Empire of Temptation

Valentina is struggling to keep her family's longtime restaurant open. During one disastrous shift, a glamorous older stranger walks into the kitchen, cooks dinner and rescues the night.

He is Luca Benetti, a mafia don, and his help has a purpose. Valentina's father is an assassin in hiding, and Luca means to use her as bait to bring him out.

Luca takes Valentina to Italy and tells her he is there to repay a debt. The lie holds less well the longer they spend together. She is independent and quick, and also innocent in ways that unsettle him, and his tight self-control begins to slip.

The book is a standalone dark mafia romance with an age gap between the leads. Obsession and danger drive it. The tension rests on a single question: whether Luca can protect the woman he is falling for by telling her the truth or by keeping her in the dark. Every day he delays, the secret about who he is and why he took her becomes harder to contain.