Nothing Can Tear Us Apart—SHATTERED!

Mark The Date: August 18! That’s when Rainbow Advocacy Press releases my new novel, RUTHLESS!, the latest installment in my Nothing Can Tear Us Apart series. I’m proud and excited!

Rainbow Advocacy Press was created to publish books and written works focused on LGBTQ+ history, identity, human rights, and culture. To prepare you for the RUTHLESS! experience, I’m posting excerpts from SHATTERED!, the current installment in the Nothing Can Tear Us Apart series.

As Bette Davis’s Margo Channing said in All About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

SYNOPSIS: Wes, a wealthy African American media mogul, and ‘Tonio, his Latino Chief of Security, are star-crossed lovers who fight against the odds to maintain their monogamous relationship. The duo must confront the ghost of Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse (IPV/A), dissociative identity disorder (DID), Wes’s wayward, homophobic teenage son Waseem, and Ruffkut, the deadly gangsta who has a vicious vendetta against Wes.

January 8, 2023

“Yo! Ovah here, ovah here! We found him, Mr. Kelly!”

There was an extreme desperation and urgency in the booming voice that blasted through the megaphone. “You need to get down here! Pronto!!!”

Aghast, Ollie, aka “Mr. B&B” (Beefy and Bulky, don’t cha know!), suddenly developed a lump in his throat the size of a golf ball. What he saw had contorted his chiseled face, which appeared even more twisted due to the broiling, fiery hot, and highly concentrated helicopter floodlights.

It was a full-blown, out-and-out rescue search, with a large team meticulously and thoroughly scouring the area. Helicopters whizzed and zoomed overhead, the sounds of their blades spinning ferociously.

The most powerful and technically advanced searchlights pierced that black ink midnight sky, lighting the heavens and transforming darkness into daylight.

What Ollie was staring at gave him the shakes and a severe case of the heebie-jeebies! And the biting, snapping, and bone-chilling air didn’t help one iota.

Ollie had steel-gray hair, craggy features, and a this-means-business mustache. He was one of the most sought-after recovery experts around.

I’m talking about finding folks who’d been snatched up.

Taken.

Kidnapped.

Then suddenly, like a thunderclap, Ollie blared, “C’mon, guys! All of you need ta git your asses down here!”

He’d seen it all in his business: the relieved and grateful faces of those he rescued who ended up in one piece, but also the tortured, mangled, and dead bodies he discovered.

Usually, he was pretty effective in maintaining his composure and professional detachment; however, this recovery operation was different. He was good buds with Wesley (Wes) Laurence Kelly, and his partner, Antonio (‘Tonio) Miguel Rios. 

And what he was staring at was, well, rather gut-wrenching!

To say the least.

Wes was neither a snow lover nor an enthusiast. This wicked, protracted snowstorm, with its sustained solid winds and, at times, near-zero visibility, had descended on the metro D.C. area with the ferocity and fury of a horde of Greek harpies! This blizzard, one helluva whiteout, delivered an overpowering knockout punch, resulting in severe disruption and utter chaos throughout the area.

The whallopalooza was poised to supplant the 1979 President’s Day blizzard, with its snow cover of 24 to 32 inches, as the third-worst. The fucked up weather made what he was fighting to accomplish—no, what he needed to accomplish–seem like “Mission Impossible.”

The disquieted Wes was in full five-alarm fire mode! Waist-deep in piles of snow, he frantically trudged through the frozen, icy soil. It felt like a sadist had cemented huge weights to his thighs and calves.

The wailing wind shook him violently. Meanwhile, the bitter cold pierced through him, from the top of his head down to his toes. And let’s not forget the snowfall’s companions, Graupel and Hail, which felt like arrows that cut and burned.

However, Wes determined that none of that must stop him! The stakes were far too high.

Glued alongside Wes was ‘Tonio, who led the private security team. What Ollie said and the urgency in his voice supercharged the couple’s adrenaline.

The search had led them to Cheverly, one of the hardest hit by the blizzard. Just outside the District of Columbia, it’s a small town in Prince George’s County, Maryland. They were smack dab in the middle of the construction site of a new upscale condo complex. However, when the dead of winter rolled around, all activity halted.

The brave duo reached the top of a mountain of dirt and mud created by an excavator, a giant piece of earth-moving heavy equipment. A massive bulldozer, along with other machinery, littered the landscape.

As they peered down the hollow pit, both men were petrified! ‘Tonio’s gut screamed out that none of this was good, although he was trying to maintain a stiff upper lip and steadfast resolve for Wes, his Baybee.