Cruel Paradise - A Mafia Romance
I thought my life was over when my sister died, leaving me to raise her two babies in a world that wanted to swallow us whole. Then I made the mistake of a lifetime: I left a bold, humiliating voicemail for the one man I should have feared most.
Anton Oryolov.
The ruthless king of the Oryolov Bratva. A billionaire monster who rules the city with ice in his veins and blood on his hands.
I expected him to fire me. I expected him to destroy me. Instead, he gave me a choice that felt like a death sentence: sign a contract and become his.
The rules were simple. I belong to him. I live in his shadows. In exchange, he protects the children. But as the doors of his mansion locked behind me, I realized the "forced proximity" wasn't just a business arrangement. It was a cage.
He thinks he can use me as a pawn in his dark mafia games. He thinks the children are just leverage to keep me in line. But he's starting to look at me with a hunger that isn't in the contract, and I'm seeing a man beneath the monster that I never expected to find.
In the Cruel Paradise of the Bratva, loyalty is a lie and love is a weakness. Our deal is signed in ink, but it's going to end in blood.
He owns my signature. He owns my safety. Now, he wants my soul.
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Chapter 1
EMMA
"Do I have your full attention, Ms. Carson?"
I gulp and refocus on my boss. Ruslan Oryolov is glowering-not because I've done anything wrong, but just because that's how he always looks at me.
Actually, that's how he always looks at everyone. I'm pretty sure he's that unfortunate case you always hear moms telling their kids about: he made a sour face once upon a time and it just got stuck like that.
To be fair, this time, he has good reason. He's actually caught me in the middle of a somewhat shockingly violent fantasy about stapling his beautiful lips together with the stapler on his desk and then yeeting him out of his gorgeous thirtieth-story office window.
He'd deserve it. And he only has himself to blame.
Because I am all-caps EXHAUSTED from tending to his every whim today.
I arrived at the office at the buttcrack of dawn this morning. I haven't had more than ten consecutive seconds to myself all day long. And only now, with the clock nearing 9:00 P.M., am I getting anywhere close to the end of this workday from hell.
Without an IV drip of quad espressos, I would be dust in the wind.
But even with my caffeine addiction, I feel frazzled inside and out. In my head, I'm cursing my past self for being dumb enough to buy these heels half a size too small just because they were on sale. The arches of my feet are ready to commit war crimes in order to be freed.
Ruslan, on the other hand, looks as polished as ever. It's actually offensive how good he looks, despite working like a machine for every bit as long as I have today. His suit is impeccable, as is his dark five o'clock shadow, and the intensity in his scorching amber eyes hasn't dimmed one solitary notch.
"Ms. Carson. I asked you a question."
"Uh, yes," I stammer. "Yes, you have my attention." I glance down at my notepad. "Litigation release needs to go to Mark Vanderberg in Legal first thing in the morning. New chairs have been requested for the boardroom on Floor Seventeen and I will check on delivery dates. I'm moving your 2:00 P.M. to your 11:30, moving your 11:30 to your 7:15, moving your 7:15 to next Thursday, and I'm telling next Thursday's meeting to-and I quote-'eat shit and die.' Did I miss anything?"
Ruslan arches one unfairly gorgeous brow. Seriously-if I could transplant those bad boys onto my own face, I really might. They're dark and expressive and communicate half of his threats without a single word. "I detect a tone."
I keep my own face perfectly neutral. "No, sir. No tone. You specifically requested 'no snark' after the lunch salad debacle last month. I wouldn't forget."
"Hm."
Like his eyebrow, one solitary, not-even-a-word syllable from the infamous Mr. Oryolov, CEO of Bane Corporation, is enough to make grown men dissolve into tears.
I've seen it with my own two eyes. Literally. When I first started here, one of the microchip suppliers that Bane uses for our flagship home security product came in for a meeting and tried to negotiate higher prices. At the end of the idiot's hardball pitch, Ruslan simply lofted an eyebrow and said, "Hm." The man started shaking so badly they had to take him out of the conference room in a wheely chair like it was an ambulance gurney.
He's not the only one. Lord knows Ruslan has brought me to the verge of tears and beyond plenty of times in the eighteen months I've been working for him.
Everyone warned me before I took the job that it wouldn't be easy. His last three personal assistants lasted six, four, and zero-point-five months, respectively, before running screaming for the hills. There's a rumor that one of them is still checked into in-patient therapy somewhere up in Vermont.
Suffice it to say, everyone was right. Life under Ruslan Oryolov's scrutiny is not easy. It starts early and ends late. It's harsh. Fast-paced. He doesn't say "please" and he doesn't know the meaning of "thank you."
But I've stuck around for one reason and one reason only: I have to.
That's not quite the whole truth, actually. I stuck around for three reasons. And their names are Josh, Caroline, and Reagan.
I glance down and look at the lock screen of my phone where it rests in my lap. Three smiling faces stare back at me. Five-year-old Reagan just lost her front tooth and the little goober has her tongue sticking out through the gap. Caroline is only six, but she's already practicing her "smizing" and chintucked selfie poses. She's going to break so many boys' hearts as soon as I let her get an Instagram account. Josh, at eight, is the oldest-but you'd think by looking at him that he's a decade older than that, even. It's something in his eyes. A hauntedness. A chill. A stony sense of responsibility that doesn't belong on a boy who's too young to grow armpit hair.
Losing your mom will do that to you.
I would know-sort of-because losing my sister has certainly done it to me.
I do the math in my head quickly. It's March 9th right now and Sienna died in September three years ago. So that's three years, six months, and four days since I last hugged her or heard her laugh.
Three years, six months, and four days since I went from Auntie to Momma in the blink of an eye.
Three years, six months, and four days since my life changed forever.
Ruslan stands and shoots his cuffs. It's effortless, just like everything else he does. You'd be forgiven for thinking he's a model for GQ. He cracks his knuckles, then his neck, watching me the whole time.
I sit in my chair and focus on my breathing.
Eighteen months is long enough that I thought my infatuation would have worn off by now. I'd have thought wrong, though. If anything, he's even more beautiful than he was the day I first walked in.
I still remember how that went. I rounded the corner and stopped, dumbstruck and drooling like a lunatic. This man ran the biggest home security enterprise in the world? Were we sure he wasn't a Hollywood body double?
For his part, Ruslan took one look in my direction before asking, "Are you going to make my life easier or harder, Ms. Carson? If it's the latter, don't even bother setting your stuff down; just turn back while you still can."
That pretty much set the tone for our working relationship.
"I'm leaving," Ruslan announces back in the present moment. "Make sure the folders are set out for the department head meeting in the morning." He rounds the desk and strides toward me. My heart quickens when he gets close enough for me to smell his cologne. Today's is woodsy. Smoky. Crisp.
"Yes, sir," I croak quietly.
"Oh," he adds, "I also need my tuxedo brought to the penthouse on 48th. Tonight."
"Tonight?" I balk. "But I have to-"
He's already gone. Swishing out the door without bothering to look back. The only thing left behind is the trailing tendrils of his cologne.
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8.6
I was the untouchable Mafia Queen, but my reign ended in the blood-soaked depths of a damp dungeon.
My half-sister, Kelsey, drove a rusted, sharpened spoon into my chest, screaming about the unfairness of fate.
In my past life, my father sold me to the ruthless Don Dante Blackwell as collateral to pay off his debts.
To survive, I took a black-market fertility drug, birthed his heir, and clawed my way to the throne through sheer ruthlessness.
But in the mafia world, a pregnant woman isn't a queen; she's a walking target.
I survived countless bombings and poisonings, only to be betrayed and slaughtered by my own family.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand. I had sacrificed everything to secure our survival in the empire. Why did my blood and tears only earn me a rusted spoon to the heart?
Opening my eyes again, I am seventeen, sitting in my father's drawing room.
Two black velvet boxes sit on the mahogany table.
Kelsey greedily snatches the box containing the fertility drug, her eyes gleaming with feverish triumph.
"I'll take this one, Papa."
She thinks she is stealing my golden ticket to the crown, completely unaware that she just chose a death sentence.
I lower my gaze, letting my eyelashes mask the cold, lethal amusement pooling in my eyes as I take the remaining box.
Inside is the detailed psychological profile of the Don's dead fiancée.
This time, I won't be a breeding mare fighting off assassins. I will dissect the devil himself.
7.6
When the Pollard family kicked Alyssa out into the freezing rain, Walter threw a ten-thousand-dollar check into a dirty puddle.
"Take it and get out. Don't ever come back," he sneered.
Her adoptive mother and stepsister stood on the mansion's porch, mocking her as a worthless country girl who tarnished their wealthy name. They laughed, claiming she wouldn't even be able to afford community college and would be begging on the streets in a week.
They looked at her cheap clothes and worn backpack with absolute disgust.
They were completely unaware that for the past five years, Alyssa was the secret mastermind who had built their failing gallery into a multi-million-dollar investment empire.
Every key investment, every fortune they made, came from the anonymous notes she had slipped into their unread books. They genuinely believed they were business geniuses, while treating the true architect of their wealth like a stray dog.
Looking at their smug, arrogant faces, Alyssa didn't feel a shred of sadness, only a cold, sharp irony.
They actually believed they had raised her.
She stepped close, whispered the master code to Walter's most secret offshore account, and watched the blood completely drain from his face.
"I raised you," she said, turning her back on the mansion without hesitation.
Walking into the storm, she pulled out a heavily encrypted phone and gave a single, cold order.
"Initiate a full hostile takeover of the Pollard Group."
It was time to end this little game and step into her true life—as the world's most elusive medical genius, and the long-lost billionaire heiress of the Summers dynasty.
8.5
"You don't get to hurt me and then make me responsible for how guilty you feel about it."
"Friends don't stand next to you, learn everything about you, and then use it to get close to the one person they know matters."
Aria thought she knew two things for certain: she was going to graduate with her best friend, Iris, by her side, and she was in love with her boyfriend, Liam.
One kiss changed everything. But as the secrets of their "before" come to light, Aria realizes the betrayal didn't start at a party or in a moment of weakness. It started weeks ago, in the conversations she wasn't part of and the moments she wasn't invited to.
Now, Aria has to decide if she can find herself again in the wreckage of the people she trusted most-or if some bridges are meant to be burned
7.6
Top DEA agent Kaitlynn Bruce woke up to a heavy, chemical lethargy, only to realize she was trapped in the body of a weak, abused war widow.
Before she could even process her new reality, she heard her sister-in-law counting cash, selling her unconscious body to a local thug for a measly two hundred dollars.
The thug dragged her new seven-year-old son, Cason, into the bedroom.
"Mommy!"
When the boy reached out, the man brutally kicked his small body into a wooden doorframe, leaving him gasping and bleeding on the floor.
Memories flooded Kaitlynn's mind. Her predecessor was a pathetic doormat whose husband's military pension had been bled dry by these greedy in-laws, leaving her children to starve and suffer endless abuse.
But as Kaitlynn looked at the bleeding boy's dark, unnervingly alert eyes, a chilling piece of DEA intelligence clicked in her mind.
Cason Richmond.
The name, the town, the abusive aunt—it all matched the classified files of the "Director of the Hive," the most ruthless and feared cartel puppet master in the criminal underworld.
How could this battered, starving child be destined to become the ultimate monster she used to hunt?
The original widow's tragic death was supposed to be the catalyst that pushed this boy into total darkness.
But Kaitlynn Bruce was not a victim.
Adrenaline burning through the drugs, she cracked the thug's neck with a brass lamp and choked the sister-in-law against the wall.
Looking down at the boy who was supposed to become a global nightmare, she made a vow. She was going to rewrite his script, even if she had to burn the whole world down to do it.
9.0
"You and your baby are mine whether you want it or not."
Renata Neroni's life was shattered the moment she discovered her boyfriend and stepsister's betrayal. In a rare lapse of judgment fueled by grief and alcohol, she spent a single, anonymous night with a stranger, unaware that she had just surrendered herself to Domenico Veronesi, the most formidable figure in the global underworld.
That night left Renata with more than just a memory; she was pregnant with the heir to a mafia empire.
As her father, desperate to free himself from the debts, prepares to marry her off to a man nearly his own age, Renata finds herself trapped. Her only escape arrives in the form of Domenico himself. Asserting his claim, he interrupts the arrangement and brings Renata to his secluded estate.
Within the fortified walls of the Veronesi estate, the man known for his cold, merciless exterior reveals a singular obsession: the protection of Renata and their unborn child.
However, Domenico's readiness to provide is met with a wall of ice.
Despite his efforts to provide for her, Renata's resentment initially hardens into a wall of silence.
To her, Domenico is simply another powerful man attempting to control her fate. However, as she is forced to navigate the inner workings of his life within the mafia world, she begins to see the man behind the fearsome reputation.
Renata discovers the deeper layers of Domenico, a loyalty and a hidden vulnerability regarding their child, and the fear that once defined her begins to dissolve.
7.3
A mafia billionaire single dad romance.
I just discovered the don's darkest secret. Wait 'til he finds out mine...
The Bratva don and I made a deal:
Spare my father. Take me instead.
But Dmitry Tsezar wasn't satisfied with my body.
He wanted everything else, too.
My obedience. My submission.
My heart. My soul.
And when that still wasn't enough, he came to take my life.
But then I found something.
Something twisted. Something wrong.
Something hidden in a locked room of his mansion, in a wing he warned me never, ever to wander near.
When I opened the door and discovered Dmitry's secret...
Everything changed forever.