Some stories just aren’t meant to be told.
From warzones to domestic scandals, Ulysses has built a career as a high-profile journalist at the expense of both family and relationships. Now his dogged pursuit of the truth has cost him credibility and job security. Discredited and depressed, he hunts for the story that will re-establish him as a trustworthy name in British journalism.
Stumbling across a string of mysterious murders that spans the breadth of the continent may prove a godsend. Yet catapulted into a world of spies and outstanding blood debts, Ulysses finds himself collaborating with elusive Robin, a man on the run whose past is as dark as the desires he awakens in Ulysses. Their chemistry is incendiary, breathtaking, unlike anything Ulysses has ever known. And chances are the fallout will prove proportional.
As Robin’s dealings land him in the crosshairs of the British intelligence services, Ulysses is faced with a choice that may cost him his life.
General Release Date: 10th November 2015
“What do you mean ‘the body is gone’?” Ulysses pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re kidding, right? I came in yesterday and you said—”
“I know what I said,” Malika shot back, lips pursed around the filter of her unlit cigarette. Her hands shook around the plastic lighter. A cold front had settled over Gatinau in the late evening hours, after Ulysses had found his hotel but before he realized he’d misplaced his cell phone. By morning, the chill was entrenched, hostile.
His on-the-ground contact was no kinder.
After a good minute of trying to ignite her cigarette, Malika pried it from her mouth and threw up her hands. “Look, some guys came during the night. Must’ve been around midnight, maybe a little later… Next thing I know, I’m told to take a walk. When I come back, he’s gone. That’s all I know.”
“Told by whom?”
“One of the doctors.” Malika pressed her thin lips together. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. Everything’s been very hush-hush since last night.”
Ulysses’ fingers itched. He wanted to grab his notepad, jot down every word in case he mistranslated them later. While he spoke it well enough to make his way through the country largely undetected, French wasn’t his mother tongue. He’d missed nuances before.
“Okay… Do you know who they were? These men who came to take the body, could they have been undertakers? Or family?” he asked, stabbing in the dark.
“Not unless the guy had five brothers built like Rambo.” Malika knuckled absently at the gleaming stud in her nose. “We need authorization from the police before we can release a body to the family. Sometimes, if there’s any hint of foul play…”
As there is in this case?
“And you haven’t received one.”
Malika shook her head. “Gets weirder, though.” She glanced around the empty parking lot as though to check that no one was listening and curled her lower lip between her teeth. The perfect oval of her face elongated when she sucked her cheeks in. No matter how round and baby-soft her features and how often her scratchy voice cracked, there was a hardness to her, a no-nonsense attitude that Ulysses had appreciated when her cousin had first put them in touch.
Yet unlike the cousin from Marseille, Malika was slightly more attuned to the dangers of collaborating with the press.
Ulysses knew he should have found her wariness reassuring—he didn’t trust the cowboy-anarchist types and the ink on her neck was hard to miss—but he was weary of chasing false leads. His patience had just about run dry. “What?” he snapped, pushing his glasses up his nose. “What else is there? Aliens? The Illuminati?”
“This morning, we have no record of a Monsieur X.”
“He’s a…” Ulysses waved a hand. He couldn’t think of the French word. “A John Doe? You misidentified the remains?”
“No. It’s as if we never registered the body, never entered it into the system…”
His jaw slackened. “But that’s not possible.” Foreign nationals who died on French soil couldn’t simply be misplaced. “Must be a glitch. Mister X didn’t just get up and walk off the slab.”
It was to no avail, Malika was already looking away. Like all astute mercenaries, she knew their collaboration had come to a close. “Is there someone else I can talk to?” Ulysses pressed. “Losing a body strikes me as a pretty big deal.”
“And if your little magazine wants to print it, be my guest. But you’re not using my name,” Malika said, gesturing with her unlit cigarette. “Are we clear?”
Ulysses drew himself up a little straighter. He was going to let the mocking comment about his magazine slide. He was going to be an adult about this, no matter how it wounded him to hear a labor of love dismissed as a vanity project. “I won’t mention you if you tell me who else I can speak to about this… Maybe the pathologist who performed the autopsy?”
Malika narrowed her eyes. For a beat, Ulysses thought she might refuse. He had lost sources to fear before, but this wasn’t the Balkans in ’93. This was France and Paris was just a couple of hours away by car.
Stories like this weren’t supposed to happen here.
“I can give you a name,” Malika said after brief deliberation. “But it will cost you.”
Helena Maeve has always been a globe trotter with a fondness for adventure, but only recently has she started putting to paper the many stories she's collected in her excursions. When she isn't writing erotic romance novels, she can usually be found in an airport or on a plane, furiously penning in her trusty little notebook.
Reviewed by Wicked Reads
A wonderful twist and my emotions heaved hard towards this being brilliant. Thank you Ms. Maeve for writing the unexpected, and the seductive so well.
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Reviewed by MM Good Book Reviews
I really liked the mystery part of the story. The way Ulysses sought out facts was fascinating. But I have to say I was intrigued by the mysterious yet sexy Robin. As more details about his past are r...
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Helena Maeve - Divine Magazine feature
Hi, Divine Magazine, and thank you for having me. I’m Helena Maeve, your friendly neighborhood writer and self-confessed globetrotter. Stories have always come easy to me, the more unconventional the better, but as a queer lady it took me a good while to give the romance genre a shot.
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