Every night at midnight, I send a man into the dark.He calls me Wren. I call him Saint. For a year that is all we have been — two voices on a scrambled line that strips the color out of everything, so that no one can ever prove who spoke.I have never seen his face. He has never heard my real voice.And I have never loved anyone the way I love him.Then I break my own rule.One night I slip out of my father’s house, and a stranger in a bad bar puts himself between me and a man who will not take no. He is calm. He is lethal. He is forty-one years old, and he will not hand me the soft version of anything.He is not Saint. I checked. The voice is wrong.The voice is always wrong.What neither of us knows is that we met a year ago.On the worst night of my life. On a line I had just been handed. On a contract I read out in a flat little voice because I wanted so badly to be useful to my family — and never once asked whose name was underneath the code.He is the man who was sent to kill my mother.He is the man who refused.THE BLACK LINE, Book One. A standalone dark mafia romance with a guaranteed HEA and a heroine who gives the orders. Their story is finished by the last page — the epilogue opens the next book.Dark mafia romance · Age gap · He falls first, she falls harder · Morally grey antihero · Forbidden · Slow burn · Dual POV · StandaloneContains explicit content and mature themes, including on-page violence, murder, the death of a parent, grief, and family manipulation. Intended for readers 18+. Read more
