Whitney Drake

Ava Rosetti was supposed to marry the mafia prince her father chose for her.

Instead, minutes before the vows, she overhears the truth. Nico Varra does not want a wife. He wants ownership, power, and the final key to a secret Ava’s dead mother hid years ago.

So Ava runs.

Barefoot, terrified, and still wearing her wedding dress, she throws herself onto the back of a stranger’s motorcycle and begs him to drive.

But her savior is no ordinary stranger.

Knox “King” Maddox is the feared president of the Devil’s Crown MC. Dangerous, ruthless, and powerful enough to start a war by claiming her, Knox says he can protect Ava from Nico.

But Knox has secrets of his own.

As Ava is pulled deeper into the world of biker kings, mafia lies, and buried betrayals, she discovers her mother left behind a ledger powerful enough to destroy them all. Nico wants it. Knox needs it. And a rival MC president will do anything to control it.

Caught between the mafia groom who calls her his bride and the biker king who claims he can keep her safe, Ava must uncover the truth before every powerful man in her world turns her into a weapon.

Knox may be her only protection.

But Ava is about to learn that protection can still be a cage.

And this runaway bride is done being owned.

Three months before I marry billionaire Adrian Vale, I receive a text from an unknown number.

DON’T MARRY MY HUSBAND.

The sender claims to be Celeste Vale—Adrian’s first wife.

There’s only one problem.

Celeste has been dead for four years.

I assume someone is playing a sick joke until the messages reveal secrets no stranger should know. Details about Adrian’s body. His first marriage. The night Celeste died.

Then one message warns me not to eat a box of chocolates arriving at my office.

The chocolates are poisoned.

Suddenly, Adrian’s protection becomes suffocating. Security follows me everywhere. I’m moved into the sprawling estate where Celeste once lived. Doors are locked. Cameras fail. Someone enters my bedroom while I sleep.

And the dead woman keeps texting me.

But the most terrifying discovery isn’t that someone wants me dead.

It’s an old photograph hidden among Celeste’s belongings.

A photograph of me taken eight years before I ever met Adrian.

Adrian recognizes it.

Because our first meeting wasn’t an accident.

Now I don’t know who to trust—the dead woman warning me away from my fiancé, or the dangerously powerful man who admits he searched for me long before I knew his name.

Adrian swears he didn’t kill Celeste.

I want to believe him.

But the deeper I dig into his family’s past, the more women I find who vanished, died, or were silenced after learning secrets they were never meant to know.

And Celeste may have died trying to make sure I wasn’t next.