Shadows of the Vow (You Fuck With Darkness, You See Shadows)
She entered his world as prey. Now, she's learning to bite back.
After her mother's death, Annabelle Gracia seeks fragile solace in the flower shop-until her father trades her to Antonioni D'Angélo, the ruthless mafia billionaire known as The Shadow King. Nights with him burn with pain, pleasure, and control. His coldness shields a heart hunted by a dangerous fraternity, one that will not forgive tenderness-love is a risk he cannot afford. Yet desire refuses to be silenced. In their world, love is weakness, and weakness could destroy them both.
Antonioni is not just another mafia heir; he is a force who commands the world's shadows. Beyond the empire most will never see: high-stakes deals in European marketplaces, clandestine arms trades, and the quiet power of a man who moves money, influence, and danger across continents.
Once fragile, she rises. No longer a pawn, she becomes his fiercest ally and mafia queen, his quiet hope. But betrayal is never far, and enemies wait in the shadows. When Nora, the daughter of one of their deadliest rivals, enters their world, alliances shatter, and danger multiplies.
In a world ruled by secrets and scars, can love save them... or destroy them?
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Chapter 2
Antonioni's POV
“What's her name?” I had asked, although not like I sincerely wanted to know. I had almost asked subconsciously.
“Annabelle,” Edward had replied.
“Hmm. She got a sexy name,” I admitted.
Edward remained mute, face down.
Being in that house felt hot and boring like hellfire. No power supply throughout our stay.
I don't know how someone could be so broke.
Although he works for some bad boys in the city, as I heard, it could be that they don't pay him half as much as they should.
I prayed Edward didn't make a move to do something silly. Not like I feared their blood, though, but I didn't have enough time to spend there.
Although the inner guards and the outer ones did a great job as well. My boys are well-trained.
Did I mention I had my fellas out, watching the neighborhood as well? I made sure every corner of their compound and streets was charged with protection. I'm never one to be caught unprepared.
“So you already know why I'm here, to get my promised bride. I have just 20 minutes more to do that, man. I hope it'll be worth it.” The last sentence came out in an undertone.
“At least let’s get you both to familiarize yourself today, and you can come back to take her tomorrow, please, young boss,” My potential bride's father had pleaded.
“I got a lot to do with my time, pappy…ain't no idle man like you. I can't be coming back here and forth to lick over a girl when I should be out there running my businesses.”
I had asked impatiently: “Where’s she?”
Edward piteously looked down like a caught chicken about to be slaughtered, and stuttered, “Som— som— somewhere around the house.”
I don't care about how bad he felt. He owed me.
“Then she better be pretty and worth it, 'cause I'd kill you.” I had proudly pointed out, leaning forward on him, to address my last clause.
I have always been one to have everything I should have in three years just in one day.
I waited for a while for Edward to do the needful—call her out and quickly hand her over to me so we could be on our way home, but the atmosphere between us remained rather icy.
“Time is a luxury you no longer possess…I have other engagements today. Fuckin’ call this girl out here already!” I barked, cutting him off from whatever the hell he was saying.
Truly, my gang and I had a major operation to run before the day drew its curtain. It was scheduled for the afternoon slash evening when the chance is high for us to pull through successfully.
Our goods, which were in transit from China, were hijacked by a rival gang—a deadly guy named Lorenzo, the Viper lord.
I couldn't afford to have my time wasted in the countryside at all.
“You gambled with what wasn’t yours. You lost! Now, it’s time to pay your debt, Edward!” I reminded him.
Just then, out of nowhere, came the damsel I had been waiting for all day.
“What debt?” She asked, looking soft and confused, like a wild cat.
I ignored her question and took in the woman standing in front of me, whom I had come all the way from the coastal town to the countryside to pick up as a wife.
Facially, she's not worth it, but she's looking very curvy and womanly. My eyes stayed there for a while.
“Is this her? Not very bad looking.” I had said. It was crazy, but I was suddenly getting hard just looking at those hips.
“What’s going on?” Her tiny but firm voice suspended my erotic thoughts, and her sad countenance, too.
I was confused and almost bursting out in laughter, “She doesn’t know?”
That old fool said he was still going to tell her.
“Tell me what?” That tiny but firm voice had come again, her face almost turning pink
“Belle, sweetheart, I… I had no choice...” The old man had answered her.
Then came the voice that turned me on again, and left off somewhere. There was something that voice was doing to me, honestly. To even think I was just meeting her…
And then came the one like someone who had swallowed a frog. “I…I owe Mr. D’Angélo more than I can ever repay.”
Scrap that. I had no business with their little father-and-daughter moment. I needed to check out my bride and dump her right behind if she didn't look like what I wanted.
I stood up and went around about her in a 360 motion, invading her space until I was satisfied. She looked like she didn't see it coming.
She stood there, mouth agape.
She was truly beautiful, even when she looked obviously like a confused feline, watching me like she honestly wanted to understand what I was doing.
Being satisfied that I liked her a little, I felt it was time to explain to her the situation of things so that we can also quickly be out of that blazing shit hole called a house—no, a hellfire.
“Your father owes me a huge debt he cannot repay, so he is offering you instead.”
She suddenly stumbled back. “No! No! No, No!”
She continued shouting “No”, unconsciously maybe, and pleading with her father.
She's really feminine and reminds me of someone, although someone I dread to remember.
Her pleading was just too sexy to watch.
I could already imagine how she'd be pleading and screaming my name later in the night when I'll be fucking away her timidity.
She's just too sweet, innocent but fierce, sexy, alluring, ladylike, and vulnerable in a very delicate and fragile way.
I was now enjoying this part of the visit. “Hmm... interesting... You are even more fragile than I imagined."
Her eyes crossed mine. I shook a little, in a way that no woman had ever dared to startle me before.
Again, her rigid and angry tone yanked me out of my sexual thoughts.
“I am not fragile!”
She also seemed quite stubborn.
No need to be there, arguing with some fragile chic when I had some serious business to handle. It was high time I left for the coastal town.
“Well, we will see about that.”
She seemed not to understand that it was a futile choice to keep flexing her muscles. I shifted on the chair, losing patience.
Adjusting my gaze between the two culprits and on the watch on my wrist, my eyes flashed on the time that it told, and I just knew I couldn't stay any longer.
Edward and his stubborn daughter aren't enough to waste my time.
“You belong to me now, Annabelle. Guards, take her, let's go!” I commanded, ignoring Edward, since it seemed to me like he was deliberately wasting my time.
The words Annabelle spat made me know she's got quite some nerves. I might be dealing with it for the rest of my life.
“I’m not something to be owned, Mr D’Angélo! I'm not going anywhere with you!”
Quite unusual for a woman to yell at me; they don't have the guts to do that.
For the first time being there, I got pissed. I had to reply to her guts in a way that she'd be pained too. “You don't have a choice.”
Amidst her begging, I was going to tell Edward it was about time when we heard gunshots from outside.
Edward must have counter-planned us, I thought. But he must be assured that I didn't come unprepared.
I warned him.
I needed to because if it turned out to be that I was right, I didn't mind sending a bullet into his gambling brain, burying myself deep and roughly into his fragile daughter until she cried out in pain, before also sending her to meet her father in the land of the dead.
Either way, I must collect what he owes me from him. “You better not be playing a deadly game, Edward.”
I went outside to know the exact situation of things, even though I knew that whatever it was would be taken care of by the guards who were positioned outside.
One of my boys, who was inside with me, followed me out, and the other kept watch on Annabelle and her father.
Without fear, I rushed out of the room to supervise the environment, knowing my boys were effectively securing the area.
“What is the challenge?”
“Nothing, boss, it's just to scare the dangerous animals away,” replied one of my guards, Danky, who was more like the head of the security team.
I adjusted my tie. “I trust you guys to cover this vicinity, Danky. Make sure everyone's back on their duty post.”
I trust them. They're well-trained.
The Gracias were still in the room when I returned, without any need to share the news of what had just happened in their neighborhood.
My boys had almost killed two cultist boys who came to rob their hood.
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8.0
For four years, Ember traced the bullet scar on Chace's chest, believing it proved his unwavering protection. Their anniversary gala was supposed to be the night he finally proposed, a symbol of their future. Instead, she stood frozen, watching him slide his mother's sapphire onto Karyn Warren's finger—the daughter of a rival family.
His voice, amplified by the silent ballroom, declared, "Karyn is for power. Ember is for pleasure. Don't confuse the assets." Her heart incinerated. Publicly humiliated, she was ordered to remain his mistress, threatened with her dead mother's grave. Chace, confident her father's debts trapped her, forced her from their shared penthouse.
He then used a fake "Help. Sick." text to lure Ember to a club, only to humiliate her further, calling her "loyal like a dog." Karyn ordered a soldier to "touch" Ember while Chace watched, indifferent. With no other choice, Ember drank a punishment cup containing wine she was severely allergic to.
She collapsed, suffocating on the club floor, as Chace and Karyn watched, annoyed. Waking in a sterile hospital room, her throat raw, she faced Chace's cold relief and Karyn's dismissive cruelty. The betrayal was absolute, the injustice sickening.
But moments before, in her despair, Ember had invoked a Blood Oath. She texted Keith Mosley, the ruthless Don, accepting his price for her father's debt: marriage. She would become his, and she was ready to pay.
8.8
I am the best esports jungler in the league, but I've been hiding a severe wrist injury just to keep my team alive in the semifinals.
Right in the middle of the crucial tie-breaker game, our mid-laner deliberately walked into the enemy team and died without casting a single defensive spell.
He was match-fixing for offshore betting sites, throwing away our entire season for a massive payout.
Because of his betrayal, we had to sub in two terrified rookies, and we were absolutely slaughtered. The stadium crowd booed us out of the arena. The internet exploded with pure vitriol, trending hashtags calling me a washed-up fraud who hid on the bench to save my own stats. The media demanded I retire immediately. My physical therapist gave me a grim ultimatum: my shredded nerves only allow me four hours of playtime a day before my right hand completely locks up.
I destroyed my own body for this team, only to be sold out by a coward and crucified by the very fans I bled for. Why should my legacy end in total disgrace because of someone else's greed?
I refuse to step down. I forced the traitor out, ignored management's safe roster choices, and locked my eyes on the most toxic, universally hated streamer on the platform.
"He's a walking PR nightmare," my coach warned.
I don't care. He is an arrogant, unhinged killer in the game, and I am going to make him mine.
7.6
The gunman pressed a Glock to my temple and gave my husband a choice.
"One walks out. One stays. Choose, Mr. Underboss."
I wasn't worried. I was Haven. I was his wife of ten years, his Consigliere, the woman who built his empire.
Beside me sobbed Gemma, a fragile twenty-two-year-old he had known for six months.
"Take Gemma! Leave Haven!" Connor screamed, his honor twisting into something unrecognizable.
He walked out of the warehouse with another woman in his arms, leaving me to be butchered.
I didn't wait for the bullet. I threw myself through a glass window into the freezing canal.
I survived the fall, but the life inside me didn't.
After five years of failed IVF, the miracle baby I hadn't even told Connor about was gone.
While I lay in a cold hospital room, bleeding out the remains of our child, my husband was buying diamond earrings for the woman who had set me up to die.
When the doctor tried to sedate me for the surgery, I grabbed his wrist.
"No anesthesia," I commanded.
"But the pain..."
"I want to feel it," I said, staring at the ceiling. "I want to feel every scrap of him leaving my body."
I burned that pain into my soul. Then, I went home, poured gasoline over our wedding bed, and lit a match.
Two years later, I returned to the city.
Connor thought I was dead.
But when he saw me on the arm of his mortal enemy, wearing the crown of a rival Queen, he realized his mistake.
He didn't just lose a wife. He started a war.
8.5
A brutal fire had Brenna's mother abandon her.
When the family finally "reunited" with her, she was a scarred outcast mucking stalls and tending horses in the countryside.
They tore into her icily. "We only brought you back to marry in your sister's place. Don't you dare bring disgrace on us!"
Disgusted, Brenna cut them off.
Then the truth surfaced-a famed jeweler called her mentor, a top hospital director named her heir, an elite hacker circle bowed to her, and her scars faded into stunning beauty.
Regrets came too late. She was already in a tycoon's arms.
Vincent, a power player straddling both business and illegal worlds, had a secret: he was colorblind.
That was until Brenna unexpectedly burst into his life, bringing colors back into his world.
At first, he never thought he could fall for this seemingly unattractive woman, yet as time passed, his heart surrendered...
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.
7.6
I spent five years as the perfect wife to Easton Harrington, smoothing his midnight-blue ties and fading into the wallpaper of his massive estate. I thought I was the heart of our family, but I was really just a ghost in a sensible beige dress.
The illusion shattered at a charity gala when Easton’s "family friend," Georgina, appeared in a gown that matched his suit perfectly. While they basked in the flashbulbs as a golden couple, I was literally pushed into the velvet ropes by a cameraman. No one noticed.
Then my four-year-old son, Holt, slapped my hand away in front of the city's elite.
"Don't touch me! You're not my mom, you're just the nanny. Daddy said so."
The room went silent, but Easton didn't defend me. He just looked annoyed that I was causing a scene, making a sharp shooing motion for me to take the boy away. Beside him, Georgina feigned shock while her eyes crinkled in pure amusement.
I realized then that I wasn't his partner; I was a placeholder. They had stripped me of my dignity and even my child's love, treating my five years of devotion like a temporary staff position.
I didn't scream. I just slid off the Harrington heirloom ring, tossed it into a fountain, and walked out into the night.
Easton thinks I’m a penniless housewife who won’t last a week without his credit cards. He doesn't know that I’m Dr. Althea Morrison, the "prodigy" researcher his company has been begging to hire.
I'm not asking for alimony, and I'm not begging for a second chance. I’m returning to the lab to build an empire that will bring his to its knees.