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 4
Antonioni’s POV
When I returned, I noticed she was sobbing hard, and unlike me, I felt pity for her for the first time.
There's something her fragility does to me that I just can't explain.
But then, feeling pity is not my style. It's a dickhead weakness for all I care about!
I had to snap back to being a real man. No one has ever made headway in life by being pitiful.
I checked the time for the umpteenth time.
“We'll be on our way now, Edward. Word will continually be sent to you as to how the marriage is going. Goodbye, man.”
I left, while my men took Annabelle, following behind.
She sobbed even more, pulling backward and making all of us stop.
For a reason I couldn't explain, I hated to see her sob—I hated the fact that she was being dragged unfairly.
But the problem was that the little stronghead would try to run if we had left her. That's the kind of show women like to put up, and I had little or no time for that drama. My boys and I had an important business to take care of, and then after that.
We were made to leave, and my eyes caught and locked with Edward's eyes, but that, too, has got nothing on me.
The bloody old fool might now learn to stop gambling when he has no substance.
Daddy's girl cried further, looking at her father to save her.
There's something about this girl that I'm yet to place.
I am ruthless and have no feelings for the folks I hurt, not to mention being moved by tears. But here I am, feeling some sort of thing that I can't even explain, for this girl.
I held myself and refused to be guilt-tripped by her tears. That's what women know to do best after all.
I looked at my men, and they understood the assignment. Side by side, they moved her forward.
At first, she resisted and continued to seek rescue from her father, her cry this time, loud and uncontrollable.
“Father, please say something! Don't allow them to take me away, please!”
This time, we truly left without looking back.
As soon as we stepped outside, the outer guards who had lined up, strategically positioned in different corners, started coming out one by one. Each of them bowed in respect to me as I walked past them.
I nodded charismatically in return.
Annabelle’s cry was becoming louder and was almost beginning to attract the passersby.
She didn't seem to care about the people who were watching.
Maybe it was because she was lost in a cry and tears blinded her eyes.
She was being pulled along, as she stumbled forward. That was the only way she could walk.
I started going backward as I had walked many kilometers past them.
As I got to them, I made an effort to shut her up, but as I went closer to pinning her lips, she fell, not to the ground yet, because I had caught her by the waist and tried to pull her up.
At first, I thought it was a deliberate move for her to run.
My men had given way since the time I had come closer. Then the rest had gone closer to their different rightful cars to take, still waiting for me.
I held her in my hands, like a prince in shining armor. She felt so soft and vulnerable in my hands.
Then came those maddening feelings again!
I won't lie. Holding her in my hands and the feel of her face close enough to mine aroused me, and it was crazy!
I took her scent in, slowly licking my lips.
“Who's this girl?!” I thought to myself.
Unlike me, I never feel a genuine yearning for a woman, but this particular one makes me feel it. But then, and I'm not about to lose my guard for a chic! Never! All of them are betrayers!
“You don’t get to run because I will find you. Do you understand? You are coming with me tonight. You dig? You are all mine from henceforth…” I informed her in case he had forgotten, abruptly letting go of her.
I was also going to inform her that in my world, I make all the rules, and nobody dared to challenge me when I saw a look on her face. I was trying to read that look.
Surprisingly, she seemed a little lost, gaping at me.
Uh, uh, maybe I was wrong. She spoke up stubbornly.
“Where are you taking me to?” I heard her ask. Her breathing was glitching from the cry.
“My hom…! Now you just come with me and stop asking brainless questions, little girl.”
Where did she find the confidence to question a Mafia lord like me? Nobody else talks to me the way this girl does.
What nonsense!
What followed after that from her words made me crave her blood, literally.
“Then I'm not com… ”
“...stop resisting. I don't like repetition, and you won't like what may follow if my fellas get impatient.” I had interrupted her because she was stepping on my patience.
Again, I looked at my men, and they understood what the look meant.
Over the years, I had taught them how to communicate with me just by taking note of my gestures.
I also observed that they craved to discipline her for talking to me disrespectfully, but were laid back because I hadn't given the order.
The men pushed her into the car, into the back seat. Then they sat side by side with her.
I wanted to order one of them to sit rather at the front so I could stay with her at the back, but I didn’t want her to think too highly of herself. Instead, I sat in the front with the driver.
The two other cars we had come with also started almost at the same time and eventually took off behind us.
En route, I pulled down the rear mirror in front of me just to observe her and know what she was up to.
She was looking outside through her left-side window. Unbothered.
How can she dare to ignore me like my presence meant nothing to her? I fumed secretly.
If she dared to disrespect me in the presence of my homies, I swear, I will skin her alive.
The city blurred past the car window beside her. “Must be a twisted reminder of how fast her life has been ripped away from her little comfort trenches.” I scorned her in my thoughts.
The car ride continued like a funeral procession.
I couldn't help but continue looking back like someone was suddenly going to open the back door and run away.
There she was. Annabelle. Sitting stiffly in the backseat of my sleek black Rolls-Royce, her hands clenched together in her lap.
I decided to distract her a little.
Across from her, I lounged like a king, fingers lazily drumming against the leather dashboard in front of me.
I paused and listened to her heartbeat.
I could feel it from where I was. Her pulse hasn’t slowed since we left her father’s house.
“Daddy's girl,” I cursed under my breath. I thought she heard me, but it appeared she didn't.
Without a warning, my phone rang out loud…
It was Diego, one of my right-hand men—the one in charge of training, weapons, and ammunition.
“Hello, Dee. Oh yes, the plan hasn't changed. We're already on our way to the Park. Please get the other boys ready, really ready, and we shall be heading out once I step in.”
“Okay, boss, noted.” Diego had answered from his end of the line.
I just knew that by the end of that operation, we would all be either dead or alive, luckily.
Either way, I wasn't going to let that baboon Lorenzo put his fingers in my eyes.
My phone kept on beeping with calls throughout the journey.
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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.