She's known him her whole life. The man who stood at her father's right hand, who vanished for months on violent business, who came back with blood under his nails and something unreadable in his eyes whenever she entered a room.
Now she's home from college and nothing fits anymore. Her father's empire feels like a cage. The men her age feel like boys. And her father's best friend watches her with a hunger he's stopped hiding.
Their first collision isn't planned. She's drunk on expensive wine at a family gathering, cornering him in a hallway, demanding to know why he won't look at her. His answer is a fist in her hair and his mouth against her throat, pinning her to the wall where anyone could find them. He tastes like whiskey and danger. His hands know exactly how rough she needs it.
They take each other everywhere they shouldn't. In his car outside her father's restaurant. In a bathroom during a funeral for one of his men. In the apartment he keeps for work, where he straps her down and makes her beg for things she didn't have words for yesterday. He calls her good girl when she whimpers. He calls her little slut when she comes too fast. She learns the difference between both and craves them equally.
He won't say he loves her. He tells her she's ruined, that he's ruined her, that her father will kill him slow when he finds out. She believes all of it. She arches into him anyway.
The violence that's always surrounded him starts closing in. Loyalty tests. A rat in the organization. Her father planning a marriage that would make her useful instead of his daughter. The enforcer who's been inside her, who's left marks on her thighs, who hasn't slept through a night since he first touched her, has to choose which oath he's willing to die breaking.
She isn't asking him to choose her. She's done asking for anything. She's taking.
A full-length age gap dark mafia dad's best friend erotic romance.
