He calls me his storm.He just forgot storms can't be controlled.
I needed to get his attention, so when the hospital asked if they should notify someone, I said,"Yeah, call my husband. Tell him Temporale. His name is Stephano Conti."
Since I knew he wasn’t married, it was sure to get his attention.
I wasn’t dragged into this world.
I wasborninto it.
Bratva blood. My brother's favorite assassin. His sharpest secret.
Stephano Conti is the son of an Italian king, heir to an empire built on betrayal. He should’ve been my target, not my salvation. But one dark secret turned into a mission neither of us could walk away from. Now we're hunting his thought-to-be-dead brother and unraveling the conspiracy that could drown both our families.
He calls meZhena.
I call himMarito.
Wife and husband by name, enemies by nature.
Together, we steal secrets meant to stay buried, trade bullets for vows, and blur the line between devotion and destruction. When we finally find the truth, I’ll have to decide whether to keep the title of wife—or make myself a widow.
Because loving a man like Stephano Conti isn’t a fairytale.
It’s a contract signed in blood.
RUTHLESS KINGis a dark,high-voltage mafia romance about a fake marriage born of lies and obsession, a Bratva assassin who becomes herhusband’sobsession, and a love powerful enough to turn vengeance into the storm of the century.
Day One…
Caracas smells like diesel,ripe mango, and the rot of too many bodies. Most of the people look like they don't belong here. Not me. I belong everywhere they tell me to go.
Grigori’s voice gnaws in my ear through the earpiece. "Report, Malishka."
"You're not gonna like this. Donna Margarita and Don Silvestre Valverde have been a couple for decades," I murmur, keeping my eyes on the villa below through the rifle scope. Not too long ago, I watched Donna Margarita and an old friend of mine, Raffael DeSantis, board a plane at a private landing strip not far from the villa.
What was he doing there?
I tried to call him, but the call went to voicemail, and Raf didn't even reach for his phone, which in our line of business can be deadly. Interesting.
"Why would that bother me?" My brother drawls.
"Because he's the father of her three daughters," I fill him in, watching the older Valverde getting it on with the two whores he brought with him a couple of days ago. I shake my head. It doesn't look like he's too upset about Donna Margarita's departure.
"Blyad—Fuck." Grigori curses. Yeah, that.
I can almost see him pinch the bridge of his nose in Moscow or Miami or New York or wherever he is pretending not to be.
"She isn’t the problem." I shift slightly to get out of the way of a crawling scorpion coming too close to comfort. "The problem is her children."
"Agreed," Grigori hisses. "She had three heirs after her husband died, and nobody asked questions?"
"Officially two," I correct him, "she’s always insisted Isabella is the daughter of her late husband." A daughter she recently married to the new Don of La Famiglia, Edoardo Zanello. If it turns out Isabella doesn’t have the bloodline he married her for… well, shit rolls downhill.
"Don't forget who she is; she’s Donna Margarita," I push the reluctant respect I feel for her to the side. "People like to live."
Donna Margarita is also known as theMedici Black Widowof La Famiglia; whoever doesn’t fit into her plans… disappears or changes their mind pretty quickly.
I move the rifle and the scope with it; I'm not in the mood to watch a threesome. Below the porn show is the office of the new Don of the Valverde empire; the window is open, giving me a view of Silvestre's son. Aurelio. His fingers are flying over the keyboard while he's speaking in rapid Spanish. Probably on speaker phone. I have him right in my crosshairs. Looks like the Venezuelans aren't taking security very seriously. Not that I'm a threat. Not today. Nobody told me to kill him.
