❝You're the most beautiful and most exquisite thing that was placed on this earth. No masterpiece could ever compare.❞ Zasha says, brushing his thumb against my cheek. Zasha Sokolov has built his life on one rule: never get attached. In the cold, ruthless world he inhabits, emotional distance is his only armor against the pain of a past that refuses to stay buried. This detachment has been his key to survival and the reason for his meteoric rise to power. But when the position he's fought his whole life to attain comes with a condition- a forced marriage-Zasha's carefully constructed world begins to crack. Adora has always been a beacon of light, masking the shadows that linger in her life. But when her abusive family sells her into marriage to pay off her sister's debt to the Bratva, she quickly realizes her so-called new beginning is nothing more than a fresh kind of hell. Trapped in a union that promises nothing but pain, Adora clings to the hope of escape-until she meets the man she's destined to marry. Zasha never anticipated that his bride would be an arsenophile with a smile as disarming as her fascination with death. Adora's blend of innocence and darkness stirs something in him that he's long suppressed, something that could destroy the fortress he's built around his heart. As their lives become entwined, passion and danger ignite, threatening to consume them both.