Book Six of the Never After Series by Emily McIntire. This book can be read as a standalone, as can all books in this series.
This is a fairytale reimagining - it is not a fantasy or a retelling. The main character is a villain. Mature and graphic content warning.
Genre - Dark contemporary romance
Pages - 584
Spice level - 4 out of 5 peppers
Tropes and themes:
•Cousin's fiancé
•Forbidden romance
•Dark mafia vibes
•The Little Mermaid fractured retelling
•Touch him/her and die
•Forced proximity
•He falls first
Blurb:
He's the prince of La Cosa Nostra. She's the witch who steals his heart.
Venesa Andersen has never been good. She wasn’t good enough for her parents, and she isn’t good enough for the gangster uncle who took her in after they died. But she’s cunning. Beautiful. Dutiful to her uncle’s demands. And she doesn’t have time for a moral compass, anyway. When her runaway cousin returns to their coastal southern town, she brings a man with her…and Venesa soon realizes he’s the only one who’s ever seen her for her.
There’s just one problem: she can never have him.
Enzo “Loverboy” Marino is a wealthy businessman by day and prince of the underworld by night. Underboss to a notorious mafia syndicate, he answers to no one except his father, the strongest don in the Northeast. When he’s tasked with marriage, Enzo doesn’t think twice.
Until he meets his fiancée’s cousin.
Venesa is everything he never knew he wanted, bewitching him with her sultry voice and supple curves. But Enzo learned long ago that for a man like him, life is better without the things you want.
When plans unravel and temptation sings its siren song, they’ll both have to choose what’s more important: duty to their families, or a forbidden love that was never supposed to be.