About the A. Jade
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Ashley Jade craves tackling different genres and tropes within romance. Her first loves are New Adult Romance and Romantic Suspense, but she also writes everything in between including: contemporary romance, erotica, and dark romance.
Her characters are flawed and complex, and chances are you will hate them before you fall head over heels in love with them.
She's a die-hard lover of oxford commas, em dashes, music, coffee, and anything thought provoking...except for math.
Books make her heart beat faster and writing makes her soul come alive. She's always read books growing up and scribbled stories in her journal, and after having a strange dream one night; she decided to just go for it and publish her first series.
It was the best decision she ever made.
If she's not paying off student loan debt, working, or writing a novel—you can usually find her listening to music, hanging out with her readers online, and pondering the meaning of life.
Check out her social media pages for future novels.
She recently became hip and joined Twitter, so you can find her there, too.
She loves connecting with her readers—they make her world go round'.
~Happy Reading~
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Feel free to email her with any questions / comments: [email protected]
For more news about what I’m working on next: Follow me on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ashley-Jade/788137781302982
Other Books Written By Ashley Jade
Royal Hearts Academy (Books 1-4)
Cruel Prince (Jace’s Book)
Ruthless Knight (Cole’s Book)
Wicked Princess (Bianca’s Book)
Broken Kingdom
The Devil’s Playground Duet (Books 1 & 2)
Complicated Parts - Series (Books 1 & 2 Out Now)
Complicated Hearts - Duet (Books 1 & 2)
Blame It on the Shame - Trilogy (Parts 1-3)
Blame It on the Pain - Standalone
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Thanks for Reading!
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<3 Ashley Jade
From USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestsellers Giana Darling and Parker S. Huntington comes a steamy, dark mafia romance with a virginity pack and an arranged marriage.
“Come play with the Devil...”
They say the Devil comes as everything you’ve ever dreamed of.
Mine has a cocky smirk and blackmail that may get me killed.
Enter Francesco Amato.
Made man. Sicilian playboy. Completely devoid of morals.
I’m engaged to Frankie’s arch nemesis.
And he’ll stop at nothing to ruin my marriage.
Even if it means taking my virginity.
Playlist
“Blue Blood” - Laurel
“July” - Noah Cyrus
“War of Hearts” - Ruelle
“If You’re Gonna Lie” - Fletcher
“I Don’t Wanna Be in Love” - Dark Waves
“Dead” - Madison Beer
“Bad Intentions” - Migos, OG Parker, Niykee Heaton
“Rome” - Dermot Kennedy
“Die For You” - The Weeknd
“Bad Habit” - Zach Sorgen
To the dark and deviant…
This hate story is for you.
Epigraph
“Because what’s worse than knowing you want something, besides knowing you can never have it?” - James Patterson
PROLOGUE
Lily, 19; Frankie, 28
Lily
Dr. Mancini had a tendency to gawk at my vagina like it was one of those macaroon-stuffed cookies from the bakery next to my house.
I shifted as much as I could, given the stirrups situation and the fact that, every time I moved, one of my barely-existent boobs popped out of the flimsy disposable gown. His eyes shifted with me, the tip of his tongue peeking out the corner of his lips. He toyed with his surgical tray of tools, eyes never leaving the center of my legs for more than a few seconds.
If my older sister were here, she would tell me to fuck with his head.
From the other side of the curtain, Papà stopped his phone call long enough to shout out, “Well?”
Dr. Mancini adjusted the height of his seat. “We’ve just started, sir.”
“Hurry. I have a meeting across Sicily.”
Hurry.
Easy for Papà to say when it wasn’t him getting fingered by someone twenty years older.
I’d been twelve when I’d had my first check. One of Papà’s night guards had caught my sister Carlotta, sneaking into the main house from the servants’ quarters. The only boy living there that was remotely her age was the gardener’s son. Papà had an enforcer execute him while his parents watched.
Meanwhile, Papà accompanied me and Carlotta to an emergency appointment with Dr. Mancini, who stuck his fingers inside us and confirmed our hymens were, indeed, intact.
That night, Carlotta slipped into my room and confessed that she’d given head to the boy’s dad.
“He fingered me and called me tight,” she whispered between fits of giggles.
On the other end of our estate, they were probably mopping his son’s blood from the servants’ quarters floors as we spoke.
I pulled the sheets over us. “Did you tell him he was tight, too?”
“Tight as in narrow, not tight as in cool.” She snorted out her laughter and squeezed me to her side. “You’re too innocent for your own good, Liliana.”
And that’s how the world saw me.
Liliana Vitali: innocent, naïve, and official property of the Vitali family.
As soon as Dad resumed his phone call, Dr. Mancini fixed the stirrups to part my legs wider.
Every year, Papà escorted me to the OBGYN.
Every year, Dr. Mancini concluded my annual exam by checking for my virginity.
And every year, he confirmed what we all already knew—I got less action than the fucking Pope.
This was normal when your dad was Paolo Vitali, brother to il condottieri of the Vitali family. One day, my marriage will be arranged to some hot shot mafioso, and I’ll be forced to lose my virginity during a deflowering ceremony in front of mafia bosses from all of Italy’s crime families.
Until then, I had to deal with Dr. Mancini’s prying fingers.
He distributed lube across his fingers and spread my lips open, breathing loud enough to pass for Darth Vader.
Stop being so nice, Lil. Fuck with him.
I could practically hear Carlotta goading me on.
But I wasn’t nice, and she didn’t know me.
Not really.
No one did.
I adjusted a little, so Dr. Mancini’s fingertips brushed against my clit. Just to see how uncomfortable he’d get.
He froze for a split second, swallowed, and grabbed the speculum. “This will be cold.”
I nodded, like the good girl everyone expected me to be. “Okay.”
When he slid the metal inside me, I bit my lip on a barely restrained laugh, made sure Papà couldn’t hear above his own voice, and let out a little fake moan. Dr. Mancini’s eyes shot to my face before darting to the curtain and back.
I blinked back at him. “Did you say something, doctor?”
He cleared his throat and expanded the speculum. “No.” His fingers began their probe. “Your vaginal ring is placed properly. Do you still check its placement and swap it regularly?”
“I forgot how,” I lied. “Can you show me?”
“You squeeze the ring between two fingers and slide your fingers inside yourself until you reach the back.”
“Is that where your fingers are right now?”
“Yes.”
I bit my lip and shifted a bit on the exam bed. “But your fingers are so deep inside me, and I’m so tight.”
He froze. �
�Excuse me?”
“I said—”
Dr. Mancini snatched his fingers back, scratched at his jaw, and pulled back when the lubricated surface met his skin. “Well, you have to swap your vaginal ring regularly, or we can switch you to another more manageable birth control method.”
Papà’s footsteps drew closer to the curtain divider. “Jacopo.”
Mancini eyed the curtain. “Yes, sir?”
“Take out her birth control.”
“Papà!” I clenched my fists and forced myself to be-fucking-have. “I told you, it’s for my period. It’s not for sex. I’m a virgin. Tell him, Doctor Mancini.”
Mancini returned to his seat and prodded inside me for my hymen. I didn’t bother messing with him, because this was serious. I had this argument with Papà once a year, and it was probably the only thing I ever won.
“Yes.” Mancini pulled out of me, snapped his gloves off, and tossed them into the trash can. “Her hymen is intact.”
I moved the curtain just enough to expose my face. “See, Papà?”
His face spoke of a youth he’d never possessed. I swore, Nonna had given birth to Benjamin Button.
“Lily.”
My name was Liliana, but Papà called me Lily whenever he wanted to patronize me. I hated the nickname. It reminded me of every moment I was forced to comply. To be weak. “Family above all, including happiness,” should have been the Vitali motto.
“Yes, Papà?”
“I just got off the phone with Samuel,” he began.
Samuel Bruno was the head of the Bruno family. Maybe I should have paid attention to his call instead of messing with Dr. Mancini.
I tuned Papà out, dread unfurling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t need to hear what he said. I’d seen that face once before. Four years ago, when Carlotta’s wedding had been arranged.
That Summer, she hadn’t passed her deflowering ceremony.
By the time Fall came, we’d buried her in an unmarked grave in the darkest corner of the Vitali crypt.
A fate I would rather bear than marry whomever Papà’s brother had selected.
Frankie
“We have a problem.”
Don Amato’s words weren’t especially portentous because of what they meant.
We were le mafie, a criminal family deep in the heart of Sicily. We ate problems for breakfast and made trouble for lunch.
So, none of the made men sitting around the glossy mahogany table in the back of Mama Sofia’s restaurant in the marina even batted an eye at the head of the family.
But he was looking right at me, black eyes fathomless and narrowed as if I was directly correlated with said issue.
Quickly, I thought over my actions the last few weeks and came up blank. Sure, I’d slept with Carlo Moretti’s wife, and Marco Umberto’s sister and girlfriend…at the same time. But I was discreet, and those women risked more than I did by fucking me.
My deceased father’s great uncle continued, his eyes still pinned on me, “The Bruno family plans to marry into the Vitali outfit.” The very same family that had murdered and terrorized mine for decades. Just five years ago, they took my brother from me. “By marrying a Vitali, they would ensure a position of power over us. I do not intend to allow this.”
Pain burst behind my eyes at the thought of my brother, who should have been sitting beside me at the table. Instead, he was buried in the family crypt, alive in memory only for as long as the people who knew him remembered to speak his name.
On the heels of hurt, came the fury.
“Cazzo.” I rubbed at my jaw and leaned forward. “Who are they trying to pawn off?”
“Tommaso Bruno to Liliana Vitali.”
I cursed under my breath.
Tom was my age, relatively good looking, and an arrogant stronzo. We grew up in Gerosa together, two sons of opposing mafia families playing together in the piazza, our knees deep in the dirt of the cliffs along the coastline, shooting finger guns and sling shots.
It was only when we hit puberty that we understood we were enemies, and the finger guns were exchanged for real guns.
We’d matched each other move for move as we climbed the ranks of our respective organizations. There was no way in hell I’d let Tom marry into the Vitali family and become the golden boy of his family.
No way in hell.
My mind whirred, chasing a fast-forming plan. “Is there a virginity pact?”
Don Amato steepled his fingers and stared at me over the peak. “Don’t be slow, Frankie. Of course, there is. The Vitalis are as old fashioned as they come.”
“Just fact checking,” I countered, ignoring the condescending looks from the other, older men at the table. They assumed the only thing I was good for was seducing the women of Sicily. “What would happen if we made sure the girl didn’t arrive at her wedding a virgin? What if someone got there before Tommaso?”
“The girl would be killed, and the unification of the Bruno and Vitali families would be dead in the water.” Don Amato cocked his head to the side, peering down his nose at the rest of us. “They’d assume the Bruno family had either deliberately fucked up or that they couldn’t even control their own family.”
I grinned, the expression slicing across my face almost painfully. “Win-win for the Amato family.”
“Assuming we can actually get to the girl. Paolo Vitali locks her in his fortress and barely lets her out of his sight after what happened to the sister,” Uncle Gaetano remarked.
I made a mental note to look into Carlotta Vitali. I hadn’t seen her in years, but we never ran in the same circles and I’d never bothered with petty gossip.
“Maybe you can finally put your dick to good use,” Angelo sneered, always up for an opportunity to take jabs at me and never succeeding.
He was the same age as me, but that was where the similarities ended. He was stupid and bitter for it, greedy and gluttonous, but without the wherewithal to attain what he desired.
He’d hated me since we were children.
I didn’t hate him at all.
Hating him would have implied he was worthy of my notice.
I rolled a pen between my fingers and let a smile tug one corner of my mouth. “Oh, my dick is good for plenty. If you worried about your own sex life as much as you worried about mine, little Angelo, maybe you’d get better results, hmm?”
His fleshy face screwed up, the blood rushing to the surface of his skin as if he were about to pop. “Where the fuck is your respect, Francesco?”
He thought calling me Francesco like the rest of the elders got beneath my skin. It didn’t. I went by Frankie, because Francesco was a mouthful for women to scream when I was balls deep inside them.
“You’ll get my respect when you earn it.” I didn’t bother hiding my amusement. “Just like everyone else.”
“And what have you done to garner our respect?” Don Amato’s words cut through the air with the force of a whip landing across my back. I flinched at the cold anger in that tone. “The Amato family’s reckless Casanova and homewrecker. You flagrantly ignore the rules of this family and its men of honor, Francesco. Maybe it’s about time you proved yourself worthy of the Amato name.”
They obviously didn’t understand the irony of their chastisement.
They accused me of being good for nothing but getting my dick wet, yet they were now asking me to prove myself by doing exactly that.
I didn’t point that out to them.
They were family, sure, but le mafie wasn’t about family.
It was about an inbred army. Though these were my uncles, cousins, and brothers, they only saw me as an underperforming soldier.
I’d take this as an opportunity to prove that I was so much more than that.
Than them.
The hot swell of anger in my chest cooled and hardened like lava after the flood. I tossed my pen at Angelo, stood, and addressed the room, “Consider Liliana Vitali mine.”
And she would be.
At least,
her virginity would.
CHAPTER ONE
Francesco
Stalking Liliana Vitali was dull as fuck.
Usually, I got a thrill from following someone. That animal delight that comes from stalking your prey.
Not so this time.
Liliana was pure as freshly driven snow. As fucking boring, too. She bought produce at the market with her mother once a week, visited her equally vanilla, vapid teenage girlfriends, and spent long hours in her room reading on her bed.
At least she was beautiful, though not in a way I was used to. She was fresh-faced, freckles the only adornment to her glowing, golden tan. She had no curves to speak of, just long, delicate bones that made her seem deliciously breakable.
All that purity excited the darkest recesses of my brain. It conjured images of my big hand around the long column of her fragile throat. Of bruises pressed and punctured into that flawless skin, purple and red around her neck and wrists like exquisite jewelry.
I wanted to bend that little body and sink into her until I broke her mind.
My dick kicked in my jeans.
Directly across from Paolo Vitali’s house, I sat on a folding chair on Maria Louisa's roof and watched his daughter through the open doors of her bedroom balcony.
I’d just bedded the plump and deliciously curved Maria Louisa. She hadn’t uttered a word of protest when I told her I was going to the roof with a glass of grappa and an after-sex cigar.
Liliana’s long spill of black hair caught the dim yellow light of her bedside table lamp. She stood up to accept someone into her room. I watched her smile and take a package from the woman at her door.
The thin thread of her giggles reached my ears like the distant peal of church bells. I wondered what noises she would make when I impaled her on my cock for the first time. She seemed like the breathy moans type.
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