Madeline looked down her disparaging aquiline nose at the younger woman. Oh? You traveled to the south of France and didn’t bring a swimsuit? Uh, feeling on the spot, Adara Valentina blinked rapidly. She sure couldn’t tell this obnoxious stranger the story of how she got there. That after being released from prison for murdering her father, her lifelong stalker, Vaclav Brasov, had stolen her by gunpoint from the man that bought her from her abusive mobster uncle just as he was about to rape her.Then, said stalker whisked her out of the country and forced her to marry him, and therefore she lacked a wardrobe. No, that wouldn’t carry over so well. Shrugging again, Adara simply said, I guess I forgot. Estella Valentina made her teen-aged daughter take the rap for her own deed of murdering her husband. Adara was sent to prison, and became a pariah upon her release. Adara had survived everything, but at what a price. Her relatives, old friends want nothing to do with her thinking she’d killed her own father. Her gangster uncle beat her relentlessly before he sold her to an equally violent man. But, Vaclav Brasov, an even more dangerous man she had feared since a small child, snatched her right out from under the violent man’s nose. Vaclav is insisting on making her his wife.Had she been grabbed from the kettle only to burn in the fire? Adara, his voice, masculine deep and husky. The heavy guttural accent so unusual, made everything he uttered come out a raw growl, and sound hideously brutal. Eyes of blue ice burned into her as if he could knife right through her cocoa irises and cut into her soul. When she just stared in wordless terror at him, Vaclav Brasov commanded, Adara. Let me in. She had no choice, he pushed through the door, and the saga began.This is a stand-alone, HEA novel. Please do not purchase if you are offended by strong language, violence, or sex scenes.