MATURE

Life hasn’t been kind to me. One moment, I was a carefree eighteen-year-old with dreams of a bright future. The next, I was a 28 year old lady and my world went up in flames. literally. My mom died in the fire that destroyed our home, my little sister is in a coma, and my brother’s in jail for trying to keep us afloat. My dad? He left us drowning in debt and despair.

I thought I’d hit rock bottom, but then I found myself working in a place where dreams go to die, doing things I never imagined just to survive. That’s when he walked into my life, Alex Romanov. Dangerous. Mysterious. And entirely out of my league.

He’s everything I should fear, but there’s something about him that draws me in. Maybe it’s the way he looks at me like I’m more than just another broken soul. Or the way he makes me feel alive when I thought I’d forgotten how.

But Alex has secrets, dark ones that could destroy us both. And as my past collides with his world, I’m left wondering: Can I trust the man who’s slowly stealing my heart, or will his darkness swallow me whole?

This isn’t the life I wanted, but it’s the one I’ve been given.

I woke slowly, the early morning light sneaking through the edges of the curtains and casting soft shadows across the room. My body felt heavy with the remnants of last night's haze, but my hand moved on autopilot to reach for my phone. As I blinked away the last vestiges of sleep, my eyes caught the date glaring back at me from the screen. And that was when I got a reminder about Alex's dinner party in two weeks. I had set the reminder because I thought I would be going this year again, not knowing that life had another thing for me. Two weeks until the night that always held a strange power over me, the night of Alex's infamous mafia dinner party.


Chapter 262 - 264