Shadows of Desire

Prologue

It was lashing down in sheets, the bleak bitterness of that cold dark water something sent from outside with the naked sky into our cloudy gaze of quiet library walls. As Zevie looked up from another romance novel, heart aching for a love only ever found between pages and seated at a corner table; Ever so slowly her fingers traced the book cover, and memory, each line a tease of lust, making a direction for passion that faded without satisfaction. In her world, she was semitransparent the curvy girl in career mode to become a doctor but who would eventually only ever be defined by the weight of her body compared to her peer group ideal. But her friends were everything she was not; thin and toned, turning heads on the street without breaking a sweat. But not Zevie. Her comfort lay in her books, in the realms of fiction where no matter what, and regardless of size or fault, women were more loved than rejected. Where the heroes did not see her with indifference, but yearning.

Tonight, however, was different. The world outside the tiny bubble of solitude that was her life tonight felt ... strange. There was something lurking behind her, an eye burrowing into the nape of her neck. She felt it, the palpable presence of another being staring right at her

Eli Moretti, the mafia king, was a man of shadows-unseen, unheard, until he decided to reveal himself. His empire stretched far and wide, but the rumors of his obsession with her were more dangerous than any criminal could ever be. He watched, waited, and followed -always in the background, always too close for comfort. His love was a dark, twisted thing. And much as Zevie tried to pretend he wasn't a part of her story, his presence seeped into the pages of her life like ink on paper. She was about to learn that in the shadows of desire, there were no lines between love and obsession