Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 126682 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 633(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 422(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126682 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 633(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 422(@300wpm)
The man who threatened to carry me over his shoulder down the aisle and marry me at knifepoint is both my captor and my liberator. He makes me weak and strong at the same time.
Before, he didn’t give me an option. Now, there’s a choice. But he’s determined to push me away.
If I’m wise, I’ll take that freedom and run for my life. Because the heart of the man who captured and saved me will always belong to the woman who broke it. The man who calls himself my husband will never be mine.
Only, there is no choice for me any longer. It’s way too late to walk away.
I’m in this war now … until death do us part.
Coerced Queen is Book 3 in the dark mafia romance trilogy, New York Underworld, and concludes Anya and Saverio's story. Coerced Kiss (Book 1) and Coerced Wife (Book 2) must be read first.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Previously in Coerced Wife
New York Underworld, Book 2
At a wedding Anya attends with Saverio, she learns that he’s recently divorced, a fact he omitted to mention. She can only guess the reason he doesn’t talk about it is because his feelings for his ex-wife are still too raw.
In the meantime, Anya works hard to ensure a good future for her unborn baby. Saverio may pay her bills for now, but when their fake engagement comes to an end, she’d still be left alone in the world to take care of her baby and her mother. While doing filing in the vault, she discovers a strange key that her boss hid there minutes before Saverio killed him for stealing mafia money. She looks for similar keys to figure out what it unlocks but comes up empty-handed.
After the murder of Anya’s boss, his widow, who never liked her, takes over. She decides to cut costs in the firm and, when Anya’s probation period comes to an end, she doesn’t offer her a permanent position.
Saverio sees Anya’s unemployment as an opportunity to protect Anya from his boss, Luigi, by making her indispensable as their new bookkeeper. After all, they still haven’t appointed a new bookkeeper, and as he recently discovered, Anya is a genius with numbers. Anya doesn’t have a choice but to accept the role. In order to prove to Luigi that she’s loyal to Saverio, he forces her to marry him before her child is born, and he’s adamant about adopting her baby.
Anya digs in her heels, but nothing she can do will prevent the marriage from happening. To her dismay, her feelings for Saverio become muddled. On the one hand, he’s her captor, and on the other, he’s oddly sweet with her, doing everything in his power to make her happy. In public, he treats her like a queen. At home, he takes care of her every need.
Yet he makes it clear that he’ll carry her down the aisle and marry her at knifepoint if that’s what it takes. It’s confusing, and it doesn’t make sense. Yes, he needs an alibi, and yes, he wants her for sex, but then Anya discovers another secret that Saverio has been hiding from her, and suddenly she understands why he’s pushing so hard to marry her. Saverio is infertile, and their marriage is his only chance at having a child.
Devastated to learn the extent of Saverio’s deceit, that he went as far as he did not for her but to steal her baby, Anya prepares for a wedding she doesn’t want but is helpless to stop. Just after the priest declares them husband and wife, the church doors burst open, and attackers start firing into the crowd. Saverio uses his body as a shield to protect Anya. The bullets that tear into his back shake his body as if he’s caught in a hailstorm. They go down to the floor as a hand grenade rolls down the aisle and Saverio tells Anya that she’s going to be an amazing mother. The last thing she sees before the explosion is his devastatingly handsome face.
Chapter
One
Saverio
* * *
“Respiratory rate twenty per minute.”
“Pulse one hundred. Blood pressure eighty-five over fifty.”
Bright overhead lights roll by fast. My stomach roils. I retch, swallow blood.
Can’t breathe.
“What happened?”
“Hand grenade.”
“Fuck.”
“At his wedding.”
“Where’s the wife?”
“Took her to maternity. She’s pregnant. Eight months. Water broke.”
“Fuck.”
I try to flex my fingers, to reach for the guy running next to me, but my limbs are useless. Dead weight.
My wife.
I want to speak, to demand they fucking tell me she’s all right, but my lips won’t cooperate. Around those white moving lights, the edges of the picture bleed red. The ruby darkness creeps in with every laboring breath that rattles my lungs. It doesn’t help that I can’t see shit through my right eye. I fight that sea of blood that slowly washes in like a tide, but the vision in my left eye turns in and out of focus. Mostly out of focus.