Dark raven hair and piercing green eyes, sweet and naive Eleanor Romero would make a beautiful bride. Ten million dollars and a forced signature later and she was mine. Like a thief I came in the dead of night and stole her away from her protected castle and placed her in a gilded cage made of gold. The deal had been made. She would become my wife. She would bear my children. She would bend to my will. But most importantly, she would help me destroy the man she loved most, the man who took everything from me: her father.

I hate Dante Moretti. He is cold, calculating, and vicious. It’s no secret that he wiped out his former fiancée and her entire family on the eve of their wedding. He’s the kind of evil that makes even devils cry. But that’s not why I hate him.

I’ll lock her in a gilded cage and throw away the key. The night we met, she thought she was tasting freedom. I devoured her once and left before I even knew her name. Four months later, Bratva business leads me to the house of my enemy with one objective: Burn it down and kill everyone inside. That’s exactly what I plan to do. Until I find her cowering before me.

It was supposed to be a harmless kiss at a lavish debutante ball. A clandestine moment with a handsome stranger. But unlike his namesake, my Romeo isn’t driven by love. He’s fueled by revenge. To him, I’m a chess piece. Leverage. His rival’s betrothed. To me, he is a man deserving of poison. A dark prince I refuse to marry. He thinks I’ll accept my fate. Well, I plan to rewrite it. And in my story, Juliet doesn’t die. But Romeo? He perishes.

I didn’t know Raphael Amado when he turned up on our doorstep demanding restitution for an old debt. My grandfather knew him well, though, and he quickly conceded. That restitution? Me. Six months later, Raphael came to claim me. He took me from my home, taking me to his Tuscan estate, where from the crumbling chapel to the destroyed vineyard to that dark cellar, the past stalked him like a shadow. Even the walls held secrets here, and I’d need to uncover them all to survive.