CIPHER: A Dark Mafia Age Gap Romance

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 closes on the last page. The epilogue opens the next one.Dark mafia romance - Age gap - He falls first, she falls harder - Morally grey antihero - Forbidden - Touch her and die - Dual POV - StandaloneSpice: 4/5. Explicit, open door, six scenes. Consent is negotiated out loud every time, and the stop signal is used on the page.Contains explicit sexual content and mature themes, including on-page violence, contract killing, the murder of a parent, grief, coercion inside a family, and rough sex with marking and dirty talk. No sexual violence. Intended for readers 18+.