Cruel Mercy

Once, Masaki took a bullet for Seojun. Then Seojun was the one holding the gun.

Han Seojun has spent his life drawing beautiful buildings with money he knows better than to question. When his father sends him from Busan to rescue a troubled waterfront development in Hakata, he sees a chance to build something he can finally call his own.

The Takamine family assigns Kurose Masaki to keep him safe.

Quiet, watchful and carrying more secrets than the tattoos beneath his suit, Masaki knows what loyalty costs. He also knows that his assignment involves more than protection. What he cannot account for is the architect who notices when his coffee goes cold—and begins to imagine a place for him in an ordinary life.

Between riverside food stalls, summer rain and rooms where they can forget who employs them, desire becomes a love neither man knows how to surrender.

Then a murder in Busan brings their hidden life to an end.

Two years later, Seojun is preparing to marry into the Takamine family. Masaki returns with scars, a question he has never stopped asking, and feelings that have survived alongside his hatred.

Why did you shoot me?

The answer could change everything he believes about the man he loved. But their reunion threatens an alliance neither family will willingly release, and trusting each other again may be the most dangerous choice they have left.

Moving between the harbours of Japan and South Korea, Cruel Mercy is a dark, sensual M/M romantic suspense novel about divided loyalties, devastating betrayal and the cost of deciding what someone else can survive.