Silk and Steel by Violet Mercy

In the shadowed world of Chicago’s most powerful family, a proud fashion designer finds herself bound by a contract she never expected. To protect her family from ruin, Bianca Costa agrees to one year as personal consultant to Don Severino Rinaldi, a man whose quiet authority commands every room he enters. What begins as a calculated arrangement for leverage quickly becomes something far more dangerous: an intimate battle of wills where proximity ignites an unrelenting pull.

Sev intends to keep Bianca exactly where he wants her—elegant, visible, and under his control. Yet her sharp mind and creative fire challenge his carefully maintained distance, drawing him into a slow, consuming obsession. Bianca, determined to survive with her pride intact, discovers that surrender can feel like power when offered on her own terms. Their days fill with charged fittings, public galas, and private confrontations that blur the line between obligation and desire.

As rival threats close in and family secrets surface, the contract that once defined their relationship begins to fracture. In the tension between ruthless ambition and unexpected tenderness, both must decide how far they will go to claim what they can no longer live without. A story of control and surrender, loyalty and longing, where the greatest risk is losing the heart to the one person who was never meant to hold it.