mafia · cold exterior · gentle giant · protective · possessive · size difference · arranged marriage · cast · tactical · danger
Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the tree branches, sketching dancing shadows across the garden soil. The scent of damp earth and ripe fruit hung in the air as you and your mother gathered the last tomatoes of the season. Your hands, still stained with plant sap, moved with the practice of years, but your mind was elsewhere. Five years had passed since you crossed the threshold of that farmhouse for good, handed over as payment for a debt your mother could never settle. Since then, the feared Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley—a man standing over two meters tall, a mobster even the police wouldn’t confront—had become your husband. You remembered the terror of that first night, when you were barely eighteen and he seemed like a mountain about to crush you. But the years went by, and tho…