LOGINEleanor's heart pounded as Armando backed her into a corner, his eyes dark and unrelenting. "Why do you keep resisting me, Eleanor?" he asked, his voice a low threat. She tried to pull away, but his grip on her wrist tightened. "I won't be your possession, Armando." A slow, dangerous smirk curled on his lips. "We'll see about that." His hand snaked around her waist, pulling her against him, the warmth of his body making it hard to think straight. Before she could protest, his mouth claimed hers, fierce and demanding. She wanted to fight, but the intensity of his kiss shattered her defenses. Her hands, instead of pushing him away, gripped his shoulders, drawing him closer. When he finally pulled back, they were both breathless. "You can lie to yourself all you want," Armando whispered against her ear, his breath sending shivers down her spine, "but you can't deny what's between us." Eleanor's heart raced with conflicting emotions, knowing he was right-and hating herself for how much she wanted him. * * * * * * Eleanor's life spirals out of control when she is sold to Armando, a merciless Mafia boss. Their fiery confrontations spark a powerful and dangerous connection neither can deny. As betrayal and threats close in from every direction, Eleanor must decide if she can trust the man who holds her captive or if their growing bond will destroy them both. In a world of ruthless power struggles, love becomes the ultimate risk.
View MoreELEANOR ~•~ They found Mr. Paulo three weeks later, in a port town two countries over, sitting on a pile of money he thought made him untouchable. I asked to be there when they took him. Armando didn’t want me to come, and we had our first real fight about it, the kind two people have when they’ve stopped being owner and property and started standing on level ground. I won it the same way I’d won every argument with him since the auction. I didn’t beg. I just didn’t back down. So I was standing in the room when they brought Mr. Paulo in. He looked smaller than I remembered. That was the first thing. In my memory he filled whole rooms, the fat greedy king of that auction floor, the man who decided whether my sister lived by how high the bidding climbed. Now he was just a sweating man in a chair with two of Armando’s people behind him, his eyes darting around the room for the most powerful person to bargain with, the way men like him always do. His gaze passed over me twice b
ARMANDO~•~Eleanor didn’t come back to me for four days.She stayed at the doctor’s place those first nights, sleeping in a chair by the kid’s bed, and when Matilda was stable enough that the staff finally sent her home to rest, she came back to the mansion, went straight up to her room, and shut the door. She wasn’t avoiding me, exactly. She’d nod at me in a hallway. She just had nothing she was ready to say, and I’d learned by now not to chase her for it.So I waited. Me. Waiting. Matteo would’ve found that funny.I spent those four days doing the things a man does after a war. Counting what was left. Burying what wasn’t. Sitting alone in the study with the chair I still hadn’t moved.On the fourth morning Dante came down with his bag packed.He set it by the door the same way he’d brought it in. One bag, no ceremony. He found me at the window, where I did most of my standing around these days.“Rafael wants me back,” he said. “And the job’s done. Salvatore’s in the ground, the kid
ELEANOR~•~The next few hours came to me in pieces.I remember Armando carrying Matilda out across the courtyard himself, not handing her to one of his men, carrying her against his chest with her head tucked under his chin and his coat wrapped around her, stepping over bodies like they were furniture. I remember the car. I remember Dante driving fast enough that the world smeared past the windows, and nobody telling him to slow down. I remember holding my sister’s hand in the back seat and counting her breaths out loud, because it felt like if I counted them they couldn’t stop.I don’t remember the drive ending. One second we were moving and the next there were doors and lights and people in scrubs, and a gray-haired man with tired eyes was already waiting on the steps like he’d been standing there an hour.“Don Armando,” he said, and then his eyes went to the bundle in Armando’s arms and everything else dropped off his face. “This is the child. The one from before.”“This is her.”
ARMANDO~•~“Choose,” Salvatore said.I’d walked into a lot of rooms in my life knowing the math was bad. This was the worst of them. Salvatore with a gun dead center on Eleanor’s chest. Two of his men against the far wall with theirs leveled on me. The sick kid slumped on the cot behind her sister. And me alone in the doorway with one weapon and a count that didn’t add up no matter how I ran it.So I didn’t run it. I’d learned that much from Dante in three days. You don’t win the room you’re standing in. You win the room the other man thinks he’s standing in.“You’re quiet, Armando.” Salvatore was enjoying himself. The gun didn’t drift off Eleanor an inch. “That’s not like you. The Armando I hear about would’ve done something loud and stupid by now. But look at you. Standing in a doorway doing arithmetic. You know why?” He smiled. “Because of her. One girl off an auction block and she’s turned you into a man who hesitates. You should thank me. A weakness you don’t know about is the o
ARMANDOI knelt there beside Matteo, my knees pressing into the cold floor of the study. The faint smell of garlic hung in the air, mixing with the scent of death that I knew too well.My hands shook as I reached out again, pressing my fingers to his neck. No pulse. I refused to believe it at first
ELEANORThe drip from the pipe was the only thing that moved down here like a clock that only counted misery. I sat, curled against the wall with Luca’s blanket pulled tight around my shoulders, but it didn’t stop the cold from crawling into my bones. I whispered into the dark, “I’m sorry, Matteo.
Armando’s plan was already in motion. He leaned back in his sofa—a whiskey glass in hand—as he let his eyes drift across the sprawling night view of New York cityAfter a while, he picked up his phone, glanced at his watch, then dialed Matteo.“Matteo,” he said, his tone casual but clipped. “She’s her
ARMANDO I strode into the house with my men behind me, each step deliberate, every move sending a message of who owned this place—and that wasn’t just a figure of speech. The others stayed outside, taking their positions at every entry point, covering each corner of the house the way they were train
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