The Deadliest Debt

GINEVRA

I make the dead beautiful for a living.

I'm the undertaker's daughter from the oldest quarter in Naples. Red mouth, steady hands, and a joke for every graveside. Nothing that lies still on my table has ever frightened me.

Then he walks into my father's funeral home and names the price of everything we own.

Pietro Barone. The most feared man in the city. Grey eyes, a scar along his jaw, and a debt my family could never pay in a hundred years.

So I make him an offer before he can take me.

Thirty days, then I'm his wife. My father lives. And he doesn't lay a finger on me.

He agrees. With one condition of his own.

Not until I ask.

I will never ask.

PIETRO

Nine years ago I made a promise over my father's coffin.

I have never broken my word. Not once. Not to anyone.

She was supposed to be the last thing I collected. A name to take. An account to close.

Then she stood barefoot in a room full of coffins, quoted me prices, and told me to marry her.

My word is the only thing standing between us.

And every night she sleeps on the other side of my wall, it gets harder to keep. Every time she looks at my mouth and doesn't say it. Every time she laughs.

I can wait. I'm very good at waiting.

When she finally asks, I'll give her everything she wants.

Everything except the truth.

This is the first book in The Darkest Truth Series. Reading order:

The Deadliest Debt.

The Cruelest War.

The Final Claim.

371 pages. Kindle edition.