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 3
EMMA
"Auntie Em! Auntie Em, wake up."
I come to with a start. The sun is slanting in through the blinds and I have absolutely no freaking idea what planet I'm on. I feel a sharp line of pain on my cheek. It takes me a long moment to realize that it's because I have a shoelace plastered to my skin. I peel it off with a wince and look up to see Josh standing over me.
"Auntie Em, it's 7:45. We're late for school."
"Shit!"
I leap to my feet-and promptly fall right back on my ass, because my legs are completely numb from sleeping in such a weird fetal position, curled up at the foot of Josh's desk like a dead cockroach.
The next fifteen minutes are a blur. I get the girls up and dressed in the least coordinated outfits in the history of shitty parenting. I hurl random food into their lunchboxes with no regard for nutritional value. And then we're all sprinting out the door.
Ben, needless to say, doesn't so much as lift a finger to help.
I get the evil eye from the receptionist at the kids' school when I drop them off well into first period, but she can shove her judgment up her ass. I just pop a kiss on each of their foreheads and then turn to haul ass to Bane.
I get another evil eye from the lobby receptionist there, too, but I don't quite realize why until I'm in the elevator up to the thirtieth floor and I catch sight of my reflection in the polished bronze.
I look like an absolute shitshow. My hair is a rat's nest on my head and my blouse is on backwards. The fashionable one-shoulder cutout is framing my frayed bra strap instead of a tasteful slice of bare arm.
Wet street dogs are more put-together than I am.
It's way too late to go back now, though. I can already imagine Ruslan's eyebrow. It's probably halfway up his scalp by now. His voice is going to be absolutely frigid when he hears me come stumbling in. Something like:
"You have got to be fucking kidding me."
Wait. That wasn't my imagination. That was actually his voice.
I open my eyes and turn around to realize that the elevator doors have opened-and who should be standing there but my beloved, benevolent boss?
Sure enough, his eyebrow is locked and loaded and that cruelly sharp jaw of his clenched so tight that I wonder idly if he has a good dentist on speed dial.
I open my mouth to defend myself, but what is there even to say? "I'm sorry," I blurt. "I fell asleep after-It was a long night and-I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
He doesn't so much as blink. "I expect you to dress appropriately for your job, Ms. Carson," he growls. "Not do the walk of shame through my building."
I frown. "The walk of-? Hold on. No, that's not what this is. I didn't-"
"You're wearing yesterday's skirt and flaunting your undergarments like you think you can seduce your way out of being-" He checks his watch. "-two and a half hours late. I'm not sure if you think I'm stupid or easy. I'm also not sure which of those two would offend me more."
One word snags my attention. "Seduce?" I parrot stupidly.
Out of nowhere, thoughts of what it would look like to seduce Ruslan Oryolov come prancing through my head.
Wrapping his tie around my fist and bringing that smirking snarl down to my lips for a taste.
Lying back on his desk, pencil skirt hiked above my hips, while he shoves my panties to the side and devours me like his last meal.
On my knees on his office carpet as he stands over me and-
"Ms. Carson, I'm not interested in your explanations. Go do your job. Before I find someone else to do it for you."
With that, he brushes past me and gets on the elevator. I turn and look dumbly at him as the doors close on his face. The last thing I see is the arrogant slant of his mouth.
Then that, too, disappears.
My cheeks are burning red for the rest of the day. Luckily, I have an extra cardigan at my desk, so I'm able to cover up the worst of my wardrobe malfunction.
But my phone keeps pinging all day long with messages from Ruslan. Do this. Send that. Fax this. Email that. He's as unbearable as ever. Everything from the expiration date on his coffee creamer to the status of the conference room chairs he's so anal about merits yet another scathing comment from him. And after yesterday's nightmare, I'm running on fumes.
My only saving grace is that he has a gala tonight, so he's scheduled to leave the office at 5:00 P.M. sharp. I'm counting down the last ten seconds until the clock strikes five like I'm a Times Square partier on New Year's Eve.
"Seven... Six... Five... Four... Three... Two... One..."
Ping. Another text. I groan and look down to see the devil's name pop up on my phone.
RUSLAN: My office. Now.
Goddammit. I was so close.
Sighing, I get up and slink inside.
"Shut the door," he orders. It's dark in here. The curtains are sealed tight and the temperature is Arctic. He's a mass of shadows behind his desk, huge and fragrant. The only thing I can see is the sharp light of his amber eyes.
"Sit." A shadowy hand points at the chair across from his desk.
I perch at the edge of the seat in question. My nerves are buzzing and frayed. I'm so, so tired. But I can't show him that. Matter of fact, I refuse to show him that.
I won't give the smug bastard the satisfaction of thinking he's outlasted me.
"I asked you yesterday if I had your full attention," he begins. "I'm not so sure I do. So let me say this: if your priorities lie anywhere other than this company, then I will find a new assistant. I'm not a nice man, Ms. Carson. So believe me when I tell you that this is not the kind of place where you get three strikes before something bad happens. You mess up once-you're gone. Am I making myself clear?" I swallow. "Yes, sir."
He nods. "Good. Be here on time tomorrow. Dress like you intend to keep your job. Now, if you'll excuse me... there's the door."
He looks down at his phone and poof, it's like I don't exist anymore.
But I. Am. Pissed.
He doesn't know what I'm going through. He doesn't know Ben is snoring and farting in my living room, or that three little kids are waiting on me to pick them up from after-school care. He doesn't know that I buried my sister or that I'm barely keeping my head above water. He doesn't know anything.
"No." I blurt it before I can think better of it. "No. No. I'm not some little worm under your shoe, Mr. Oryolov. I'm a-I mean, fuck you, I'm a person! I have a life and hobbies and people who depend on me. I'm real! So I'd appreciate it very much if you'd pull your smug head out of your smug asshole and treat me with some damn respect for once."
Ruslan blinks.
Blinks.
Blinks.
"Is there something else, Ms. Carson?"
That's when I realize that my whole little tirade took place entirely in my head. It wasn't real. All imagined. Just a pleasant little detour to a fantasy land where I give him my two cents and then some.
I swallow past the nasty taste in my throat and stand. "No, sir," I say quietly. "Nothing at all."
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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.