He's the ice king of London's most dangerous family. She's the lawyer who was never supposed to want him back.
Cassius Vaughn doesn't lose control. Not in boardrooms, not in negotiations, not with women who think his name is an invitation. Then Marlowe Sinclair walks into a fundraiser, calls his family's seating chart a "power play disguised as hospitality," and refuses to be handled — and for the first time in his life, Cassius finds himself wanting something he can't simply acquire.
Marlowe doesn't do powerful men. She's spent a decade building a career — and a life '' in direct opposition to the world her own father's choices nearly destroyed her with. The last thing she needs is a Vaughn, with all his money, his family's violent history, and his infuriating habit of being right.
But contracts turn into dinners. Dinners turn into something neither of them can call by its right name. And when Cassius says the one thing that can never be unsaid, Marlowe has to decide whether a man capable of that kind of cruelty can ever truly change — right as a threat from his family's past turns her whole life into a weapon aimed at both of them.
Forbidden Reign is a full-length, standalone-HEA dark mafia romance featuring a icy, possessive hero who has to earn every inch of the heroine's trust back, a sharp-tongued heroine who never apologizes for who she is, slow-burn tension, and a danger-driven romance that doesn't shy away from real consequences. Part of The Vaughn Reign series — can be read as a standalone, richer with Book One.
CONTAINS: explicit language, on-page violence and threats, dark themes (verbal cruelty, organized crime, family trauma), fade-to-black intimacy.
Used availability for Cora J Riley's Forbidden Reign