𝐛𝐲 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧
Yareli DeLuca is married off the way powerful men bury their mistakes - quietly, cleanly, and at someone else's expense. When her father's empire begins to collapse, she is handed to Christopher Alessandro Barrone, a man feared not because he is loud, but because he never needs to be. Christopher expects what he expects from every contract placed in his hands: order, obedience, and a result worth the damage. What he gets instead is Yareli - unreadable, unbending, and far more dangerous than silence should allow. She was meant to be a solution, a name transferred from one house to another like currency. Instead, she becomes the one thing in his life that refuses to yield to power. Their marriage begins under pressure, not tenderness, and what grows between them is darker than either of them intended: desire sharpened into obsession, protection soured by possession, and a hunger neither knows how to survive cleanly. As cracks spread through Christopher's empire, he discovers the greatest threat to his control is not the enemies circling his borders, but the woman across from him each night - quiet, unshaken, and dismantling him with a precision no enemy has ever managed. This is not love born gently. It is love with blood in its mouth.