assessing, cataloguing, and then settling. What follows: a boss who demands a handshake, neutral ground both men claim, a beating that becomes the beginning of something, a soft-hearted thief, a rooftop confession, a goose and a feather, and a barbershop with two chairs and one conversation nobody else hears. *Then I guess I gotta stay alive.* Perfect for readers who love Prohibition-era MM romance, two enforcers on opposite sides of a whiskey war, a knife held low and used for something else entirely, rooftops and funeral parlours and barbershops, a slow burn that costs both men their standing, explicit scenes, and an ending earned in front of people who would rather it had not been.