PAPER SAINT

An arranged marriage dark mafia romance, standalone. Forced proximity, a morally black antihero, and a heroine who does the arithmetic.

Dual POV. First person, present tense. Standalone, no cliffhanger.

In the Chicago Outfit, every dollar has a name, and somebody has to write it down. Serafina Danesi has kept her father's books since she was nineteen. She knows to the cent what every made man in that family is worth, and which line a body gets billed to.

HE TAKES CONFESSIONS. SHE KEEPS THE BOOKS.

Eighteen months ago my brother was shot in a parking garage and my father called it the Russians. Then I found three hundred thousand dollars in a ledger nobody was supposed to open, and the money did not come from Moscow. It came from us.

So when my father pays a blood debt with me, I do not cry, and I do not run. I say yes. Because the man he is selling me to is Rafael Vaccaro, and Rafael Vaccaro is the only man in this city who can tell me who paid to kill my brother.

Unless he is the one who pulled the trigger.

They call him il Confessore, because he takes your confession before he takes your life. He does not raise his voice. He does not lie. He has sat at my father's table for twelve years and has never once asked that man for anything, and I am the only person in this family who understands what that actually means.

He gives me a floor of his house, one rule, and the truth when I can carry it.

I give him a ledger, a locked room, and every lie I have.

I have until March. After that, the numbers go in front of eleven capos, and neither of us walks out of that room the same.

Things to know about PAPER SAINT
• Arranged marriage, marriage of convenience, forced proximity
• Morally black antihero. He is not misunderstood. He is guilty
• Touch her and die
• Competent heroine with her own plan from chapter two, who saves herself at the end
• Age gap, 24 and 33
• Slow burn, then very high heat, open door
• Revenge, found family, one bed by choice
• Happy ending for the couple. Nobody gets out clean

Content warnings
Graphic violence, torture, murder and gun violence on the page. Organized crime. The killing of a family member. A marriage entered into under duress. An attempted sexual assault that is interrupted and does not succeed. One consensual non-consent scene, negotiated out loud in full beforehand at the heroine's initiative, with a safe word that is used and honored. Explicit consensual sex between adults. Grief, parental betrayal, a suicidal mindset in the hero that is addressed and never romanticized, hospital scenes, a death by fire described after the fact. An animal is injured and survives.

For readers of Shantel Tessier, Cora Reilly and Rina Kent.