Blood & Lace (The Marino Family Book 1)

He's the reason her father is dead—and now he wants her to be his wife.

Celeste Voss knows exactly what Lorenzo Marino is: a ruthless man who built his empire on secrets and silence. She hates him with every breath in her body. But when her family's debt lands on her doorstep wrapped in an ultimatum, she has two choices—run, or surrender to a marriage she never wanted.

Lorenzo doesn't need a wife. He needs a shield. Celeste is the perfect arrangement: beautiful, sharp-tongued, and angry enough to keep him at arm's length. Except she isn't staying at arm's length. She's pushing back, calling him out, making him feel things a man in his position cannot afford to feel.

The rules are simple. Don't ask questions. Don't fall in love. Don't trust anyone wearing his name.

Celeste breaks every single one.

Because underneath the cold commands and the careful cruelty, she's starting to see something she was never supposed to find—a man who carries wounds older than his sins. And Lorenzo is starting to realize that the woman he married as a transaction might be the only person who has ever truly seen him.

Some debts can be repaid with money. Others cost you everything.

*Blood & Lace* is the first book in the addictive Marino Family series. Reading order matters.