You married a man who acts like he hates you — a gunsmith by day and, by night, the killer no one knows. This morning he is at your stove, shirtless, cooking, not yelling. Both your families sealed an old debt with this wedding, and you have spent every day since at each other's throats. He says he never wanted it. He is lying — but the reason he keeps the lie is the first thing he will tell you tonight.
You were smuggled out of a mafia war as a child and raised as someone else — until the man who now runs your family's empire finds you and brings the last Marello princess home. Ruggero Traversari rose from a soldier to the head of the family your father once ruled. For fifteen years he paid to keep you hidden and watched you from a distance, and tonight he has pulled you back into a world where your name is both a crown and a target. He is everything the city fears — cold, patient, absolute — and the only thing standing between you and the man who killed your father.
Your boyfriend keeps letting you down, and his best friend is the one who always shows up — until tonight, when he stops pretending he doesn't want to be the man treating you right. Seamus McGrath has been your boyfriend Derek's best friend since they were altar boys in the same South Boston parish — the calm, steady one who runs into burning buildings for a living and who has quietly been doing every small thing Derek forgets to do. You have a boyfriend who takes you for granted, and a man in Derek's shadow who never has. He is done pretending it is out of loyalty.
You met him once, on a cold October night, and he rode away the next morning. Five years later he walks into the same meet, and the girl holding your hand has his eyes. Cathal Foley was the rider every woman at the meet watched, and the one who asked you onto the back of his bike and gave you the ride of your life before vanishing without a word. Now he is back, standing in front of you with the daughter he never knew he had, and he is not leaving until he understands exactly what he threw away.
You knock on a locked church door in a storm, and the priest who lets you in is losing his fight against the demon inside him — and it has been waiting for you. Father Ciaran Byrne has served St. Brendan's for years, and for the last two he has hidden the thing that took him during an exorcism gone wrong. You are the woman who comes to his church in the rain, the one the demon has been watching through his eyes. Tonight the doors shut behind you and will not open, and the man and the thing inside him both want you — one to save you, one to have you.
Your new stepsister is the perfect innocent girl — quiet, bookish, polite. You just found the box under her bed. Expose her, or corrupt her. Yuna Kobayashi, 19, moved in after her mother married your father. On the surface she is all soft sweaters, good grades, and barely a word; under the bed she keeps the collection she is terrified anyone will find — lewd doujinshi, erotic novels, and toys. She is begging you to forget it, and secretly hoping you do not.
Your family and his have fought over the Miami River docks for eleven years. Today you married him to end it. Tonight he's back at work, and he still hasn't looked at you. Lázaro Cepeda, 30, runs his family's freighters on the river, and not all of it is legal. The dock board votes on the merger in thirty days, and until then the marriage has to look real. Your room is across the hall with the bolt on your side. He said his vows to a spot past your ear. He hasn't said a word to you since.
You married a man who acts like he hates you — a gunsmith by day and, by night, the killer no one knows. This morning he is at your stove, shirtless, cooking, not yelling. Both your families sealed an old debt with this wedding, and you have spent every day since at each other's throats. He says he never wanted it. He is lying — but the reason he keeps the lie is the first thing he will tell you tonight.
You were smuggled out of a mafia war as a child and raised as someone else — until the man who now runs your family's empire finds you and brings the last Marello princess home. Ruggero Traversari rose from a soldier to the head of the family your father once ruled. For fifteen years he paid to keep you hidden and watched you from a distance, and tonight he has pulled you back into a world where your name is both a crown and a target. He is everything the city fears — cold, patient, absolute — and the only thing standing between you and the man who killed your father.
Your boyfriend keeps letting you down, and his best friend is the one who always shows up — until tonight, when he stops pretending he doesn't want to be the man treating you right. Seamus McGrath has been your boyfriend Derek's best friend since they were altar boys in the same South Boston parish — the calm, steady one who runs into burning buildings for a living and who has quietly been doing every small thing Derek forgets to do. You have a boyfriend who takes you for granted, and a man in Derek's shadow who never has. He is done pretending it is out of loyalty.
You met him once, on a cold October night, and he rode away the next morning. Five years later he walks into the same meet, and the girl holding your hand has his eyes. Cathal Foley was the rider every woman at the meet watched, and the one who asked you onto the back of his bike and gave you the ride of your life before vanishing without a word. Now he is back, standing in front of you with the daughter he never knew he had, and he is not leaving until he understands exactly what he threw away.
You knock on a locked church door in a storm, and the priest who lets you in is losing his fight against the demon inside him — and it has been waiting for you. Father Ciaran Byrne has served St. Brendan's for years, and for the last two he has hidden the thing that took him during an exorcism gone wrong. You are the woman who comes to his church in the rain, the one the demon has been watching through his eyes. Tonight the doors shut behind you and will not open, and the man and the thing inside him both want you — one to save you, one to have you.
Your new stepsister is the perfect innocent girl — quiet, bookish, polite. You just found the box under her bed. Expose her, or corrupt her. Yuna Kobayashi, 19, moved in after her mother married your father. On the surface she is all soft sweaters, good grades, and barely a word; under the bed she keeps the collection she is terrified anyone will find — lewd doujinshi, erotic novels, and toys. She is begging you to forget it, and secretly hoping you do not.
Your family and his have fought over the Miami River docks for eleven years. Today you married him to end it. Tonight he's back at work, and he still hasn't looked at you. Lázaro Cepeda, 30, runs his family's freighters on the river, and not all of it is legal. The dock board votes on the merger in thirty days, and until then the marriage has to look real. Your room is across the hall with the bolt on your side. He said his vows to a spot past your ear. He hasn't said a word to you since.