The Thorned Rose of Vitale

They warned me about men like Lorenzo Vitale.

They said he was a king in a world of shadows, a man with a soul as cold as the steel he carried. They told me to run if I ever saw his storm-grey eyes across a room.

They never told me what to do when I became his obsession.

It happened in a single, blood-soaked moment. I saw something I shouldn't have-a murder, a body, him. I was just a girl who worked in a bookshop, a nobody. I thought he would kill me to silence me forever.

I was wrong.

He didn't kill me. He took me. He locked me in his penthouse fortress, a gilded cage where fear was my constant companion and his dark, possessive presence was my only reality. He called me his "little dove," his "rose," his "mia." He was cruel, he was kind, he was my captor and my only protector.

And the most terrifying part?

I started to fall for the monster.

But in his world, love is a weakness, and my innocence was a target. When his enemies found out about me, they didn't just see a girl. They saw a way to break the unbreakable Lorenzo Vitale.

Now, the man who vowed to protect me is waging a war to get me back. And I have to decide: is my heart safer in the hands of the king who destroyed my world, or with the monsters who want to tear it apart?