SOFIA

My father spent twenty-seven years teaching New York that I was beautiful, obedient, and useless.

He never noticed the women who whispered to me in powder rooms. The drivers who remembered license plates. The clerks who copied records powerful men left unguarded. I know where every Moretti secret is buried, and I know which secrets can start a war.

Then fourteen people are slaughtered at a family wedding, and the evidence points to my brother.

Alessio De Santis comes to collect a life in payment. My father gives him mine instead.

Thirty days of marriage will buy me time to find the killer. Living inside Alessio's guarded house will put me close enough to search his empire—and close enough for him to discover how much I have hidden.

His hands are controlled. His voice is quiet. His attention feels like a blade pressed flat against my skin.

If I cannot expose the truth before the treaty expires, my husband will execute my brother and call it justice.

ALESSIO

My brother died on Moretti ground.

I should have answered with bodies. Instead, I accepted Sofia Moretti at the altar and shook hands with the man I intend to ruin.

The marriage gives me access to New York's ports, her family's political machine, and every weakness hidden behind their old name. Once I have what I need, Marco Moretti dies.

Sofia turns every clean term of the arrangement into a liability.

She listens while captains lie. She finds theft in numbers my advisers approved. She walks through my security as if the house has been waiting for her.

And when someone tries to kill her, restraint stops being useful.

She wears my ring. She sleeps behind my walls. Anyone who reaches for her will lose the hand first.

The closer Sofia gets to the truth, the more dangerous she becomes to my plans—and the harder it becomes to imagine an empire that does not have her standing at its center.

This is the first book in The Black Crown Trilogy. Reading order:

Vows of Venom.

Empire of Venom.

Crown of Venom.

Vows of Venom 1: Dark Mafia Romance

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