COLLATERAL DAMAGE: THE KINGPIN'S OBSESSION
Isla Monroe's life exists in shades of gray—gray hospital walls where her mother fights cancer, gray overdue bills stacking on her kitchen counter, gray exhaustion from working three underpaid jobs that still aren't enough. She's invisible, drowning, desperate.
Then she witnesses something she shouldn't have. A murder in the alley behind Romano's Restaurant. The killer's face illuminated by streetlight: sharp cheekbones, cold emerald eyes, and a smile that promises death. Dominic Volkov, the Bratva king who rules the city's underworld with an iron fist and zero mercy.
She runs. He catches her. And instead of a bullet, he offers a deal: "Work for me. Your mother gets the best care money can buy. You get to live. Refuse, and you both disappear."
Isla becomes his collateral—his translator, his cover at high society events, his living shield against enemies who'd never suspect the scared girl at his side. She's a tool, nothing more. At least, that's what Dominic tells himself as he watches her navigate his brutal world with surprising steel beneath her soft exterior.
Women have warmed his bed and left without a trace. Love is weakness, attachment is liability, and feelings get you killed. But Isla sees through his monster to the man beneath—the boy who survived his father's torture to become something worse, who built an empire on the ashes of his own humanity.
When her old life collides with his new world, when her abusive ex-fiancé turns out to be an undercover FBI agent determined to destroy Dominic, and when her mother's "cancer" reveals a conspiracy decades in the making, Isla must decide: Is she still his prisoner, or has she become his queen?
Some collateral damage is acceptable. But losing her? That would destroy them both.