I'll Love You Slow

Gianna Russo has never been someone who bothered to know herself, she was never someone who bothered with her own happiness or contentment, instead choosing to exist in a place of fear, right in the eye of her personal monster so that her child could have her father in her life - that was what he claimed he wanted, why he claimed to have come back... Never in a million years had she imagined that he would do the same things to his own daughter that he'd done to her, a fact that made her entire world shatter in a matter of minutes on her daughter's birthday - her daughter, the light of her life, her best friend since she was sixteen-year-old, shared the same wounds she did, inside and out.

Francesca Walsh, wife of kingpin Phillip Walsh II, and mafioso herself met Gianna in a way that she considered to be pure fate, the universe pushing them together, because there was no other reason why she and Gianna were in the same place at the same time, why their children had become friends, close enough to practically be family. Francesca has consistently done everything in her power to secure Gianna's safety, happiness, and contentment to no avail - the woman practically repelled it for years, stating that if her daughter was safe, she considered herself to be doing her job, that her own safety was a luxury...

But when Gianna realized that all of the sacrifices that she had done to keep her child, Esme, safe had been in vain, her entire world was yanked out from underneath her in a matter of moments. In the wake of the unspeakable act that she committed in the name of her child's safety, she forms a net around her, a family with one anchoring rock: Francesca Walsh.

Her dearest friend.

Her confidant.

Her... Lover?