"You came begging for a shield, sweetheart. You had a dead man's blood on your hands and a terrified child clutching your leg, and you thought you were just asking for sanctuary. You didn't know I've spent four years turning the Russian underworld into a slaughterhouse just to find the girl who smiled at me in a hallway. You want me to wipe out the cartel that hurt her? Done. I'll burn them to ash before the sun comes up. But the price is you. You think this diamond on your finger is a marriage? It's a cage. And I am never, ever opening the door." - Andrei Romanov --- To the Russian underworld, Andrei Romanov is the Devil-a ruthless, untouchable Don who commands the largest criminal syndicate in the country. To Angelina Smirnova, he was just a bleeding boy she bandaged in a school corridor four years ago. She forgot his face. He converted an empire into a search engine to find hers. Angelina is a gentle English teacher who has spent her life pouring her soul into the children at her orphanage. When nine-year-old Nika is brutally assaulted by a cartel heir, Angelina doesn't hesitate-she kills the monster and runs. Desperate, hunted, and out of options, she seeks out the only man powerful enough to keep the child safe. She thought she was asking a crime boss for a favor. She didn't know she was walking straight into the arms of a man whose obsession has no ceiling and no limit. Andrei agrees to protect the little girl, but his price is absolute: a marriage. Angelina thinks she sold her soul to a monster to save a child. She doesn't know that the Devil has been waiting four years to worship her, and he will burn the entire world down to ensure she never leaves his cage. _ Book 2 of the Addicted Series {Can be read as a standalone too}

Anna Rafferty left New York two years ago to find herself. Not because she was running. Not because she was afraid. But because somewhere between the violence, the secrets, and the trauma that changed her life, she'd lost herself. For two years, she built a life on her own terms. She traveled. She healed. She learned to preserve things most people considered beyond repair, restoring rare books and forgotten stories while trying not to think about her own. Because some trauma isn't dealt with. It's buried. Returning to New York was supposed to be simple. Be closer to her family. Purchase the rare bookstore she'd fallen in love with years ago. Continue building the future she'd fought so hard for. The only complication... Julian Mercer. The powerful, devastatingly handsome and infuriating Don of New York, a man she should stay far away from. A man her sister can't stand. A man she hasn't seen since the night she left the city. Unfortunately for her, Julian Mercer has never forgotten a debt or Anna. What starts as a favor quickly becomes stolen moments, lingering glances, and a connection neither of them seem capable of walking away from. The problem? Julian is a man built from secrets and Anna has spent the last two years burying her own. When a string of brutal murders rocks the city-random, violent, and seemingly unconnected-every road somehow leads back to one person. Anna. As detectives begin circling, asking questions she can't answer and digging for secrets she can't share, Anna finds herself caught between the life she's carefully built and a past determined to drag her back. And the closer the danger gets, the harder it becomes to ignore the man she's spent two years trying to forget. Because Julian Mercer has always been dangerous. The difference is that now Anna has something to lose. Not her safety. Not her freedom. But her heart.