Elle Maldonado

She was mine. Made for me. Born to ruin me. Evangelina: I lived my life surrounded by luxuries, love, and attention. While at the mercy of lies, death, and deceit. I was tired of being just a pretty face. The woman who always had to prove her worth. When tragedy tears yet another gash in my heart, he was there to help mend my grief. But there was a mystery hidden behind those alluring diamond eyes. A whisper of ghosts and trauma from his past. Red flags I knew I shouldn’t ignore. Yet I couldn’t help the feelings blossoming within me or the fire that scorched my skin under his touch. Derek Cain held promises of love and protection. But what if he was who I needed saving from? Derek: As a child, I knew nothing but hate and pain. I was a soulless, unlovable bastard bred into a killer. Bound by blood to the world’s most obscure and elite society of global puppeteers. For years, I fantasized about taking revenge on the man who’d abandoned me. And when his time finally came, that’s when I saw her . His weakness. Detective Evangelina Cruz was mine to taint, use, and ruin. Until the lines of vengeance and obsession blurred. And she consumed my every thought. Though my secrets would destroy her, I’d bathe the world in blood before letting her go. Would the love we forged in darkness prevail in the light of truth?

Mikhail Petrov and his cartel princess, Leah Castellanos, are coming soon in this brother's best friend, Dark Mafia Romance. This novella is part of The Petrov Family anthology: Nikolai Petrov by M.A. Cobb Viktor by Darcy Embers Lev Petrov by Harper-Lee Rose Aleksei Petrov by M.L. Hargy Roman by Luna Mason

He was supposed to be just another name on a contract. A bounty to collect. Until temptations of the flesh scorched the line between love and hate. Leni: I was the villain in stilettos and red lips. Trained in the art of seduction and death. As a clinical psychologist, I was an expert in the intricacies of the mind. Yet my own was a labyrinth of suppressed traumas, ghosts, and untapped grief. Faced with betrayal, I never expected to find salvation at the other end of my barrel—in someone who also desired my death. He was a man without a past. Hands drenched in the blood of those before me. Yet his touch was the spark my heart needed to feel. Where Silas would set the world on fire, I would walk through the flames.

When a debt is owed, sacrifices must be made. I owed my brother my life. My loyalty. He’d saved me from pain and lifelong scars more times than I could count, taking the brunt of the demons haunting me. When the time came to return the favor and settle a debt, I never imagined my sacrifice would leave me bound in marriage to a woman who would consume my heart. Amalia Montesinos. I fell for her fire. Her rage. The soft pieces of her very few knew. Loving her was never part of the contract. My purpose was clear—ensure she inherited her empire, then go our separate ways. But I had lived at the edge of death for so long that I’d forgotten what it felt like to be alive. Until her. My wife. I’d be damned if I ever let her go.

Broken, violated, and left for dead. I might have been breathing the day I woke up in that hospital room, but they had killed everything inside me that mattered. With scars in my soul as deep as the ones on my skin, I craved revenge. And I took it. But as I lost myself in every faceless man whose blood stained my blade, the freedom I sought from my demons never came. Until him. Santino Leone fell for the girl I kept hidden behind a mask—the one whose jagged heart was never meant to be put back together but filled with all the sharp edges of his. He was safe with promises of a future I didn’t know I deserved and a love I thought I’d never touch. But when my secrets unravel, and the monsters of my past come to collect, will we rise and reap what’s owed or be delivered into the arms of death?