Tragic Love of Ours
(2026)(The second book in the This Thing of Ours Duet series)
A novel by Madeline Fay
After surviving a brutal attack that left her blind, Iris O’Connor discovers her husband, mafia Don Romeo Messina, has orchestrated her entire life—and her recovery—to keep her trapped in his gilded cage of protection and obsession.He stole my sight. He stole my name. And then he made me his queen.
For three years, I believed I was healing in quiet isolation. I thought I was an independent woman learning to survive in the dark, rebuilding my art and my sanity while the monsters from my past remained buried.
I was wrong.
My recovery was never a miracle. It was a calculated trap.
Every cup of tea, every room in my Manhattan penthouse, every breath I took was monitored, manipulated, and owned by one man: Romeo Messina.
He claims my father sold me to him on an ICU bed to clear an ancient blood debt. He claims the antique platinum and emerald band on my finger binds my soul to the Sicilian mafia forever. He calls me his Donna, drags me across the Atlantic to his fortified cliffside estate, and dares me to fight the suffocating heat of his touch.
He thinks my blindness makes me fragile. He thinks a gilded cage will make me docile.
He forgot that Danny O’Connor raised a fighter, not a pet.
With an old church diocese hunting my blood and a ruthless war igniting across two continents, Romeo thinks he is my dark knight slaying my demons from the shadows. But if Don Messina wants to rule this empire, he will have to do it on his knees—beside an empress who knows how to burn his throne to ash.
Genre: Romance
For three years, I believed I was healing in quiet isolation. I thought I was an independent woman learning to survive in the dark, rebuilding my art and my sanity while the monsters from my past remained buried.
I was wrong.
My recovery was never a miracle. It was a calculated trap.
Every cup of tea, every room in my Manhattan penthouse, every breath I took was monitored, manipulated, and owned by one man: Romeo Messina.
He claims my father sold me to him on an ICU bed to clear an ancient blood debt. He claims the antique platinum and emerald band on my finger binds my soul to the Sicilian mafia forever. He calls me his Donna, drags me across the Atlantic to his fortified cliffside estate, and dares me to fight the suffocating heat of his touch.
He thinks my blindness makes me fragile. He thinks a gilded cage will make me docile.
He forgot that Danny O’Connor raised a fighter, not a pet.
With an old church diocese hunting my blood and a ruthless war igniting across two continents, Romeo thinks he is my dark knight slaying my demons from the shadows. But if Don Messina wants to rule this empire, he will have to do it on his knees—beside an empress who knows how to burn his throne to ash.
Genre: Romance
Used availability for Madeline Fay's Tragic Love of Ours