Cruel Devotion: A Dark Mafia Stalker To Lovers Romance

Isabella Chen thought New York would be her sanctuary—a place to escape the Chicago Outfit, build a legitimate career, and finally live on her own terms. Clean. Free. Invisible. She was wrong. I own this city. Every street. Every shadow. Every person who dares to breathe my air without permission. And the moment she crossed into my territory, she became mine to deal with. The rules are absolute: you don't operate in another family's domain without the boss's approval. The penalty is death. No exceptions. I should have killed her. Should have sent her back to Chicago in pieces as a message to her father. Instead, I watched her. Studied her routines, memorized her schedule, filled her empty refrigerator while she worked brutal hospital shifts. I became the shadow she never saw but always felt. She delivered a baby in a parking lot, and I caught her when her legs gave out. She looked up at me with those dark eyes, exhausted and defiant, and something inside my broken mind clicked into place. I gave her father twenty-four hours to decide: give me his daughter in marriage, or I eliminate the territorial violation permanently. Isabella walked into my penthouse in a wedding dress, tears streaming down her face, and I destroyed the last shred of freedom she had left. Now she's trapped with a man who can't sleep more than four hours a night. Who watches her through cameras because the alternative is drowning in panic. Who survived torture that should have killed him but left him fundamentally shattered inside. She fights me. Throws priceless antiques at my head. Refuses to forgive what I've done. And every act of defiance only makes me want her more. I know I'm sick. I know I'm damaged beyond repair. I know she deserves better than a monster who tracks her location obsessively and can't function without knowing exactly where she is every second of every day. But I can't let her go. Won't let her go. She'll hate me. She'll curse my name. She'll make me work for every smile, every touch, every moment of softness. And I'll take it all. The hatred, the fight, the slow transformation from enemies to something that might—impossibly—be love. Because there's no divorce in our world. No escape clause. No way out of the vows we spoke in my living room with her brother watching and a terrified city clerk officiating. She's mine now. For better or worse. In sickness and in broken, twisted health. And I'm never letting her go. -------------------- READER NOTES: This is a DARK romance with a hero who engages in surveillance, forced marriage, and controlling behavior. He is not a good man, but he tries to be better. If you need a perfect hero, this isn't your book. If you want messy, complicated, obsessive love with a hard-won HEA, welcome home.