VELVET VENOM

The last candidate in the room is the only one he already owns.

Anya Sharma walks into Luca Valenti’s Milan office with eleven days before the hospital throws her father out — and three years of hate saved for the man who starved her family’s company to death. He already knows her bills. He already knows she has nowhere else to go. He hires her anyway.

Day one, a black SUV almost kills her in the garage beneath Valenti Holdings. Luca is the one who yanks her out of the way — and the one who locks the door after. She is not going home.

Now she lives in his penthouse above the city. Sleeps where he can see her. Holds a gun he put in her hand. In Italy, standing next to a don is not a job. It is a target.

She is supposed to hate him.
She does.
That is not the problem.

The problem is the photograph in his study she was never meant to find. The child hiding in his kitchen. The men who keep saying the girl. And the sick understanding that the car was never aimed at him.

It was aimed at her.

He will keep her close enough to save her and close enough to ruin her. In his office. In his meetings. In rooms where someone could walk in. She will tell herself it is survival. She will be lying.

In Luca Valenti’s world, love is not the opposite of a threat.

It is the threat that stays.

Enemies to lovers. Billionaire boss. Forced proximity. Mafia dark romance. Set in Italy.