Rating: 5 Stars

Publisher: Self-Published

Genre: Gay Romance/MM

Tags: Mafia, Enemies to Lovers, Dark Themes, Revenge, Possessive, Obsession, Kink, Cliffhanger Ending. CW link  

Length: 376 Pages

Reviewer: Kazza

Purchase At: amazon

Blurb:

I used to be a mafia prince. Now I’m marked as prey.

Someone is systematically eliminating my Family bloodline, and I’m the last heir standing.

No money.
No allies.
No way out…except one.

An underground auction where the wealthy and the wicked bid on desperate, untouched men like me.

I expect to be sold to a stranger. Used and discarded.

Instead, I’m bought by a man with a two-decades-long vendetta against my dead father. A beast who drops ten million dollars to own me, then drags me home to a prison he built just for me.

He wants vengeance. He wants to break me. But I’m not as easy to break as he expects.
And when danger follows me into his territory, he becomes something I never expected.

A protector.
A possessor.
He keeps me safe, even while he keeps me caged.

I’m starting to think the most dangerous thing isn’t being owned by him.

It’s wanting him to keep me…

The Beast Who Bought Me is book 1 of an ongoing-couple trilogy and ends on a cliffhanger. Expect dark dealings, obsession, possessiveness, toxic dynamics, and all the red flags. These antiheroes will earn their happily ever after, but they’ll fight hard to get there.

Content guidance can be found on the author’s website.

Review: 

There are a thousand ways to hurt someone without even touching them.

I was looking for a dark romance when I stumbled upon this book. I’m not generally a mafia romance reader, with a few exceptions – the Giovani trilogy by Laura Lascarso, which is centred primarily on a TPE relationship, and Dark Soul volumes 1-5 by Alexander Voinov.  

The Story: With the Clemenza family being picked off, his cousin being the latest, it appears that Caligula Clemenza is running out of time. There isn’t anything to inherit but his name seems to have clout, or disdain, among other mafia families. He’s been laying low for a while, doing it tough, especially after being raised with wealth and privilege. Someone has been trailing him and Caligula has narrowly escaped being killed on several recent occasions, but the unlikeliest person has kind of distantly helped him, the Giuliano Enforcer. Why? He can’t trust him. In fact there’s a dwindling number of people he might, maybe, perhaps trust now. Once the money runs out and you’re being chased – in this world in particular – you’re on your own.

So Caligula needs somewhere and someone safe. Jesse, one of those maybe, perhaps friends, says he can help Caligula get some quick money by being auctioned at the Obelisk, a Bratva owned club for shady billionaires. Let someone own him for a year month and be treated to nice things. Be kept safe. Then an instant and healthy bank account will be available at the end so he can safely disappear. Sounds like a basic plan, but a plan nonetheless. 

The Obelisk holds auctions for pretty things, and at twenty-one, good looking, still a virgin, plus the Clemenza surname added in, Caligula is a heady mix. Not everyone is thrilled with the Clemenzas, though. Jesse assures ‘Cal’ that he’s got a wealthy friend who wants him, will look after him, that the auction result is preordained. Caligula figures shelter, food, safety, they all sound appealing right now. He’d also like to fly under the Giuliano Enforcer’s radar. Caligula baits the people bidding on him at the auction because Caligula is nothing if not imperious, and it’s more money for him at the end if he can rile the bidders into spending more $$ for him. However, a late entry figures into the bidding. Damiano Orsini, the Giuliano Enforcer. Surprise! He pays $10 million for Caligula. I was like, say what? I mean, $10M! Really? I am severely undervalued. 

Damiano wants a Clemenza for revenge and it’s going to be Caligula. It’s been his burning goal for a looooong time. Caligula’s father killed his father when Damiano was thirteen, the same year Caligula was born. So there’s a thirteen year age gap and a shit-ton of white-hot revenge between them. Damiano may have money these days, but his house is gauche, according to Caligula’s disdainful and pissed-off eye. However, there is a whole other surprise awaiting in the end-game dungeon for Caligula. 

Every familiar room from the Park Avenue townhouse is represented here. It’s like someone dismantled it room by room and laid it out on one level. It’s dizzying and upsetting and strange, an autopsy of my Family’s legacy, a museum curated by my captor.
What kind of hatred burns cold and long enough to fuel such obsession?

I know this is fiction but something took me out of the book for beat or ten when Damiano subjected Caligula to three days in a room with deprivation of sight, sound, other people, etc. Even a short period like this would very likely cause psychological problems such as auditory hallucinations. Extreme anxiety. However, in mafia fictionlandia Caligula recovers quickly enough to call Damiano an arsehole and then proceed to talk about his grandfather’s townhouse, what he was prepared to do to get said townhouse that’s coming up for auction.  

“Thirteen,” Damiano spits out, echoed by whoever is on the other end of that phone. But he’s not really listening to the auction anymore; he’s staring down at me with an intensity that makes my skin burn. His hand tightens in my hair. “Use your hand, too.”

I also thought the book would go super dark, because it was right there and heading further down the rabbit hole but there’s a shift in dynamics about half way through. This happens in part because Caligula is a smart cookie. He grew up in a mafia family – grandfather, father. He works out what impacts his captor because he knows Damiano is not unaffected by him aesthetically. It’s also in part because Damiano doesn’t come from a secure place. Sure, he’s happy to humiliate and scare Caligula, get his revenge, but you just know when he was watching over him at the beginning, then buys him at the auction, Damiano not only has a physical connection but an unhinged psychological one. Obsession? Possessive desire? A recipe for dysfunction and disorientation. This book is not pretending to be based on healthy dynamics and I do love possessive, obsessive, morally grey fictional characters. 

So today I want him to learn that it’s not going to be all darkness and solitude while he’s here. Sometimes I’ll make him hurt.

So Damiano has built himself up to where he is, plenty of money, but people see him differently to Caligula. He’s livid that the New York elites view him as nothing but a brute yet Caligula is treated like one of them, certainly at a superficial level, in spite of being broke. Everyone knows Caligula, even people outside the mob know him because their son or grandson went to school with him, and, as is often the case, old money speaks to old money. Caligula can also put on the charm with that pretty face. Damiano calls Caligula ‘little prince’ or ‘golden boy,’ the nicknames are partially the behaviour he displays, at times haughty, quick on his feet, and also how he was presented for the auction. 

I’m the one who told him to act like a free man tonight. He’s only doing what I told him. But he’s so easy with all of it, belongs in a way I never will. These people are his people. This world was built for someone exactly like him.

I liked the sex. There is kink via humiliation, a touch of voyeurism, rough sex, dirty talk as well. All meant to degrade Caligula, but they get involved in more than just aggressive handling or humiliation. There is somewhat of a sado-masochistic bent that becomes apparent to them both. The more Damiano is rough or grabs his throat, holds Caligula against a wall, spanks him, other things, the more Caligula enjoys it, which confuses our MCs. But at the same time, there isn’t a lot of sex, which I also appreciated. It flowed organically within book #1 of a trilogy. What there was of it, I found really hot. The author spends a bit of time building this world. Creating different scenarios. Working the push-pull of the MCs. Then there’s the puzzle of, why do some of the mob families want Caligula untouched? Why do others want him dead? Are there really Clemenza Loyalists?

I haven’t read any other books by the author, and while this can clearly be read without the others, I suspect if you have read other series books of Greene’s it would possibly be advantageous.    

Overall: 

I was more than pleasantly surprised by The Beast Who Bought Me. I was unsure of the mafia trope but I liked the premise. The author appears to be an Aussie. There aren’t that many of them in gay/mm romance so I was keen to see how good this book was. It only took me a day and some wee small hours reading to finish 376 pages. I very rarely do that anymore. It’s a testament to the power of the MCs. I swear the author sprinkled Caligula and Damiano with crack because I’m having definite withdrawals after finishing. Know going in that this ends on a cliffhanger. It will be the sixth series that I’m waiting on the next book for. Both my son and my blog partner say ‘wait until a series is finished.’ But do I listen? Nope. I’ll have to wait until May for the the second book, The Beast Who Broke Me. Then I’ll need to wait further for the third book in what is a trilogy. Overall, I have to give this book 5 Stars because of its sheer entertainment value. It sucked me right in, gave me plenty of what I like, and delivered MCs that this character obsessive is very impatiently waiting for more of.