His Tesoro

The book opens with Matteo Rossi counting seconds between two gunshots—the shots that killed his parents.

The book opens with Matteo Rossi counting seconds between two gunshots—the shots that killed his parents. He was twenty-three, home with his eleven-year-old sister Sienna, when his uncle arrived to seize power over the Italian Mafia's Five Families in New York. In the silence between the first bullet and the second, Matteo faced an impossible choice: rush to the study where his parents were dying, or take Sienna's small hand and run. He chose his sister. They escaped through a hidden passage and spent two years in hiding while Matteo assembled enough loyalists to overthrow his uncle and reclaim his city. He became Don at twenty-five. The guilt of that choice—the conviction that he abandoned his parents to die—would calcify into an inability to let anyone close again.

A Mafia Don's arranged bride reveals a secret his ally hid

Thirteen years into his reign, Matteo faces a new threat: Arben, the reckless son of the deceased Albanian boss, is pushing into his territory. Romeo, his second-in-command, presents a solution—marry Sofiya Ivanova, daughter of Rustik Ivanov, head of the Bratva in Chicago. The alliance would yield eastern trade routes for the Russians and military support against the Albanians for Matteo. He agrees, insisting it will be strictly business. At the Chicago church, Sofiya wheels herself down the aisle alone—her father refused to walk her, furious at the wheelchair he never authorized. Rustik had hidden his daughter's disability entirely. Matteo keeps his face blank, but her beauty jolts something in his chest he cannot name. The ceremony is brief. She hesitates visibly at the word obey, and her reluctant compliance almost makes him smile.

Sofiya starves in her room until Matteo carries her to the kitchen On the plane to New York, Matteo declares their marriage purely logistical—separate rooms, separate lives. He assigns Angelo, a gentle giant of a guard, to Sofiya's detail. At the penthouse, he installs her in the guest room farthest from his own and leaves for a meeting on their wedding night. Next morning, he snaps that she is in his way in the kitchen. Sofiya—raised by a father who once backhanded her for leaving her room without permission—interprets this as a confinement order. She stays in the bedroom for over a day, surviving on a single chocolate bar from her purse. When Matteo returns and finds her crying and starving, he carries her to the kitchen island and orders pizza. For the first time, he asks about her body. She explains hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome: a connective tissue disorder that destabilizes her joints and causes chronic pain. Her father destroyed her medical…