The Angel's Den

“You understand there’s no going back after this…right?” I nodded. Azrael’s brows immediately pulled together. “No.” His voice dropped, deep and commanding. “I want to hear you say it, Wilhemina.” My heart hammered as he hovered over me, close enough that his heat surrounded me. His cologne filled my lungs, mixed with the faint scent of mint and whiskey on his breath. “Say you understand.” “I understand,” I whispered. His eyes darkened. We had met like this before. Stolen nights. Locked doors. Hours where I could forget the diamond on my finger and the husband who barely remembered I existed. But tonight felt different. Tonight, Azrael wasn’t offering me an escape. He was asking me to choose. His fingers closed around my chin, forcing my eyes back to his. “Good girl.” Two words. That was all it took to send a shiver through me. ___ For three years, Wilhemina Rucci-Saldini has been the perfect mafia wife—beautiful, obedient, polished, and utterly unwanted. Her marriage to Emilio Saldini was never about love. It was a calculated alliance between two of the Central Region’s most influential crime families. Emilio’s heart, however, has always belonged to someone else: his college sweetheart, Yazmin. Wilhemina accepts his mistress. She accepts his absence. She even accepts the humiliating agreement that Emilio will never consummate their marriage because Yazmin cannot bear the possibility of Wilhemina giving him an heir. What Wilhemina cannot accept is discovering—on their third wedding anniversary—that Emilio has secretly given Yazmin something he never intended to give his legal wife: A real wedding. Publicly humiliated by Emilio, trapped by a father willing to use her comatose mother as leverage, and tired of living as everyone’s beautiful possession, Wilhemina finally does something selfish. She enters The Angel’s Den.