TOBY
Three months of late-night encrypted conversations and the moment I meet Gabe in person, everything shifts.
The attraction hits fast and neither of us pretends otherwise.
It’s exactly what I need as we crack the most dangerous files I’ve ever worked on.
But something is off.
Gabe knows things he shouldn’t.
Small details that slide past in conversation.
A look that lingers a beat too long.
The way he finishes my sentences, like he’s heard them before.
I’ve spent six years picking Pritzrak apart.
And finally found someone who wants to destroy them as much as I do.
But I can’t help feeling like the man in my bed knows exactly what Pritzrak took from me.
GABE
I should have told him the truth from the start.
Bryant needs Toby’s skills, and I’m the one sent to bring him in and work alongside him on the job.
Simple enough.
Except nothing about Toby is simple, and the closer I get, the harder it becomes to keep what I know from him.
I have my reasons for finding him, and not all of them are the mission.
But the mission comes first.
That’s what I tell myself every time he looks at me like I’m someone worth trusting.
The files we’re tearing apart will expose Pritzrak’s London operation, their final stronghold.
Pritzrak knows it, too, and they’ll cross a continent to stop us.
If the truth doesn’t break us first, the people we’re exposing will.
—
SPECTRE is the fourthin the Shadow Contracts series. Shadow Contracts is a planned series of six standalone romances with an overarching plot that ties them together. Handler Bryant deploys contractors on high-stakes missions to dismantle a dangerous criminal organization. As operations intensify, these men find love in the crossfire. Six standalone MM romance suspense novellas featuring military operators, explicit content, and emotional vulnerability.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: A gay military romance suspense novel (40,000 words) with dark themes, online-to-IRL romance, hacker/cyber ops specialist, forced proximity, instalust, and identity deception. Content warnings: gun violence, organized crime violence, references to torture and captivity, grief and loss of a sibling, explicit sexual content, and on-page violence typical of military ops thrillers.
