The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙❤️💚💜🖤
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌏🌎🌍
Character development: 😊😄😘😍
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration
The heroine: Mercy – she is a twenty-five-year-old administrative assistant at an alcohol and drug rehabilitation center. She is nearly finished with her degree in substance abuse counseling but has decided to take the LSAT and go to law school to try to get her father an appeal. He is in prison for killing a man who tried to rape her. It was technically an accident, but they spent all their money on a lawyer who didn’t give a decent defense.
The Hero: Gabriel – he is a twenty-nine-year-old co-owner of a successful nightclub callee Empire. He and his brother own the nightclub which is also used to launder money from his father and Uncle’s drug business. His father is a mobster who is currently serving time for money laundering himself. He will be in jain for another 6 years and is 75, so the sons don’t know if he will live to be free again. Gabriel and Caleb want to go completely legit, but their father still tries to run things from his jail cell and their uncle seems to be making moves to cut their father out.
The Story: When Mercy’s father was getting beat up in prison, by a cousin of the man he killed, Gabriel offered Mercy a deal to get her father protection. He offered protection in exchange for her living with him for a week. He expected to be through with her by then. Though when the week was half over, he decided it wouldn’t be long enough for him, so he offered to get a new lawyer for her father if she would stay longer.
I was a bit frustrated when I was reading the first book in this series, that I looked and found out it was just book one of four for the story of Gabriel and Mercy. I didn’t know if I would even continue on with the series after the first book, because I am not too fond of reading four separate books about one couple. Though I am really liking this story and the characters are great. Gabriel was a bit of a jerk at first, especially in how he treated and thought of women, but he changed his tune much faster than I expected and I really like how he treats Mercy.
Mercy is the one that is determined to not fall in love with Gabriel for two reasons, first because he is part of a mafia family and doesn’t always do legitimate business, secondly because she feels he bribed her into being with him and she says she will never love someone who could do that. Technically I don’t think he bribed her so much as made a deal with her. He had something she wanted, and she had something he wanted (herself). She could have said no but didn’t.
This audiobook was told in dual points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Alex Kydd and Ada Sinclair. Alex Kydd is a good narrator; I like the voice he uses for Gabriel; it is kind of low and gravelly. He is great at using completely different sounding voices for other characters as well. Ada Sinclair has a soft, feminine voice which I find I really like.