His Favorite Hostage

"The man your father should have taught you to fear."

Alessia Moretti understood the brutal laws of the Camorra: in a world ruled by monsters, weakness is a death sentence. But when a sudden blackout plunges an elite charity gala into gunfire, she isn't rescued, she’s hunted. Dragged into the dark by calloused, bloodstained hands, she finds herself captive to southern Italy’s most calculating predator: Luca De Santis. Luca is cold, lethal, and bound by a twenty-year blood debt carved directly into his ribs. He didn't take the rival princess to demand money; he took her to tear her father’s empire down to the foundations. Alessia was supposed to be collateral. A pawn on a chessboard. A temporary captive meant to draw the devil out of hiding. Except Alessia doesn't behave like a hostage. She doesn't weep. She doesn't bend. She shatters crystal glasses against his head, matches his razor-sharp arrogance with venom of her own, and looks into the eyes of a mafia king without blinking. Trapped together in a fortress perched eighty feet above a churning sea, forced proximity turns mutual hatred into an all-consuming, dangerous obsession. When her father abandons her and declares her dead to the world, the rules of war change. Luca no longer wants leverage. He wants her. He swore to wipe her family’s name from the earth. Now, as enemies close in on all sides, the king of the south is ready to burn the entire world to ash just to keep her breathing. She was stolen to be his pawn. Instead, she became the only person alive capable of bringing him to his knees.