Ayo Mide

In Sicily, Italy, family is more than just blood... it’s power.

Loyalty is earned with bullets, and betrayal costs lives.

Two strong Mafia families, the Bellantis and the Morettis plan to unite through marriage. It’s a careful deal built on years of violence and tradition.

Valentina Bellanti is the perfect daughter. She was chosen to be the bride, the symbol of peace between the families.

Meanwhile... someone else has always wanted Matteo Moretti. The cold and ruthless heir of the Moretti family.

Aurora Bellanti.
The quiet sister.

When Valentina was shot just before the wedding, only one choice remained.

Aurora must take her sister’s place.

But what happens when love, desire, and betrayal enter a deal that was never meant to be real?

He had watched her for years, a silent predator claiming his prey even before she knew she was caught.

He has already marked her.
And now… he owns her.

Anya Petrova thought she could finally breathe.

Orphaned at seven, she had been sent to live with her uncle in Canada. What should have been a safe home had turned into a nightmare.

Her uncle had started assaulting her when she was eight, and the flashes of those dark days never stopped. The trembling never stopped. She had grown up learning to hide her fear and her pain.

At nineteen, Anya finally escaped. She stole enough money to get to the airport and boarded the next flight back to Russia. She had won a scholarship to study Arts and Humanities and believed that it was her chance to start over, to be free at last.

She was wrong.

Because freedom did not always mean safety.

Nikolai Volkov was the man everyone feared. Silent, brilliant, and merciless, he moved around the campus with his black cat and said almost nothing to anyone. Rumor had it he was mentally unstable. Others said he was violent. No one knew what he would do next.

And the moment his eyes landed on Anya, everything changed forever. He was a force that terrified and mesmerized, a man who could destroy her in ways she never imagined and make her crave it at the same time.

Anya had come to Russia hoping to escape her past. What she found was obsession, danger, and a darkness that followed her everywhere she went.

The question is whether she can survive it or fall completely under his control.

Mistake.

That was all it took to ruin Violet Brooks’ life.
She had been an ordinary college girl in Virginia—until one night she drank too much and ended up in a situation she could barely remember.

Weeks later, she found out she was pregnant.
She didn’t know who the father was.

When her parents found out, they didn’t try to understand. There was only anger, disappointment, and words that made home feel unbearable. Violet couldn’t even return to school. The thought of whispers, stares, and silent judgment was too much.

So her parents made a decision for her.
They sent her away.

Violet was forced to leave Virginia and start over in Brooklyn with her aunt, expected to erase everything like it never happened.

She tried.

She kept to herself, applied to a new university, and told herself this was a second chance. After giving birth, she returned to school, determined to rebuild her life quietly.

But Hawthorne University was not what it seemed.

There were rumors about a group called The Red Pen. No one knew who they were. No one had seen their face, but everyone feared them.
It was said that once they wrote your name down… your fate was sealed.

Violet didn’t believe in rumors.

Not until her first day.

That night, she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see.

If she had left earlier… if she had chosen a different path… none of it would have happened.
But she didn’t.

And now, there was no undoing it.

Her fresh start was over before it truly began.

Because Violet Brooks had just made a mistake—

One far worse than the first.