Taste of the Dark - A Mafia Romance

I moaned out his name. "Damien, you are not trying hard to get me, yet .." He smirked and whispered to my ears. "I like being hard, Not "trying" hard." When Lila Sinclair's mother is sentenced to life in prison, her world collapses overnight. With nowhere else to go, she is taken in by Sebastian Blackwood, her mother's former lover. A powerful, reserved man who agrees to shelter her under strict conditions. Lila is placed in his household... and into a life she never asked for, sharing a roof with two stepbrothers who change everything. Damien is danger wrapped in charm...intense, controlling, and impossible to ignore. Ethan, on the other hand, is steady, kind, and grounding...the only place she feels safe when everything else feels like it's slipping away. But Lila's situation comes with a hidden clause: her stay in the country is temporary. Within 365 days, her legal protection expires. To remain, she must marry one of the Blackwood heirs. One house. Two brothers. Twelve months of blurred lines, buried secrets, and emotions she was never meant to feel. As desire clashes with safety and passion wars with peace, Lila is forced into a choice that could secure her future...or destroy it completely.

For three years, I played the role of the quiet, obedient trophy wife to Cristian George, the most ruthless man in New York. Everyone, including me, thought ours was just a cold transaction for his family trust. Then, his legendary first love, Hayden, returned from Europe after finalizing her divorce. She didn't just come back; she came straight for my husband. The entire Upper East Side exploded with gossip. My phone buzzed constantly with videos of her sobbing his name in VIP clubs and friends warning me to watch my back. Hayden even showed up at my workplace, sliding a multi-million dollar tourmaline necklace across the table as a condescending welcome gift. The elite circle opened dark web betting pools, mocking me as a pathetic charity case and taking bets on how fast I would be thrown out on the freezing streets. I was terrified. I had secretly loved him for ten years, but I was just ordinary. I hid the necklace in the darkest corner of my drawer, waiting for the executioner's blade to fall, fully expecting him to run back to his golden girl. But when Cristian accidentally found that velvet box, his eyes didn't fill with nostalgia. They darkened with absolute, territorial rage. He didn't ask for a divorce. Instead, he pulled me into his arms, threw the multi-million dollar gem aside like actual garbage, and picked up his phone. "Clear my schedule for Saturday evening. And book a fitting for Mrs. George." He was going to give the city a show they would never forget.

Aubree pushed Ezra down the grand staircase, crippling the only man who silently protected her. She thought she was finally escaping his control to be with her true love, Foster Newton. But she had no idea it was a vicious trap meticulously set by Newton and her sweet, innocent cousin, Brandi. Once Ezra was driven out of New York in despair, Aubree's life became a living hell. Her father completely disowned her. Brandi smoothly took over her home and her millions in inheritance. "You were just a stepping stone for us, Aubree." That was the last thing Newton sneered before leaving her to die. Lying on the freezing floor, her warm blood pooling in her palms, Aubree finally saw the horrifying truth. She had destroyed her own family and ruined the one man who genuinely cared for her, all for a pair of greedy parasites. Endless regret and suffocating hatred consumed her fading consciousness. Why was she so blind? Why did she let them manipulate her into destroying her own life? Then, her eyes snapped open. A violent wave of dizziness hit her. She looked down at her pale, flawless hands. There were no deep cuts. There was no sticky blood. She was back. She had miraculously returned to the exact night she pushed Ezra, just two hours before his private jet was scheduled to leave forever. Hearing her father's furious roar outside her bedroom door, Aubree didn't cower. She wiped the smeared makeup from her face, her eyes turning dead cold. This time, she was going to make Ezra stay, and she was going to send those leeches straight to hell.

I died on the cold delivery table, bleeding out while the heart monitor flatlined. Through the blinding surgical lights, I heard my husband Damon's cold, final order to the doctors. "The child is the priority." He didn't care about my life. To him, I was just a vessel to produce an heir, a tool to fulfill his prenuptial clause and secure his billionaire empire. While I took my last agonizing breath, he was already planning his future with his fragile, theatrical mistress, Jasmin. In my past life, when he first brought her into our home claiming she was a helpless victim, I shattered. I screamed, threw vases, and played the hysterical wife perfectly. My desperate pleas for his affection only gave him the exact weapons he needed to ruin my reputation, isolate me, and ultimately force me onto that fatal delivery bed. Until my very last moment, the suffocating pain in my chest wasn't just physical. I couldn't understand how the man I loved could treat my death like a simple business transaction. Why was my absolute devotion rewarded with a carefully calculated execution? But then, my eyes snapped open. I was sitting on the edge of my king-sized bed, exactly three years before my death. From downstairs, I heard Damon's voice echoing in the foyer, bringing Jasmin into our home for the very first time. This time, the scream building in my chest turned to ice. I didn't cry or throw a fit. Instead, I calmly swallowed a secret birth control pill, smiled at his mistress, and dialed the most ruthless divorce lawyer in Manhattan.

Cora Foster was a brilliant archaeologist, but a jagged burn scar across her face made the world treat her like a contagious monster. During an elite excavation of a Gilded Age crypt, touching an ancient artifact triggered a terrifying memory. She remembered being Seraphina Beaumont, a socialite brutally buried alive by her vain, cruel sister, Isolde. When the team pried open the crypt's pristine mahogany casket, they cheered, believing the mummified corpse inside was Seraphina. But Cora recognized the onyx hairpin and the angular jawline. It was Isolde. The sister who had stolen her life, mocked her agony, and left her to suffocate in the dark. Her colleagues scoffed at her forensic proof, dismissing her as a scarred, delusional liability. Worse, the ruthless billionaire funding the expedition, Julian Montgomery, was the spitting image of Alistair—the man Seraphina had deeply loved. Why was Julian staring at her ruined face with such intense, inexplicable recognition? And why did Isolde take Seraphina's most precious silver ring to the grave? Driven by a century of agonizing grief, Cora secretly pried the tarnished ring from the mummy's stiff, dead fingers and dropped it into her pocket. "What are you looking at, Foster?" Julian's deep voice vibrated inches from her ear, his cold, predatory eyes locked directly onto her half-open pocket.

Aliya woke up in a dingy, freezing apartment with a throbbing headache, only to realize a horrifying truth. She had transmigrated into the American romance novel she read just last night, becoming the ultimate vicious supporting character. The exhausted man walking through the front door was Cyrus Pace, an amnesiac billionaire currently living under the delusion that he was a broke laborer. The original owner had trapped him with fabricated memories of being childhood sweethearts. Worse, she relentlessly abused him. Her phone was filled with toxic texts calling him a useless loser, and she had just staged a psychotic hunger strike to force him to buy a designer bag. Cyrus already looked at her with bone-deep, visceral disgust. In the original plot, the moment he regained his memory, his ruthless revenge would send her straight to a maximum-security prison for the rest of her life. "Are you done playing your hunger strike game?" Hearing his cold, mocking voice, the sheer terror made Aliya's blood run cold. How was she supposed to survive living with a future tyrant who already despised her? Every time his massive shadow fell over their cramped, shared mattress, her heart stopped. A single wrong move—even a microscopic mistake like accidentally crossing a physical line—would completely seal her doom. Staring at the torn box of condoms hidden under the bed, Aliya made a desperate, life-or-death decision. She had to completely rewrite her toxic persona, secretly hustle a high-commission real estate job, and save enough money to flee the country before the billionaire remembered exactly who he was.