Callous Desire

A Dark Mafia Romance (New York Underworld, Book 4)

His weapon is seduction, the battlefield between his sheets, and cruel betrayal the blade he plunges deep.

My mother raised me on knights in shining armor and happily-ever-afters. She groomed me to be the perfect mafia princess. It was only natural that I’d believe in fairy tales.

Only, I didn’t fall for the prince. I fell in love with my father’s enemy.

I’ve never deluded myself about the man Dante is. Powerful. Cold. Ruthless. Brutal. Bad doesn’t come close to describing him. But when he held me in his arms in a rented room, he showed me that he could be good. Just for me. He always chained the monster when I was pinned beneath him, at my most vulnerable and exposed, in the most dangerous place I could be.

The darkness I glimpsed in him is embedded in his soul, coloring his heart and world black. I knew exactly what I was getting into when I lost myself to a callous man. I just couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that his seduction was only part of a cruel strategy and that I was nothing but the pawn he used for his revenge.

©2026 Charmaine Pauls (P)2026 Charmaine Pauls