Kidnapped and Married to the Mafia Heir

That stupid-ass idea would never work, and the person who suggested it should have been shot right on the spot, if only to serve as a reminder. That was one of the many cursing thoughts that crossed Ella Blackwood’s mind as she stood just outside the study, listening to her family and their allies discuss a plan that was, in her opinion, one of the most idiotic things she had ever heard. Of course, she wasn't supposed to be in the room. And she certainly wasn't supposed to put a bullet in Montgomery, whom she suspected was the “great mind” behind it all. Women in the Blackwood family had always been expected to stay out of the business. They could be beautiful, well-connected, carry the Blackwood name into the right marriage and, most importantly, they could help clean the money that came from the wrong places. But they didn't sit at the business table. And they certainly didn't have a say. To be fair, it wasn't just the Blackwoods. Mafia women were practically the same no matter the country or even the continent. There were rules for men and rules for women, and everyone seemed perfectly happy to pretend those rules had never been written by men in the first place. And no matter how good Ella was with a gun - or how many men she could put on the floor with her fists—she was still a woman. So she listened from the hallway instead. The whole thing was a much bigger problem than it had any right to be. It wasn't even a Blackwood fight. It was the Gallaghers' mess. The irony wasn't lost on Ella. The Gallaghers had once been enemies of the Blackwoods. Their families had spent decades trying to undermine each other, stealing territory, sabotaging businesses, and occasionally putting bullets into one another. Then came a marriage. Another idiotic arrangement of another man. One Gallagher daughter had married into an allied family, and suddenly the old lines between enemies had become blurred. Now the Blackwoods were involved with their s**t whether they liked it or not. And somehow, it got even worse. The Gallaghers weren't just fighting outsiders. They were fighting their own blood. The Vitale family. The Italian branch against the Irish-American one from the same family tree. Ella couldn't decide whether that was tragic or f*****g hilarious. She listened to the men argue over territory, alliances, weapons, and retaliation. A whole f*****g mess. And, as far as Ella could tell, it would end exactly the way these things always did: With bodies. A lot of them. People dying wasn't a real problem for her. It was sad, sure, but it was what she had known since childhood. Death was part of the world she had been born into. She had grown up understanding that some people didn't make it home for dinner. Some names simply stopped being mentioned. Some chairs at the table remained empty. She had learned to live with it. But after her father died, things had changed. Because now her little brother was officially in the business. Luke was seventeen. Seven-f*****g-teen! He was still young enough that Ella could remember him stealing cookies from the kitchen and blaming the dog. And now the men in that room were talking about him as though he were another Blackwood soldier. Ella clenched her jaw. She wasn't going to let her brother die for someone else's war. Not for the Gallaghers or the Vitales. Not for anyone. Which was exactly when Ella came up with an idea. An idea that was, admittedly, even worse than the one the men were currently discussing. And if she pulled it off, it might just solve everything. Or get her killed. Possibly both.