Resplendent

Serafina Silvano has always believed nothing worth having comes easy. As a respected bookseller and aspiring romance novelist, she is careful with her choices and even more careful with her heart. When the chance for a coveted publishing contract lands in her hands, it feels like the break she has worked toward for years. That is, until the publisher makes it clear the offer comes with conditions that could ruin her reputation before she even has one.

Crime boss Francesco Romano commands an empire balanced on silence and answers to no one. But he does need a woman at his side, one visible enough to steady rumors that he had an affair with a rival's wife and respectable enough to quiet speculation. He offers Serafina the role: public appearances on his arm, elegant dinners under watchful eyes, and a carefully managed illusion in exchange for financial support.

Serafina calls it an opportunity too valuable to refuse, and perhaps her only way forward. Francesco calls it a temporary expedient, a calculated move to shift suspicion away from where it belongs. It's mutually beneficial, nothing more.

Then his hand at her back becomes his hand in her hair. Polite smiles give way to lingering looks that last far past propriety. Formal dinners blur into locked doors and breathless whispers. What begins as performance turns possessive. She stops pretending she can keep her heart out of it. He stops pretending he can walk away.

By the time they realize they are no longer controlling the arrangement but caught inside it, leaving would be the safer choice.

They don't choose safety.

And neither does the shadow already drawing closer.