Bound by Duty

Cora Reilly

Book 2 of Born in Blood Mafia Chronicles

Widowed young Valentina is remarried off to Dante Cavallaro, the icy soon-to-be head of the Chicago Outfit, who is still mourning his first wife. As duty forces them into the same house and the same bed, Valentina fights to be seen as more than a placeholder for a ghost, while Dante struggles to let go of his grief long enough to notice the woman trying to reach him. Told entirely from Valentina's perspective, it's a slow-burn, arranged-marriage story steeped in mafia politics, old secrets, and hard-won trust.