Chapter One
Parker Knight was a pompous billionaire and an arrogant jerk, and he could kiss her ass for all she cared.
No, scratch that, Everleigh Rose thought angrily. Parker Knight would not be coming anywhere near enough to kiss anything of hers, let alone her ass, even if the man had just made himself her husband.
Her freaking husband.
How did this even happen?
She was never supposed to meet him in real life. That wasn’t supposed to happen in this lifetime of hers. Parker Knight had been designated fantasy fodder from the first moment she had seen him and that was all. She daydreamed about him in a romantic setting. Okay, a very hot romantic setting.
Which girl wouldn’t?
He was in two words male magnificence.
When she had feasted her eyes on him for the first time, she had no idea about his possible affiliation with the mafia. While he portrayed an upright, honorable billionaire on the surface, with his hotels and casinos and resorts and islands, he apparently took care of his own dirty business behind the scenes.
There had been enough rumors and speculations, which had made it to the media about his involvement in the mafia, or that he was the mafia himself, of all things. Nothing could be proven though, which made him undeniably powerful and untouchable.
Sadly, even after digging up everything she could about him on the Internet, and becoming aware of who he might be, she still couldn’t erase him from her mind.
Or her body.
Telling herself those few articles about him were all just click bait, so she didn’t feel as if she had thrown her morals out of the window when she brought him, an alleged crime lord, into her bedroom night after night to star in her fantasies.
But it hadn’t mattered to her at all.
He didn’t know she existed, which was exactly how she preferred it. He didn’t need to know a twenty-three-year-old baker, with not a single glamorous bone in her body, without any sophistication or temptress traits, thought about him as much as Everleigh had.
She was, in a word, ordinary, tepid in the looks department, her fashion sense dependent on her bank balance but she had some good friends to enjoy life with. She was doing the best she could with what she was given. And she was okay.
She didn’t belong in Parker Knight’s world whether he was a legitimate billionaire, or a mafia billionaire and he didn’t belong in her unspectacular world either.
That was up until her father had made one crazy mistake that changed her world forever.
She couldn’t believe how her life had taken such an epically wrong turn.
How could she possibly be Parker Knight’s wife?
Yet she had signed the marriage license, hadn’t she? That couldn’t be a dream, right?
She’d been warned by everyone in her family to follow his instructions without any deviations. Her two uncles, stunned by the turn of events, wholeheartedly believed her new husband’s nefarious reputation, so in the interest of her health and her longevity, they had begged her to follow his instructions.
Well, no. She had no plans to do that at all.
She didn’t care that he was considered adangerousman.
He didn’t scare her, so no, she wasn’t going to be waiting patiently for him to send a car to her tiny apartment to collect her and then deposit her in his palatial home… as his wife.
He had graciously allowed her, through his lawyer as the messenger of course, twenty-four hours to pack up whatever she needed to bring with her and tie up any loose ends.
How kind of him. This after they had gotten married, and during which he had been entirely absent for the signing of the licenses.
He had sent over one of his henchmen… okay, his lawyer again, as a proxy.
So, it seemed fair that she did not show up for their marriage as well. In fact, the arrangement couldn’t suit her better. Besides, he only wanted the same thing as, at least, twenty other men before him had tried to get out of her.
Except he had succeeded because he was brutal and devious.