Platinum PegasusPublishing
Editorial introduction based on the existing title material. This is not a manuscript excerpt.
Jonah Mercer turns nineteen expecting an ordinary birthday. An attempt to abduct a young Saudi prince draws him into danger. His response brings him to the attention of people who know more about his family than he does.
A person, an institution and an inherited promise give the story its shape. Jonah wants to understand what has happened to him. The people watching already recognise something in his response. Between those two kinds of knowledge lies the question of what he has inherited.
An ordinary life becomes visible.
Jonah is a hotel employee in South Florida. His father, Jacob Mercer - known as Nightowl - disappeared the day after Jonah’s tenth birthday. The later attack brings that unresolved family history into contact with a larger institutional story.
People connected with the Laurel witness his response and recognise both the skill and the bloodline. What looks like a private emergency also becomes a signal to an organisation with its own memory.
Protection has a history.
Recruits, instructors, alumni, guarantees, protected bloodlines, regional nodes and factions give the Laurel a life beyond a single mission. Training and protection belong to a continuing institution. Knowing that its members share a history does not settle who can be trusted.
Prince Zayd, a Saudi royal Jonah’s age, is protected under an old Laurel guarantee. The Platinum Mariner, an old-money club and hotel, can serve as sanctuary and social cover. A protected person and a protected place offer different ways to consider the same question: what does the institution promise, and who carries the obligation?
What outlives the person who promised?
A guarantee can survive its guarantor. A promise can remain active after the person who made it has disappeared, leaving other people to inherit protection, duty or danger they did not choose.
Jonah’s inheritance is more than a missing father’s reputation. An institution remembers obligations that he is only beginning to encounter. That imbalance makes his position compelling: what others recognise as continuity arrives in his life as a rupture.
Continue with the book.
The series is in development. The title page brings together the story, characters and publication updates.
View the current title record