He gave her sixty days. She cost him everything after.
Mirsad Dushku doesn't make mistakes. He makes calculations — and marrying Adrijana Kelmendi is the most precise one he's ever made. His father is dying. The Kelmendi gjoba is real. Sixty days of a paper marriage and Pjetër's final debt is paid. Adrijana goes home. Mirsad goes back to Tirana. No one gets hurt.
He has said this to himself forty-one times since the compound gates closed behind her.
Adrijana Kelmendi came to New York with one job: survive this long enough to warn her father. She has twenty-seven days before Bashkim's plan becomes irreversible, a borrowed bookstore counter, and a captor who reads Pavese in the original Italian and pretends he doesn't notice what page she's on. She is not supposed to want to stay. She is definitely not supposed to start counting the things she would burn to protect him.
The problem with a man who calculates everything is that he leaves no margin for what he didn't account for. And Mirsad didn't account for her.
Mirsad and Adrijana's story is a slow burn that earns every degree — banter-sharp and emotionally precise, set against the Albanian mafia world of the Blood & Besa universe. For readers who want the heat without sacrificing the slow-building dread of two people who know exactly what they're risking and choose each other anyway.
✦ Albanian mafia romance
✦ Arranged marriage / gjoba settlement
✦ Age gap (17 years)
✦ Captive bride
✦ Dual first-person POV
✦ Slow burn with maximum heat
✦ Morally grey antihero with a grief wound
✦ Banter-forward with real emotional payoff
✦ HEA guaranteed
Book 1 of 5 in The Dushku Cousins — interconnected standalones in the Blood & Besa universe. Each book follows a different cousin's HEA. No cliffhangers.
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Mirsad Dushku doesn't make mistakes. He makes calculations — and marrying Adrijana Kelmendi is the most precise one he's ever made. His father is dying. The Kelmendi gjoba is real. Sixty days of a paper marriage and Pjetër's final debt is paid. Adrijana goes home. Mirsad goes back to Tirana. No one gets hurt.
He has said this to himself forty-one times since the compound gates closed behind her.
Adrijana Kelmendi came to New York with one job: survive this long enough to warn her father. She has twenty-seven days before Bashkim's plan becomes irreversible, a borrowed bookstore counter, and a captor who reads Pavese in the original Italian and pretends he doesn't notice what page she's on. She is not supposed to want to stay. She is definitely not supposed to start counting the things she would burn to protect him.
The problem with a man who calculates everything is that he leaves no margin for what he didn't account for. And Mirsad didn't account for her.
Mirsad and Adrijana's story is a slow burn that earns every degree — banter-sharp and emotionally precise, set against the Albanian mafia world of the Blood & Besa universe. For readers who want the heat without sacrificing the slow-building dread of two people who know exactly what they're risking and choose each other anyway.
✦ Albanian mafia romance
✦ Arranged marriage / gjoba settlement
✦ Age gap (17 years)
✦ Captive bride
✦ Dual first-person POV
✦ Slow burn with maximum heat
✦ Morally grey antihero with a grief wound
✦ Banter-forward with real emotional payoff
✦ HEA guaranteed
Book 1 of 5 in The Dushku Cousins — interconnected standalones in the Blood & Besa universe. Each book follows a different cousin's HEA. No cliffhangers.
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Used availability for Sienna Marchetti's The Coldest Bargain