The Bride Who Wouldn't Kneel

On our wedding night, I put a knife to my husband's throat.
He told me to do it. Or kiss him.

NORA

Seven years ago I hid in a wardrobe and listened to a Russian voice give the orders that killed my family.

Today my uncle married me to the man I was raised to blame.

Maksim Orlov, Pakhan of the Orlov Bratva, is cold, exact, and entirely unbothered by the blade against his pulse.

He should be afraid of me. I'm a pharmacist. I brought more than a knife.

Instead he says one sentence that breaks seven years open, and hands the knife back.

You'll want it in this house. But not for me.

MAKSIM

I have four hundred and twelve photographs of my wife. She has seen none of them.

I have watched her from two hundred meters for seven years, and I keep one rule in my house. Nobody touches her. My men. My guests. Me.

Not until she asks.

She says she will never ask.

She has nineteen days until she inherits her father's port, an uncle who needs her dead before then, and a husband who may be the only man in Los Angeles who wants her alive.

She can weigh me. She can pour me a glass and watch me choose.

I'll drink whatever she puts in it.

Tropes:
Dark mafia romance, Russian Bratva
Arranged marriage, forced on her
Enemies to lovers
He watched her for seven years
Touch her and die
A morally grey hero who keeps his rules
A heroine who never needs saving
Guaranteed happily ever after

This is a dark romance. It contains violence, on-page death, a poisoning, grief, and explicit intimacy between adults. All intimacy in this book is consensual. 18+.

Vows of San Pedro, Book One of a dark mafia romance series. Every book follows a different couple and reads as a standalone.