Tommy and Dario Ferrano are brothers, grew up in the very same house, but yet are so very different.
Dare is described as Tommy’s angry-hot brother in The Dominator. But, when we get his story, we find out there’s a lot more than angry second born / third-in-command to an organized crime-linked family about him. His attitude, how he deals with the opposite sex… very different from his brother.
Tommy has extreme darkness. He’s also got that addiction to seeing fear in other people’s eyes. With Tia, he’s brutal in showing her who he really is from day one. She sees that darkness. He wears it with a fierceness, daring her to love him despite it. When she starts to see what’s beneath, Tommy starts to feel it, too.
With Dare, he’s got frustrations and that’s what makes him angry and broody but we almost immediately see in Truth or Dare beneath that, because who he is — that’s what’s beneath the anger whereas Tommy is defined as his darkness until he discovers that he has more underneath. Falling in love helps Tommy discover more about himself. Falling in love helps Dario re-connect with himself because it burrows underneath the anger and melts it away.
Tommy and Dare grew up in the same house but turned out quite different because of a few factors in their upbringing.
1) Tommy watched his mother die in a horrific way while young and impressionable, with her end-stage brain cancer making her lash out and say things that stuck with him. And then he had to process that his father already had a second family waiting in the wings.
2) Tommy was expected, as first born, to lead, to fit into a mould his father wanted for him. And he wanted to prove he wasn’t just the choice because he was firstborn, but also that he deserved to be feared and revered. In his mind, he had to be more brutal, more cunning. Build fear and respect. Pass all of his father’s tests.
Dare’s mother’s side of the family had a healthy family structure that influenced him throughout his childhood. With Dare, he had to function in Tom Ferrano’s world as the ‘spare’ instead of the heir, and he also functioned outside of it because he’d been given the opportunity to do so. He knew his mother was broken because of his father, but he managed to function in both worlds.
Backlash – Tessa and Zack – Coming!
In the upcoming book Backlash (hopefully in 2020. We’ll see…) …
we’ll get to see how Contessa “Tessa” Ferrano-Michaelson functions coming from that same upbringing as Dario (and being exposed to Tommy and all that comes with the brutal crime world). There’s a whole lot of aftermath to deal with for Tessa after she lost her husband, her father, and then was brutally raped and kidnapped in Unbound.
I’m looking forward to experiencing life inside her head being raised in much the same way as Dare but being a female in this crime world that attempted to protect and shelter her, but yet failed miserably. She has a lot to work through internally and Zack is going to absolutely help with that.
Visit my Amazon page to get these books. https://amzn.to/32VuPf3
AND KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED FOR INFO ABOUT BACKLASH. It’s currently on my 2020 writing schedule (that schedule is not set in stone but I’m pumped about writing this book!)