Obligations And Contracts

Everyone in Palermo knew Alessandro De Luca had a reputation. He was the Boss of the De Luca family, one of the oldest bloodlines in Sicily — a name tied to the port, the courts, and half the construction contracts in Palermo. Wealth, power, discipline—those things were expected. Romance was not. He didn’t chase women, and he never went back to the same one twice. Until me. When we broke up after a brutal argument, he did something no De Luca had done in generations—he stood outside the gates of the Moretti estate, my family home, for an entire day and night. I watched from behind the curtains and never opened the door. The next day, he came inside the estate kitchen himself. Alessandro De Luca, who grew up surrounded by servants, tried to cook my favorite seafood pasta with his own hands. He burned the sauce. I threw it away without tasting it. On the third day, he found the necklace my grandmother had left me—something my uncle had sold years ago—and bought it back, paying far more than it was worth, just to return it to me. At a formal family dinner, in front of elders and allies, he made it clear: No more women. Only me. It took him a year to win me back. That summer, fireworks lit up the Palermo coastline as he announced our engagement. I believed he had chosen me. Until the night of a private gathering at an old harbor estate. A young woman was being pulled forward in the middle of the courtyard, her dress torn at the shoulder, tears running down her face. Alessandro went still. Then he stood up. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t explain. He just walked toward her. And something inside me went cold. I rested my hand over my abdomen. There was something I hadn’t told him yet. He broke his word that night. So I broke mine.

He was forbidden. My brother's best friend. The most dangerous man in the country. And I signed myself over to him. Eve Thorne had one rule: stay away from Dimitri Valentino. It shouldn't have been difficult. He was ruthless, feared, and devastatingly beautiful in the way that only truly dangerous things are. The kind of man who owned nightclubs, commanded armies, and made grown men weep with a single look. The kind of man her brother Mike trusted with his life. The kind of man she had absolutely no business wanting. But one shattered marriage, one bottle of whiskey, and one catastrophically bad decision later, Eve wakes up in Dimitri's bed with a signed contract on the nightstand and six months of her life no longer her own. Her body. His rules. No exceptions. The contract is iron-clad, the penalty clause suffocating — fifty million dollars she doesn't have. And Dimitri Valentino, the Wolf of the Italian underworld, has absolutely no intention of letting her go. He says he'll ruin her for other men. He's not lying. Because beneath the cold control and the thousand-dollar suits is a man who has wanted her for seven sinful years — who has memorized the curve of her smile, the sound of her laugh, and exactly how to take her apart piece by piece until the only word left in her vocabulary is his name. Eve came to him broken, looking to feel wanted. She never expected to feel owned. She never expected to love it. Undressed by the Mafia Lord is a scorching dark romance about forbidden hunger, dangerous obsession, and the catastrophic moment a good girl stops running from the wolf who has always been hunting her. Some contracts change everything. Some men are worth the fine print.