I packed the knife at half past one.

My mother died on the marble of my father's front step when I was fifteen. He raised me on the inside of one name for nine years, and on one truth: the Castellano Don had ordered the bullet. For nine years I sharpened a paring knife every Tuesday. It was for the Don of the Castellano family.

Then the four families voted. The old Don is dead seven nights. His son is their king now, and he has thirty days to rebuild the name his father destroyed and a wife he did not choose to do it with.

Me.

I married Niccolò Castellano in his mother's wedding dress at six in the evening. I brought the knife.

He knew before I crossed the threshold. He put a chair on the other side of the bedroom door. He will not sleep for thirty nights. He will let me keep the knife, sharpen it, sleep with it under my pillow. He will not once ask me to put it down.

On the second night he told me one fact. My father had lied to me. The man who killed my mother had also fired the bullet that killed his father seven nights ago.

The same man. The same hand.

CRUEL KING is a dark mafia arranged-marriage romance with an enemies-to-lovers slow burn, a dominant protector hero and a heroine who has planned her husband's death for thirty days. For readers of Ana Huang, Penelope Douglas and Danielle Lori. Book Two of The Marchetti Dynasty. Explicit content, eighteen and over.