"I don't do girlfriends, tesoro. I do possessions. And you? You are my favorite sin."Her father loses his last chip, and Elara Vance's life is over. She is drowning in an insurmountable debt to the Rinaldi Family and is given one brutal option: sell her freedom at a black-market auction to square the score. She expects to be won by some old, vile creditor.Instead, she is bought by Dante Rinaldi for five million dollars. But to the world, he's Dante-the billionaire playboy of New York, the heartless hedonist who wears bespoke suits and has a new lover in his bed every week. In the dark underworld, he's the Capo Bastardo, ruthless enforcer for the Rinaldi crime empire, with blood-drenched hands.He marries her for the coldest of reasons-a sham marriage that lets him into his grandfather's inheritance and further cements his ultimate power within the Mafia Council. He plans to lock her down, break her spirit, and then discard her when the contract ends. Incapable of love and hardened by betrayal, he becomes a man addicted to the darkness. But Elara isn't as easily broken as that fragile pawn he had expected, and her silent strength, and her desperate defiance, is a flame to his darkness, an addiction more potent than power.When one rival Mafia Lord makes a move on his new "wife," that playboy mask shatters. The city becomes a hunting ground for rising Capo Bastardo as he executes threats, sacrifices alliances, and reduces to ashes every obstacle in his path to get to the woman he was supposed to ruin.He had promised to claim her body, but he had never planned on begging for her soul. He was supposed to be her death in that world of blood and lies, but she became the only reason he finally wanted to live.