Ares (De Bellis Crime Family Book 6)

Ares De Bellis doesn't lose control — until her.

As the calculating heir of the De Bellis crime family, Ares has built his reputation on knowing everyone's secrets before they know them themselves. So when Zara McKinley transfers to his school for senior year, he clocks her immediately — not the radiant, effortlessly magnetic girl the rest of the world sees, but the carefully concealed darkness she carries beneath every smile. She's a puzzle he can't solve, and that infuriates him more than anything ever has.

He wants to keep his distance. Zara's hidden battle with depression is a world he doesn't trust himself to enter, fearing it could pull him somewhere he can't control. But fate — and the ruthless mechanics of a shared world — keeps closing the gap between them. When distance becomes impossible, Ares does what he always does: he takes charge. He decides he'll fix her, contain her, figure her out on his own terms.

What he doesn't account for is the way she starts to unravel him instead.

Set against the gritty, high-octane backdrop of new adult mafia life, this grumpy-sunshine romance explores what happens when a man obsessed with control meets the one person who makes him want to surrender it. Ares isn't just fighting enemies outside his door — he's fighting the terrifying possibility that caring for Zara might be the most dangerous thing he's ever done.

Some puzzles don't need solving. Some just need to be held.