Chapter 1 - The Man at Table Seven
On Christmas Eve, twenty-seven-year-old waitress Aria, crushed by rent debt and her late father’s medical bills, accidentally dumped a two-hundred-dollar dessert onto Dante Morelli, a feared thirty-year-old mafia boss. Instead of retaliating, Dante gave her an address. The following afternoon, inside his Brooklyn fortress, he offered her seventy-five thousand dollars to pose as his bride for five days at his grandfather’s Hudson Valley estate to ward off arranged marriages. But buried in the contract was a chilling rule: Aria must never be left alone with any male Morelli—especially his predatory cousin Vincent, his ruthless uncle Carmine, or his dangerous younger brother, Marco. Caught between an eviction notice and the wolves of New York’s underworld, Aria stood on the edge of the abyss.
