Smoke Carelli lived by his own rules. He wasn't interested in normal. He didn't care about things like love and commitment, damn sure not marriage and forever. But the second Maggie Ramirez parked outside his family’s restaurant, his life became a series of distractions he was learning to love. Maggie and her kid have shaken up his world and dislodged every hard and fast rule he’d ever made. And when the demons from her past resurface, Smoke and Maggie may have to break more than their own rules to win their freedom. But will it cost them everything and everyone they love? The Carelli Family Saga Book One - Smoke Book Two - Dario Book Three - Dante Book Four - Toni

DarioCarelli has one job—get the new bakery owner to fall in line. Cuoricino, New York, their sleepy, small town, has rules. Rules his ironically kind-hearted mob boss brother set in place to keep everyone safe. But Ava Anderson has no intention of following a single one. The woman is a hassle Dario doesn’t need. She ignores his ultimatums and mocks his intimidating guards, sending them back to him with a basket of baked goods and amped up on too much espresso. If Dario thought the charm he once had before landing in prison for a crime that wasn't his would work, he’d teach Miss Ava a lesson in pleasure she wouldn’t soon forget. But behind her sarcastic tone and forced smiles, Dario recognizes the same flight-or-fight look in Ava’s eyes that had grown sharper in his own reflection during his time locked inside one of New York’s roughest prisons: the desperation of someone with nothing left to lose. When Ava takes off, only to return months later pretending she’s not looking over her shoulder every time she walks down the street, Dario realizes there’s something more dangerous in Cuoricino than the enemies his brother’s rules try to safeguard: a woman he’d die to possess and kill to protect.