Cognac Villain - A Mafia Romance
One wardrobe malfunction.
Two people who don't belong together.
Three awful "Be my wife."
Everyone else is at this party to marry the host.
I'm only here until I can get a ride home.
When my dress rips in the world's worst-timed wardrobe malfunction,
I go find somewhere quiet to fix it.
So I'm standing there in nothing but my heels when,
As my luck would have it, the door opens...
And the man of the hour walks in.
I wish I could say I played it cool.
But it's been a looong time since anyone has seen me in my birthday suit...
Much less the hottest man I've ever laid eyes on.
All I want to do is fix my dress, click my heels three times, and be back on my couch in fuzzy slippers.
But Ivan has other ideas.
He's decided who he's taking to the altar...
And I don't have a choice but to say "I do."
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Chapter 4
So I open my mouth. My real name is right on my lips. "I'm-"
Then someone taps the man on the shoulder.
He straightens and turns with a scowl on his lips. The person interrupting us is slender and tall, with a wiry frame and a shock of brown hair. He's got the same kind of serious composure in his face that Prince Testosterone has. A do-not-fuck-with-me-ness.
The new man whispers something urgent in his ear. Both their scowls deepen. Their eyes flit out to the lawn.
I see that for what it is.
A window of opportunity.
With one last prayer to the heavens above just in case any of those celestial assholes have decided to tune in, I clamp the ruined halves of my dress together as best as I can, pirouette on my heel, and take off waddle-running down the nearest hallway before the two men turn back to realize I'm gone.
My plan is simple: I'm going to find somewhere quiet to fix my dress. Then I'm going to find Jorden and we're going to get the hell out of here.
With any luck, I'll never see that man again.
4
CORA
Bad news: this place is a labyrinth. I feel like I've been running for hours, twisting and turning down hall after hall. The one silver lining is that at least I'm leaving the super Hulk behind.
I shiver at the thought of him. He was too perfect to be real. His bone structure was brutally sharp. Those lips had a cruel slant to them. And those eyes-Lord have mercy, those amber eyes could hypnotize a girl if she's not careful.
He hadn't laid so much as a finger on me, but the way he looked at me was a physical touch in and of itself. It stroked the deepest parts of me.
As if I didn't already feel plenty naked with a gaping rip in the backside of my dress.
I shake off the memory just as a door with a thin slice of light at the bottom beckons. It looks like a bathroom, so I push through-
And come to a screeching halt.
A trio of girls is clustered around a hand mirror balanced on top of the sink. Their hair is expertly curled, their dresses flawless, their manicures glistening in the candlelight.
Two of them don't notice me enter. The third looks up from where she's bent over the mirror with a straw pressed to her nostril. Her face is reflected on the surface below, although it's broken up by five or six neatly arranged lines of white powder.
When she sees me, she frowns. It's not a frown of surprise at being barged in on, though.
It's a frown of recognition.
"Cordelia?" she says in shock. "Is that you?"
Cordelia. A dead name. A nobody name.
My heart jumps into my throat. One thought blares through my head like a tornado siren: run.
This time, I hold nothing back. I run and run and run. High heels be damned. Ripped dress be damned.
I keep running, down hallways and up stairs, until my breath burns in my lungs. Then I burst through the nearest door I see and slam it shut behind me.
Inside the darkened room, I keel over, elbows on my knees, and try to inhale. I'm so tired I don't give a rat's ass about the fact that anyone who comes up from behind me could get a high-def view of where the sun don't shine.
I stay there for a while. Even when I catch my breath, though, my heart continues to pitter-patter in my chest.
She saw me. She knew me.
I shudder again. Cordelia. God, I hate how that sounds.
I'm Cora now.
Cordelia is dead.
Eventually, my heart calms down, though the tang of fear never truly leaves my mouth. When I'm as at ease as I'm gonna get, I look around the room.
I'm in an office of some sort. Very masculine, dark palette, brooding. It's shadowy in here, though there's light coming through a set of French doors. When I walk over, I realize the attached balcony looks out over the rear lawn. Most of the crowd has shuffled outside, so it's a maze of bodies. The sound of laughter and clinking glasses rises up to meet me. There's no sign of Prince Testosterone or his friend.
I turn my back on the balcony and fish my phone out of my purse. I press Jorden's contact and hold it up to my ear. It rings and rings, and then:
"Heeeey! Girl, where'd you go? This party is crazy!"
Oh jeez. Jorden is blitzed beyond belief. I know that looseness in her voice, that cackle. The girl is D-R-U-N-K. She isn't coming to save me.
I'm all on my own.
"Uh, never mind," I mumble into the phone. "Butt dial. I'm coming to find you. One sec." I hang up and drop my phone onto the nearby couch.
I find a lamp in the corner and click it on. The rip is in the back, so I need to get this dress off and try to finagle some kind of safety pin stopgap solution good enough to get me out of here without mooning every partygoer in attendance. With a grimace and a prayer, I start trying to peel off the dress while doing the least damage possible.
The back where the drunkard's hands went is pretty ruined, but if I can just wriggle out of it carefully and find a safety pin around here somewhere, there's a chance I'll be able to-
Riiiiip.
Never mind. I'm screwed.
My oh-so-careful efforts have just extended the rip even further. As soon as I let my hands go limp, the dress parts in two like wilted flower petals and pools around my feet. I'm left standing there, in the middle of some stranger's office, in nothing but high heels and nipple pasties.
Which, of course, is when the door opens.
For a second, I hold out hope that it's Jorden, here to provide backup.
But it's not Jorden.
It's not Jorden at all.
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9.1
Waking up with a cold, scaly hand wrapped around my throat wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was realizing I'd transmigrated into the body of Terra Mason—the most despised woman in the entire Enclave. She drugged high-level beast-men and forced them into life-binding bio-contracts. She locked an aquatic warrior in a dry basement until his organs failed. She treated the most lethal males in the city like broken toys.
Zev, the Level 6 serpent who's currently choking me, would rather blow up his own heart than spend another day as my slave. His affection metric? Negative ninety. His trust? Zero.
Then my system activates: the Kore AI. It gives me exactly 500 credits, a medical nano-gel, and a recipe for neutralizing the radioactive poison in mutant meat. Real food. In this world, that's worth more than gold.
I save Rhys, the dying aquatic male everyone left for dead. I season a slab of purple mutant steak until Sam, a battle-scarred grizzly shifter, groans at the taste—and his trust points finally tick above zero. When my backstabbing ex-best friend tries to steal my males and destroy me, I don't scream or throw a tantrum like the old Terra. I dismantle her with the truth.
But earning their trust means more than grilling meat. A scorpion swarm ambushes us at midnight. Sam throws himself between me and a stinger the size of my arm. As he stands over the corpse, fur receding from his claws, he stares at me and whispers, "You were testing me."
Yes. I was. Because in this world, the weak don't survive. And I refuse to be weak again.
Four beast-men. Four contracts. One system. And a whole lot of steak. Let this dystopian wasteland know—I'm not the monster they remember. I'm worse. I'm the one who's going to feed them until they'd kill for me.
7.8
Helen was finally brought back to the luxurious Gallagher estate as their long-lost blood relative.
But her new family didn't welcome her; they looked at her with undisguised disgust.
The matriarch mocked her stench of poverty, while her step-sister Candice treated her like a feral animal. The patriarch, Fredy—who had built his empire by betraying Helen's mother—tried to break her spirit. He blackmailed Helen into attending a high-society gala by threatening to cut off her grandmother's medical funds.
At the gala, Candice squeezed into a diamond-encrusted gown, desperate to seduce the guest of honor, Damian Montgomery. Damian was the most powerful man in New York, and he was currently tearing the city apart looking for a mysterious woman named Jane.
Overhearing this, a sick, greedy smile spread across Candice's face. She planned to impersonate Jane to claim Damian's wealth and completely crush Helen under her heel.
"Hide in the corner tonight. Don't you dare try to speak to anyone important!"
They all thought Helen was just a helpless, uncultured country girl they could easily manipulate and step on to secure their stolen legacy.
What they didn't know was that Helen was the real Jane. She was the lethal shadow who had saved Damian in the woods, shattered his grip, and robbed his highly guarded vault just the night before.
Helen calmly adjusted her simple black dress and stepped into the ballroom, ready to tear their stolen world apart.
9.4
Michael Carter is an undercover FBI agent on a mission to take down ruthless mafia king Fernando Ramírez-the man he believes killed his sister. But getting close to Fernando means playing a dangerous game, one where seduction and power blur the lines between enemy and lover.
When Michael uncovers a shocking truth, his thirst for revenge turns into a fight for something far more dangerous-his own heart. Now, torn between duty and desire, he must decide: destroy the man he swore to take down or surrender to the one thing he never saw coming.
Love has never been more lethal.
9.7
Blurb: She signed the divorce papers. He never signed away his obsession.
Veronica Stanford was the perfect wife-devoted, patient, and hopelessly in love. But when her billionaire husband, Jason Harper, trades her in for her treacherous best friend, Rhea, Veronica's world shatters. Broken and betrayed, she drowns her sorrows in a bar, only to be saved by a dangerously alluring stranger with emerald-green eyes and a lethal reputation: Monte "Four" Zagcanni, the ruthless heir to a mafia empire.
Four is everything Jason isn't-dark, dangerous, and devastatingly protective. When Veronica discovers she's pregnant with Jason's child, she strikes a deal with Four: a fake marriage to shield her from scandal. But what starts as a cold arrangement ignites into a passion neither can resist.
Jason, realizing his mistake too late, wants Veronica back-along with the son he never knew existed. But Four isn't a man who surrenders what's his. And Veronica? She's done being the meek wife.
Betrayal runs deep. Revenge burns hotter.
As secrets unravel-her father's bloody past, Rhea's twisted obsession, and Jason's deadly lies-Veronica must decide: trust the man who destroyed her once, or surrender to the devil who might destroy her forever.
One wants her back. The other wants her forever.
8.6
The Maybach glided through rain, Dante's cold cedar cologne a familiar comfort. Seven years, my life revolved around him, my fingers on his suit cuff, a silent promise. But tonight, our normal shattered with a single phone call.
He answered, speaking rapid Italian – a language he thought I didn't understand. Every word: a death knell. Confirming his engagement to Sofia Moretti, dismissing me as a 'consolation prize.'
Seven years of loyalty vanished. His loving mask back, he left for his fiancée. I stumbled into freezing rain, recalling my foster past. My numb fingers dialed his mother, Isabella, demanding fifty million for my silence. Her insults didn't sting.
The true gut punch: Sofia's Instagram, a prenup on Dante's desk, proudly showing *my* watch, captioned: 'Fourteen days left.' This wasn't their celebration; it was my death sentence.
I wouldn't stay another day in this gilded cage. My old duffel bag, packed, waited. The Australia brochure, a childhood dream, in my pocket. This time, I would live for myself, and they would all pay.
7.4
I was only fifteen when my venomous family orchestrated my doom by forcing me into an arranged marriage with mafia heir Javier Velasquez.
On our wedding night, Javier paraded strippers into our suite to show his absolute contempt, turning me into the ultimate joke of the underworld overnight.
But being a joke was a luxury compared to what came next.
Three years later, Javier needed to be a widower to marry into a heavily armed family and secure their backing for a coup.
He didn't grant me the mercy of a bullet.
Instead, he dragged me to an abandoned underground safehouse, locked me in the damp, rotting dark, and told the world I had been assassinated.
For six months, I starved in that dungeon, surviving only on the desperate hope that my family was safe.
Then, on the day of his lavish new wedding, a cruel maid kicked a plate of spoiled food onto my floor and delivered the final, fatal blow.
"Annabel is dead. Pined away and died of a broken heart two weeks ago."
My gentle mother was dead, all because she actually believed his lie about my tragic murder.
Driven by pure agony and an all-consuming hatred, I shattered crates of smuggled chemical solvents and struck a match, letting the roaring inferno turn their bloody wedding into my funeral pyre.
I thought the fire was the end.
But when I opened my eyes, the suffocating smoke vanished, replaced by the biting chill of a Long Island winter.
I was standing in the snow, back on the exact day my descent into hell began.
This time, the terrified girl was dead, and I would use their own ruthless rules to tear their empire apart.