Dear Readers,
First thing’s first—this is a full-length standalone set in The Five Syndicates series. It can be read alone or in the following reading order: Asher Black, Niccolaio Andretti, Ranieri Andretti, and Bastiano Romano.
I kept the recapping pretty short to avoid spoilers from the other books, but those spoilers are still there. GAH. Sorry. Either way, this is a standalone, so you can go forth without confusion.
Second thing—if you’re looking for your conventional love story, where the hero is the golden boy, sweet and worthy of love… this isn’t that. The hero is flawed. The heroine is flawed. There’s hate and anger and lust—a provocative slow burn.
Third—I usually add a lesson in my author’s note. Something I learned while writing the book. Usually, it has to do with lessons the characters themselves learn. With Asher Black, Lucy finds courage just as I find courage in pursuing writing instead of med school. With Niccolaio Andretti, it was seeing pain beneath other people’s masks and learning to respect them for it.
With Bastian, the lesson wasn’t necessarily within the characters but what I learned while writing them. I suffered a loss. A huge one. One that, nearly a year later, still cuts deep.
I fear it will always cut deeply; I fear it won’t always cut deeply.
I started this book in 2017. It’s 2019. So much time has passed, so much pain has elapsed, I ended up rewriting this book five times. Five. Each rewrite, Ariana and Bastian changed, twisting and morphing into who they were meant to be.
In the first draft, Ariana started as a hardened FBI agent. This wasn’t her. It was a mask. Bastian started as a cocky, heartless mafia prince. This wasn’t him either. Yes, Ariana is tough. Yes, Bastian is emotionally distant. But the reasoning behind their flaws isn’t superficial. It delves into the same pain I felt over the past year.
It was scary to write this way. To take a part of myself that hurt and let it bleed onto my pages. To let Bastian and Ariana take pieces of my pain and heal it. Even now, I feel vulnerable and stripped bare as I type this author’s note.
Here is my lesson—let yourself feel pain. You are allowed to lash out. You are allowed to seek escapes. You are allowed to be bold in your pain. You are allowed to learn from it.
You are also allowed to heal.
As you read Bastian and Ariana’s story, I hope you connect with them the way I did. And maybe, you will find the same lessons I found while writing their love story.
As always, thank you for reading.
xoxo,
Parker