The Gilded Rat - A Victorian Gothic MM Thriller

Hunted in the dark, their only sanctuary is each other.

Elias Thorne has built his life on order, cleanliness, and the strict rules of the Metropolitan Board of Works. As a brilliant junior civil engineer mapping London's massive new intercepting sewers, he is terrified of the dark, the dirt, and the scandal that would ruin his pristine reputation.

But when Elias discovers a sealed cistern hiding a mass grave, his ordered world collapses. The conspiracy reaches the highest levels of his department, the police are hunting him, and his only escape route leads straight down into the pitch-black, industrial gothic nightmare of ancient, buried rivers.

His reluctant guide in the dark is Silas Kalloway, a "tosher" who survives by scavenging the forgotten Roman aqueducts and medieval culverts beneath the city. Scarred, pragmatic, and haunted by his own underground past, Silas is everything Elias was taught to fear and avoid. Yet, as they flee through collapsing tunnels and rising floodwaters, Silas becomes the only solid thing in Elias's crumbling world.

Forced to rely on each other to survive ruthless assassins and a lethal storm, the lines between necessity and desire begin to blur. Elias realizes the surface world he worshipped is built on corruption, while the terrifying dark holds a man worth burning his old life to the ground for.

The Gilded Rat is a gripping industrial gothic thriller featuring a high-stakes conspiracy, a stark class-difference romance, forced proximity, intense hurt/comfort, and a meticulous engineer who realizes he doesn't have to be perfectly clean to be perfectly loved.