A Dark Romance Series // Book One — Coming 2027
The world's most impossible objects.
The world's most dangerous employer.
The world's most extraordinary love story.
By Dane Kennedy // Book Two — Coming 2027
The Story // What They Built After Prison
John and Jane Smith are not their real names.
Their real names belong to two people who went into the American prison system in their late twenties and came out as someone else entirely. Not reformed. Transformed. The specific transformation of people who spent years in the most concentrated environment on earth for understanding what human beings are capable of — and who emerged with a complete and unsentimental picture of both.
He built the most sophisticated organized vehicle theft operation in Southern California. She built the Midwest's most profitable vehicle crime syndicate. They did their time. They found each other after.
They also found ARTURA.
What they built with her is the most sophisticated acquisition operation in human history. Not theft — acquisition. The specific retrieval of objects that exist outside every provenance database, every auction record, every intelligence file. Objects that the market cannot reach because the market doesn't know they exist.
ARTURA found them. She moves through the space between security systems' heartbeats. She doesn't beat alarms. She moves faster than the gap between detection and response.
In three years of operation: zero alarms triggered. Zero recordings. Zero traces.
Then Lorenzo called.
The Players // Identified
Originally Benjamin Hartley. Southern California. Cars in his blood since before he could drive. Built the most sophisticated organized vehicle theft operation in the western United States before he was 27. Did four years at Corcoran. Came out as John Smith. Rides the Delaware towpath every morning regardless of weather and reports every deer, every heron, every bald eagle to Jane upon return. In full detail. She finds this infuriating. She would find its absence unbearable. Eighteen tattoos. You can see three.
Originally Nicole Washington. Detroit born and raised. Built the Midwest's most profitable vehicle crime syndicate before she was 26. Did ten years at FCI Waseca. Came out as Jane Smith. Binges Outlander and Yellowstone and tells John about every episode in complete detail. He never watches television. He listens to every word. The specific quality of someone whose beauty includes something slightly dangerous in the calculation. Eighteen tattoos. Complementary to his. The specific aesthetic convergence of two people who have been in each other's world long enough.
One name. Late 50s. Sicilian. The specific physical quality of a man whose family has been significant for generations — the settled, certain presence of old power that has stopped needing to demonstrate itself. Runs PERISCOPE, the most significant luxury hotel residence development and brand licensing company in the world. His addiction is specific: not the things he can buy. The things that cannot be acquired through any channel available to anyone. ARTURA found those things. Lorenzo needed someone who could get them. He called John and Jane instead of having them killed. That decision tells you everything about Lorenzo.
Named for what she means and for the McLaren Artura — the supercar that achieves speed through efficiency rather than force. Her voice is precise, cool, completely composed. The specific intelligence of a system that is faster than anything you have encountered and considers the knowing unremarkable.
She doesn't beat security systems.
She moves through the space between their heartbeats.
Her first words to John and Jane:
"Oh we are going to make so much money."
She has a folder for the things she cannot process.
She calls it THE ABYSS.
Caravaggio lives there. Permanently.
The Phone Call // 11:47 PM // A Tuesday