He is the kind of man the city whispers about in fear and the underworld obeys without question—a mafia don whose name alone is enough to silence rooms.

Cold, calculating, and ruthless when the business demands it. Yet every calculated move, every body that falls, every empire he builds or burns, has only one true center of gravity: her.

He is madly and crazily obsessed over her. Not the soft, romantic kind of madness—the all-consuming, world-ending kind.

She is the only softness he allows himself, the only person who can make the monster kneel.

If the streets, the families, the police, or God Himself stood between them, he would set it all on fire without hesitation and walk through ashes for her.

No one is born with scars. No one is born cruel. Villains are made.

Magnus Malatesta learned that truth at five years old, when his parents divorced, remarried strangers, and erased him from their lives. Disowned and alone, he survived the only way the streets allowed—until survival turned him into a man who owned cities, a mafia don whose name commanded fear and respect.

For six years he watched one girl with an obsession that never faded. When he finally claimed her, the marriage was forced by his will alone.

Yet after the vows he never touched her, never forcing anything more despite her rude behavior towards him because of the forced marriage. He met her coldness and rudeness with quiet respect.

His only condition was:

Act however you want with me. Just never leave.