Guns n' Boys Book 1 Part 1
Read Guns n' Boys Book 1 Part 1 Online
Authors: K.A. Merikan
Book 1, part 1
K.A. Merikan
Acerbi & Villani ltd.
Guns n’ Boys
K.A. Merikan
— Love is sour like a
Sicilian lemon. —
The Family is always right.
The Family doesn’t forget.
The Family pays for blood in
blood.
Domenico Acerbi grew up in the
shade of Sicilian lemon trees ready to give his life for the Family. Ready to
follow orders and exceed expectations. A proud man of honor.
When Seth, the younger son of
the Don is kidnapped, it’s Domenico who is sent to get him back. The man he
finds though, is not the boy he knew all those years ago. Lazy, annoying,
spoiled, and as hot as a Sicilian summer.
Seth Villani wants nothing to
do with the mafia. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get a say when the Family pulls
him right back into its fold after his mother’s death. Thrown into a den of
serpents otherwise known as the Villani Family, Seth has to find a way to
navigate in the maze of lies. But when Domenico Acerbi, the most vicious snake
of them all, sinks his fangs into Seth, the venom changes into an aphrodisiac
that courses through Seth’s veins.
Domenico knows his life is
about to change when he gets the order to train Seth up to the role of future
Don. Seth isn’t made for it. He isn’t even made. But a man Domenico knows he
would never have to fear might just be someone he’s always needed.
If Seth is doomed to follow in
his father’s footsteps, he might as well enjoy himself—with the most
intoxicating man he’s ever met. Maybe he can even fool himself into believing
that Domenico isn’t a handsome sociopath who kills for a living.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
Themes:
Enemies to lovers, mafia, homophobia, assassin, organized crime
Genre:
Dark, twisted erotic romance / crime thriller
Erotic content:
Explicit gay sex, coercion
WARNING:
Adult content. If you are easily offended, this book is not for
you.
Guns n’ Boys
is a gritty story of extreme violence, offensive language, abuse,
and morally ambiguous protagonists. Behind the morbid facade, there is a splash
of inappropriate dark humor, and a love story that will crawl under your skin.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons,
living, dead, or undead, events, places or names is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be
reproduced or transferred in any form or by any means, without the written
permission of the publisher. Uploading and distribution of this book via the
Internet or via any other means without a permission of the publisher is
illegal and punishable by law.
Text copyright © 2014 K.A. Merikan
All Rights Reserved
http://KAMerikan.com
Cover Design by
Natasha Snow
http://natashasnow.com
We want to thank our Polish
readers, whose love for these characters kept us writing relentlessly and
improving the story to make it what it is now. Without that support, writing wouldn’t
have been the same.
Dorota, for beta-reading and
fangirling.
Serena Yates, for being so
generous with your time and proofreading for us.
Aleks Voinov, for all the
chats that encouraged us to break rules and write the story that keeps us up at
night. Not to mention lending one of your characters to us and supervising him
so we wouldn’t get hurt.
Kat and Agnes
(K.A. Merikan)
Guns n’ Boys
is a mafia homoerotic
series
.
The first book is divided into
two parts due to its length, each around 100,000 words, so it is a long journey
with these boys. Their relationship is rocky to say the least. We want to take
you on a rollercoaster ride with no safety belts. There will be blood,
violence, abuse, jealousy, and scorching hot sexual chemistry. We’re planning
to have the next part out within a month, so the pace will be fast and furious
:).
We started writing this book in
2007, and now, seven years on, we decided to give it a new, better life. It is
a story close to our hearts, and we hope readers fall in love with our
anti-heroes as much as we have. While this isn't a traditional kind of romance,
we can promise that when the whole story is finished in the far off future, the
ending will be a satisfying one.
Pain at the back of
Seth’s skull was making him want to throw up the lasagne he had just… how long
ago? He had no idea and was just as clueless about where he was. The smell of
curry from the bag over his head was making him more nauseated with every
breath he took. Sensation rushed back to him and assaulted nerve endings all
over his body. Everywhere apart from his hands. He could barely feel his
fingertips, arms tied behind the chair he was sitting on and numb from the rope
digging into the skin of his wrists.
His breathing sped up,
making the bag over his head cling to his face every time he tried to inhale
deeply. Seth didn’t know where he was, who had abducted him, or what his future
was to be here, but he wasn’t as ignorant as to state he didn’t know what was
happening at all. Even if there was no personal fault of his, he could be sure
that being tied to a chair with a bag over his head had a lot to do with being
a Villani.
A crunch of dirt under
someone’s shoes snatched all his focus, and he stopped trying to move his numb
fingers. “Who’s there?” He hardly recognized his own voice, now shaky and with
a higher pitch than usual.
Instead of answering,
his captor slowly walked around the room, extending Seth’s anxiety into an
eternity of imagined future torture.
“What’s happening?” Seth
groaned, this time in Italian.
Light blinded him for a
split-second when someone pulled the bag off his head. As soon as his eyes
started adjusting to the dim illumination of the single lightbulb, he looked up
at the man in front of him. He was a chubby, short Asian, but with the
confident way he was holding a gun in his hand, Seth wouldn’t dare underestimate
him. In the dark, empty room, with Seth unable to defend himself, this
situation could quickly take a turn for the worse.
Seth swallowed and
quickly glanced around the room. No windows.
“Who are you?” he moaned
in English again.
The stranger squinted
and cocked his head to the side. “Seth Villani,” he said with a strong Mandarin
accent.
Seth swallowed hard.
“Yes?” Only then he realized there was a barely audible breath somewhere behind
him.
“I hope we didn’t snatch
you away from any important assignments,” said the man in front of him as he
took a step closer. Too close for Seth’s liking.
He tried to even out his
breath, but he was hurting all over and wasn’t sure if he should play the tough
guy act, or play nice. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Unfortunately, we have
unfinished business with your father.” The abductor ran his fingers through his
short pitch-black hair. "You are quite an asset in the argument he and I
are having."
“But I… I have nothing
to do with it! I left Italy five years ago.” Seth slouched in his seat and for
once, he wished he wasn’t a big guy. He wished he could be small enough to just
disappear. Shrink into the chair. He knew all too well that talking to the man
in front of him was like trying to eat clear soup with chopsticks. Any argument
he might have would slip right through.
“I’m afraid, Mr.
Villani, you have a lot to do with it.” His words had no emotional coloring to
them whatsoever. He looked above Seth’s arm, to the faceless third person in
the room, and gave a curt nod.
A sharp snap turned
Seth’s blood into ice, and he tried to look back in panic. Why the fuck would
they not understand he didn’t even talk to his father much? He was done with
the Family. A glint of blade made Seth inhale deeply when he spotted it from
the corner of his eye.
“Just tell me what you
want!” he screamed, but the stranger shook his head, stepping back with a blank
face.
Seth lost his breath
when someone’s hands brushed against his, and even with the numbness, he could
sense someone squeezing his little finger.
“He’ll give it to you!
He will! Just let me go!” Seth squealed and tried to writhe away, but it turned
out the chair was attached to the floor. Screwed to it like some freaky torture
device.
A sharp pain exploded in
the side of Seth’s hand, and the person behind him pulled on the finger, as if
trying to rip it off. The blade cut through Seth’s skin without mercy, and
Seth’s cries, his screams at the top of his lungs, couldn’t change a thing
about his situation. He imagined the pain would have been even worse if his
hands weren’t so numb, but nothing prepared him for this never ending ordeal.
The butcher behind him got stuck on the bone, and Seth cried like a child, his
arms shaking uncontrollably.
Losing consciousness was
bliss.
Seth’s days and nights
went by in a pitch-black room, with him falling in and out of sleep or walking
in circles. If he stayed here for too long, he feared he would get heart
arrhythmia. The only times he got a glimpse of light from the corridor was when
someone brought him food, and he awaited those moments with both dread and
excitement. He got used to the damp air, the smelly mattress he was given for
sleeping on, the scant comfort of the thin blanket. Whenever someone entered
his cave of solitude, change was imminent, and change could mean either a meal
or another severed finger. There seemed to be a regularity to the visits, but
Seth eventually lost track of time. Another thing he lost was his appetite. He
ate because he knew he had to, but if he ever got out, he would never have
another tikka masala in his life.
With all the time on his
hands, he had more time for thinking than he ever wished to have. He followed
orders and kept quiet, since he already knew the people who held him were
capable of anything. Seth fantasized that he could take on one of them, but
then what? Even if he stole the gun from the first guy, he was underground, God
knew where, and there had to be at least a dozen more Triad scum out there.
Another thing he
agonized about when he lay sleeplessly was his mother’s funeral. He’d learned
about her death only hours before he was taken. She had been ill for a long
time, he knew it was coming, yet the fact that he couldn’t even pay his last
respects made him nauseated with guilt.
His boyfriend was
probably worried sick, but as much as Seth felt sorry for Peter being left in
the dark, thinking about him helped Seth focus on something other than the pain
in his hand. He kept replaying the last weeks together in his head over and
over.
The wait had no end.
Days? Weeks? Without windows, Seth didn’t even know if it was day or night. He
desperately tried to make out a pattern at first, but his captors seemed to
randomly wake him up, whether just out of cruelty or to deliberately confuse him,
he didn’t know. They would tear the blanket off him, scream in a language he
didn’t understand, bang on the radiator with a baseball bat, breaking the
silence and turning Seth into a pile of shaking goo.
The pain was less of an
issue than that. Seth became so used to it, he forgot about it now and then,
but the furious throbbing in his hand always came back with a vengeance. It
took three beatings for Seth to realize questions would be met with violence,
so he stopped talking to his captors altogether.
The day he got dragged
out of the room started out like one of those horrible moments meant to confuse
him, but there was no baseball bat, no unnecessary noise. Two men dragged him
out, and the bright white lights of the corridor had him squint to shield his
eyes from the painful glow. After a short cold shower, he got an ill-fitting
suit that was a mockery of tailoring and shoes that were too large for his
feet. He had no idea what was happening. Would he be shipped off to somewhere
else? Surely they wouldn’t bother to let him bathe just to kill him? He dared
to ask about it but was only told to dress faster. Maybe his family finally
chose to act? As much as he didn’t want to have anything to do with them, he’d
never had warmer thoughts about his father than now.
Seth was led down a
narrow corridor with a low ceiling so full of cables and pipes it seemed to be
adorned with industrial-themed Christmas decorations. They finally got to a
door at the end of it, and bright light blinded Seth for a split-second when it
opened.
He was overwhelmed by
the sharpness of the air that filled his lungs and the sun coming in freely
through the sides of the building. He tried to understand where he was, but the
space looked like an oddly empty parking garage.
He squinted for better
focus as his captors pushed him forward. Seth’s lips parted at the sight of two
groups of men gathered close to a few expensive cars. Asians on one side, white
men on the other, most with tanned, olive skin and dark hair.
Sicilians.
Seth opened his eyes
wider, and his heart beat furiously. Was it all going to be okay? Would they
buy him out?
His gaze instantly
darted to a man who took a step forward, moving ahead of his group. Partially
because he held a black suitcase, which hopefully contained a ransom that would
get Seth out, partially because the man was so freakishly handsome. Seth’s mind
was sent into a parallel reality for a few seconds.
A snap of the suitcase
opening brought him crashing back to reality, and what he saw were neat stacks
of hundred dollar bills. The handsome Sicilian looked sleek like a panther,
with his long black hair tied back into a tight ponytail. His moves were
confident, as if he were born to keep calm under pressure. The way he stood
straight in his tar-black suit brought out the pride in Seth and made him
straighten his back despite the pain in his muscles and joints. In a battle of
suits though, Seth’s would lose before the fight even started. The immaculate
tailoring on the black piece of art created an angular silhouette from the
man’s wide shoulders to the slim waistline. Even looking at the dark perfection
had Seth itching to take off his blue insult to fashion. The man’s tie was
elegant and slim, while Seth didn’t even wear one.
One of the Asians
stepped forward, took the suitcase, and brought it back to their leader. Seth
didn’t follow him, remaining captured by the Sicilian, who looked up at him
with a pair of amber eyes. Their gazes met, and Seth stopped breathing. It was
like being watched by a puma, the man’s eyes never blinking and intense. Seth
wasn’t sure if he wanted to take a step forward or run away. Those eyes were
cold and scrutinized Seth as if he were a piece of merchandise worth much less
than what was being paid for it. But maybe that wasn’t what hid in that perfect
skull? Maybe it was Seth’s bruised ego talking, since he was mad at himself for
having to be rescued like a baby. In the end, Seth’s insecurity won, and he
looked away, trying not to think of the shrubbery of a beard on his own face and
how it compared to the smooth-shaven skin of the handsome mafioso.