Sometimes love isn’t beautiful...
Sometimes the only way to describe it is
beautifully brutal.
If you think you know him… You’re wrong.
If you think you know his family… Wrong again.
If you think you know his story… You don’t.
If you did, you’d likely wonder how the hell a man like
Maximillian Adorite managed to make it to this point in his life. At
twenty-nine, he’s experienced more
than most people could only ever imagine, all thanksto his family. Organized
crime they call it. Mafia.
No matter how they spin it, it comes down to
one thing. Max gets what he wants. Except for the one thing he wants most.
Her name is Courtney Kogan.
And now that he’s had a taste of her, Max knows he’ll never be able to let her go.
The Southern Boy Mafia series is a spinoff
from the Sniper 1 Security series. It has been set up to be read without
reading Sniper 1 Security, however, the characters will frequently cross over.
ARC received for an honest review
WOW!!
We briefly met our main characters, Courtney and Max, in Ms Edwards' book Wait for Morning (Book 1 in the Sniper 1 Security series) - but you can read this without having read it.
Courtney is from a family of Good Guys (Sniper 1). Whilst on assignment she met one of the Bad Guys, Max Adorite, second in charge of the Southern Boy Mafia.
In Wait For Morning, it was mentioned that she knows Max, but that is about it. Boy, did she know him! And as we learn more about them, you will want to know him too.
Max is the bad guy, who it seems has a heart of gold. As I read, at times it was hard to believe he really could be the cold hearted mafia man, and it was not hard to lose my heart to him.
Beautifully Brutal is written in past and present tense, so we get plenty of their back story. The too and fro of it all. They know they are bad for each other, but the pull to each other, the attraction, the feelings keep bringing them back together. I particularly felt for Courtney - I think it must have been so much harder for her jumping from the right side of the law to hook up with the mafia bad boy.
The heat between them is undeniable, but can that be enough?
Courtney swallowed hard, her eyes traveling over his face, taking in every inch of him, reliving every moment they'd ever spent together as it flashed through her mind. It'd always been like this... Their interactions were heated, passionate, and innately sexual underneath it all.
Beautifully brutal, that was how she'd come to think of this thing between them.
It also turns out that Max and Courtney are already kind of connected, though I don't want to say why. Way before they ever met there were things that happened that neither of them know about, and put a different spin on things.
As events unfold, Max and Courtney are going to have to trust each - but can they? Is there more to them than just sex? Or will events cause them a world of hurt?
This felt like a new direction with Ms Edwards' writing. Not sure what it was about it, but it felt different to all the other series of hers that I have read and loved. Yes, there is still all that sexiness and heat that we know and love her for, but this was like a whole different style from her. And I loved it!
I am really looking forward to more of the Southern Boy Mafia series. I need Leyton's story ASAP!
EXCERPT
Twenty two months ago.
Courtney tried to pull away from Max, her heart pounding
against her chest. Max was going to kill Weston, He was going to kill him and
it was all her fault.
At that point, she’d been
with Max for several months, getting deeper and deeper into a relationship with
him, but never had actually gotten any information to take back to her father.
Nothing that would take Max down, nothing concrete enough to do any damage to
the Southern Boy Mafia and she felt as though she was running out of time.
So, she befriended Weston, pretended to like him until
she convinced him that she wanted him. And then, she’d gotten his phone number, called him and invited him to meet with her.
He had
But the young man hadn’t given up any information that would have hurt Max.
“What’d she offer you?” Max
asked Weston.
Weston’s head shifted, his right eye
opened ever so slightly, his gaze meeting hers. She could hardly make out the
color of his iris because the lid was so swollen, purple from the bruises that
marred his once handsome face.
“Did she
offer her pussy?” Max asked, his tone lethal. “Is that what she offered you?”
“God,
no!” Courtney screamed.
She hadn’t offered him anything. She’d merely tried to talk to him. Sure, the flirting might’ve eluded to more, but she’d never intended to do anything with him. She wasn’t a whore.
“He didn’t…” she uttered, her throat
closing around her words. “H didn’t betray you.”
“No? He
met with you in with you in the park, sat with you for two fucking ours and
talked. What’d you talk about? The goddamn
weather? If he didn’t betray me, what did he do,
Courtney? Confess his undying love? Ask you to run away with him? What?”
“I
betrayed you.” Weston said through swollen
lips. “I shouldn’t have talked to her.”
“He didn’t!” Courtney yelled. “He didn’t tell me anything.”
“But you
tried, didn’t you?” Max yelled at her directly. “You tried to get him to talk”
Courtney’s gaze dropped to the floor as
she nodded. She’d tried, but Weston had
revealed very little. Not even enough to take back to her father.
“Anything
you have to say to me, Weston?” Max asked.
Lifting her gaze to the broken man and battered man in
front of her, she wanted to plead for Max to let him go, but she knew better.
He was going to die. This was what happened in Max’s world. This soulless man was the leader of the Southern Boy Mafia, the
ruler of the dark and dirty underworld that she found herself living in.
He was
the man she’d fallen for. And she hated
that, hated that she’d betrayed herself. Even now,
even knowing what was going to happen, she couldn’t deny her feelings for Max. He was doing what had to be done. He weeded
out the weak links in his organization in order to move forward. It made sense
even if she hated it.
New York Times
bestselling author Nicole Edwards launched her professional writing career in
July of 2012. Having been an avid reader all of her life and a huge fan of
creative writing, it seemed the likely path for her to take. Since then, she
has released fifteen books and has no plans to stop. As her full-time
career/hobby, Nicole writes steamy contemporary and erotic romances. Nicole is
a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who was born and raised in
Texas. Married with three kids and four dogs, she has plenty of interaction to
keep her imagination brewing. Her books have been featured in USA Today’s Happy Ever After segment as well
as Indie Reader’s best
seller list. She has forged her way as an independent author. Although she has
a bachelor’s
degree in Human Resources, she prefers to be hiding out in her writing cave,
talking to the fictional characters that have built up in her head over the
years. When she isn’t writing or plotting her next book (sometimes translated to “playing on Facebook”), Nicole loves to read and spend
time with her family and her dogs.
