khan_isha_
Everyone in New York has heard two rules about Dante Moretti:
Never lie to him.
Never run from him.
Dante Moretti is 32. A billionaire CEO by day, the ruthless King of the Moretti empire by night. 6'3, scarred knuckles, ice-cold eyes, short-tempered, brutally possessive. He built his empire on blood and betrayal, and he has zero tolerance for liars. He doesn't do love. He doesn't do mercy.
Elara Rossi is 26. A broke single mother working double shifts at a diner to keep a roof over her 5-year-old daughter, Mia's head. Innocent to the world Dante lives in. Soft-spoken, too trusting for her own good, with no idea that her late husband left her with more than debt - he left her owing $2.7 million to the most dangerous man in the city.
When Dante comes to collect, he expects cash. What he finds instead is a tiny apartment, a woman in a worn-out uniform who looks him in the eye and doesn't flinch, and a little girl with pigtails who offers him her crayon and calls him "Mister Grumpy."
He should take the apartment. He should take her life. Instead, he makes a different deal:
She will move into his penthouse. She will play the role of his obedient pet. She will never lie to him.
In return, her debt is wiped and her daughter is safe.
What starts as a contract turns into an obsession. He wants to ruin her innocence. She wants to survive him. But Dante Moretti has never wanted anything as much as he wants to own the one woman who isn't afraid to say no to him - and the little girl who starts calling his mansion home.
He won't fall easily. But when he does, he falls violently, obsessively, irreversibly. And anyone who tries to touch what's his will learn why the whole city fears his name.
He was a king who trusted no one. She was a mother who had nothing left to lose. Their love was never supposed to happen - and now he would burn the world to keep it and her daughter.