The Mafia King's substitute Husband
THE MAFIA KING'S SUBSTITUTE GROOM
Lucian Laurent has spent his entire life being treated like an outsider in the family that adopted him. While Constantine Laurent's biological daughters enjoy wealth, privilege, and affection, Lucian is little more than an unwanted presence in their luxurious home. He has learned to keep his head down, his opinions to himself, and his expectations painfully low.
But everything changes when the most feared mafia king in the city demands a bride from the Laurent family.
Elias Lawrence is ruthless, powerful, and accustomed to getting what he wants. Before his death, his father made him promise to establish a business alliance with the Laurent family through marriage. Elias never wanted love from the arrangement. He only intended to fulfil his promise by marrying Vivienne Laurent, the family's eldest daughter.
Unfortunately, Vivienne has other plans.
Rather than become the wife of a man she fears, she runs away with the man she loves, leaving her family scrambling to save the alliance. Desperate to prevent the deal from collapsing, her younger sister, Evelyn, volunteers to take her place.
Elias refuses.
He has no interest in marrying Evelyn simply because Vivienne abandoned their agreement. If the Laurent family must provide a groom to secure the alliance, he will choose someone else.
Someone nobody expected.
Lucian.
To Elias, blood relation is irrelevant. Constantine accepted Lucian as his son, making him a member of the family and an acceptable substitute for the abandoned bride. The marriage is a business decision, nothing more. Elias has no intention of falling in love with the man he has chosen.
Lucian, meanwhile, is horrified. He knows nothing about the cold, intimidating mafia king who has suddenly claimed him as his future husband.
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Chapter: THE CORNERCHAPTER 5 - THE CORNERLUCIANI asked him on the third day.I had meant to ask on the first, and the second, and each time I had got as far as the threshold of the study and lost my nerve. It isn't easy to walk into a room and ask a man what he saw in a corner. It sounds like the start of a joke, or a threat.But on the third morning Marcus drove me up Halloway Hill, and the gates opened before we'd slowed, and the house sat grey and quiet against a sky the colour of pewter. I climbed the three flights of stairs. The man in the dark suit knocked once and opened the door without waiting.Elias was at the window again. The books were stacked differently, I noticed. Someone had been reading one of them and left it open face down on the sill."You've been thinking," he said, without turning."How can you tell?""You stand differently when you've been thinking. Your weight goes back onto your heels." He turned. "Sit down, Lucian. You're making the carpet nervous."I sat. I didn't speak yet
Last Updated: 2026-10-29
Chapter: TermsCHAPTER 4 - TERMSLUCIANThe contract was forty-three pages long, and I read every one of them.I read the way I had learned to do everything in that house: slowly, without moving my face, and without letting anyone see which lines had hurt. The fire burned lower. A clock somewhere below us struck the half hour, and I didn't look up. Elias sat across from me with a cup of coffee going cold on the desk and a newspaper he had stopped pretending to read, and he did not say a single word the whole time.I think that was the worst part. Being watched while I worked, and knowing he had decided it was worth his morning.On page nineteen I found a clause about my name.The party known as Lucian Laurent shall retain the surname Laurent for all civil and private purposes, unless he elects otherwise in writing.I read it twice. Then I read it a third time, because I didn't trust it.It was the first thing in four pages that had been written for me and not for the arrangement. Someone had thought
Last Updated: 2026-10-27
Chapter: BondCHAPTER 3 - BONDLUCIAN Evelyn was waiting at the foot of the stairs.I don't know when Evelyn had doubled back. My father had sent her to bed, but Evelyn had never been the sort of person a command could actually reach… it just passed through her and came out the other side as a grievance. So there she stood, one hand on the banister, dress still on, the diamonds still on, and the second she saw me come out of the drawing room she stopped pretending to be calm."Him?" she said again, like she was still trying to find a version of the word that made sense. "Him. Of all the people in this house. Of all the people in this city."I kept walking trying to ignore her "Don't you dare walk past me, Lucian–" she shouts the minute she saw meSo I stopped walking…that was my first mistake."Do you know what you've done?" she said tapping her feet on the floor in annoyance – which I'd never seen from her, because Evelyn's whole personality was built on never letting anyone see her sweat. "Do yo
Last Updated: 2026-10-23
Chapter: Lucian and EliasCHAPTER 2 - LUCIAN AND ELIASLUCIAN"Him?" Father exclaimed in shock Elias didn't look at her…he was still looking at me, and that was the strangest part, that a man like that should have any reason to keep his eyes on the furniture."You can't be serious," Evelyn said. She had gone very still, and then very loud, which is what happens to people who have rehearsed their whole lives for a moment and watch it be handed to someone else. "Mr. Lawrence, you can't… he's adopted. He's got no position in this family, he's not –" She gestured at me... "And he's a man.""Does that matter?" Elias asked."It's not usua .""I don't care about usual." He said it flatly, the way you'd correct a fact and Evelyn's mouth opened and then closed, because there was nothing to argue with. You couldn't argue with a man who had simply decided that the rules didn't apply to him.My father was still standing there with both hands half-raised, the smile frozen on his face like a photograph of a smile and
Last Updated: 2026-10-23
Chapter: The substitute GroomCHAPTER 1- THE SUBSTITUTE GROOMLUCIAN"Whatever you do tonight," Constantine Laurent said, without turning from the window, "don't let the mafia king look at you."I had been standing in the doorway of my father's study for two minutes, holding a coffee nobody had asked me to bring, and this was, as far as I could recall, the first instruction I'd been given in a month.I considered it…thinking what might be the consequences of a little mistake to the order I was given ‘Don't let the mafia king look at you.’ As though that were a thing a person could control. As though the direction of Elias Lawrence's eyes were something a quiet, overlooked adopted son could steer like a boat."Should I look at him," I asked, "or just not be looked at?""You should be…” he paused as he ran his gaze over me before continuing “...forgettable…the way you're good at."It wasn't an insult. In this house, being forgettable was a skill, and I'd spent fifteen years perfecting it the way other men perfected
Last Updated: 2026-10-23
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