Title: Dark Intentions
Author: Charlotte Byrd
Publisher/Year:  Byrd Books 5/27/21
Length:  200 Pages
Series: Dark Intentions #1

Overview

One debt. One secret. One night.
I have a secret and I’ll do everything in my power to keep it that way.
I’ve been watching her for a long time.
I’ve been following her.
She’s lost a brother. I lost a best friend, but no one could ever know. 
She’s in pain, and so am I.
She deserves so much better than me. I am rotten to the core and if I take this any further, I will pull her into my darkness.
But I can’t stay away. I can’t stop.
What happens when she starts to uncover my lies? What happens if love isn’t enough?

From USA Today Bestselling author Charlotte Byrd comes an intense forbidden mafia romance about debts, lies and secrets and the extent to which people go for love.

I’m not supposed to know his name and he’s not supposed to know mine. But we break that rule. That’s not the only one.

He gives me chills and makes my body ache. He makes my pain go away. He’s just a distraction, but I can’t get enough of him.

What I don’t know yet is that he will help save my mother’s life.
What I don’t know yet is that I’ll owe him a debt.
What I don’t know yet is that he is a man of many secrets. Secrets dark enough to break us both.

My Thoughts

I’m a big fan these days of our author Charlotte Byrd so I was pleased to find this series when I was looking for something new to read. I’m in a bit of a stop gap right now waiting for a few ‘next books’ in series to come out.

This is one of those stories that you already know how it’s going to go, and you’re just along for the ride. Jacqueline is at an interesting point in her life and i’m not entirely sure how she got there. She’s graduated from a really good college, but I don’t think that she’s ever truly worked a job. Her twin brother has recently died and that set her life into a tailspin. Her mother has also been really sick with Cancer and has the opportunity to get into an experimental treatment, but that comes with it’s own risks.

Through all this turmoil, Jacqueline is working to find herself. She uses men to feel something but doesn’t necessarily get what she needs from them. Its’ through her friend Allison (roommate from college) that she learns about Redemption. A series of private clubs that caters to people with unique tastes, unconventional tastes sexually – and it seems like it could be right for her. While she’s not necessarily comfortable there, she meets a man who makes it all worthwhile.

Enter Dante – a man who comes from a distinctly different background, with more means than imaginable, but he is searching for much of the same that Jacqueline is. They meet one night at Redemption and have a night to remember. Then they go their separate ways, and we watch the story unforld.

What we don’t know (or rather what Jacqueline doesn’t know) is that Dante has some sort of connection to her, or at least perhaps her brother – and we don’t know what that line of connection is. What we do know is that he’s been watching her, watching out for her, and while he didn’t know that she would be at Redeption, it’s not a bad thing.

The story from here is a whirlwind. Jacqueline’s mother’s treatment costs a lot more money than she can ever come up with and Dante has that money. Secretly he pays for that treatment and there’s a new lease on life. At the same time, both of these two characters can’t get one another out of their head but since they shared no real information, Jacqueline doesn’t know how to find Dante, until they cross paths again.

When they do, it’s just as intense and deep, and we watch something interesting unfold. He’s there for her while her mother gets her treatment and when things take a turn for the worse. He’s not just a shoulder to cry on, but he’s something more – they both feel it. the challenge of course is that there’s a secret that she doesn’t know – that Dante is linked to her and we all know what will happen when she finds out. And that’s where we are left at the end of the book.

Thankfully I have a few train rides this week that I can try to read on, and see what happens in book 2. I anticipate anger, frustration, lies, and then the hot steamy spark that they shared in the first book. There has to be more to the story than what we’ve seen so i’m off to find out. Enjoy!