Everly Voss has spent fourteen months buried in the archives of the Volkov real-estate syndicate, forensically building a federal case her cold FBI-investigator father trained her to deliver.

When the old Pakhan dies and the empire begins tearing itself apart, Roman Volkov — the son banished to a Siberian labor camp at fifteen to absorb his brother Viktor’s crimes — returns to seize control and immediately identifies the too-perfect accountant as a Bureau plant.

Rather than execute her, he claims her, and their fates entangle as Viktor threatens to expose them both to the pakhan council and a war for the throne closes in.

The story follows their forced union, the collapse of Everly’s belief that she is only a tool, and the price two ‘discarded’ people pay to survive the people who built them.

Tropes: mafia romance, morally gray/villain hero, undercover heroine / enemies to lovers, captor-captive to obsession, forced marriage, forced proximity, only-she-is-safe / touch-her-and-die, he-falls-first obsession, touch-her-and-die protector, praise kink / possessive claiming, wounded pasts mirror each other, surprise pregnancy epilogue