He didn't ask for my hand. He acquired my life.I was the negative space.As a curator, my job was to be invisible. To let the art speak while I faded into the beige walls of the gallery. I was good at it. I was safe. Until the night Mikhail Thorne walked in.He didn't look at the paintings. He looked at me.Mikhail is a ghost story whispered in the city's darkest boardrooms. A billionaire fixer with a chaotic past and a ledger dripping in red. When he decides I'm a target for his enemies, he doesn't ask if I want protection. He boxes up my life, cancels my lease, and moves me into his fortress in the sky.He calls it protection. I call it a cage.He thinks he owns me. He thinks I'll be a docile little bird in his gilded tower. But he forgot one thing: I know how to read the fine print.If he wants to write the rules of my captivity, I'm going to edit them. With green ink.I negotiate for my freedom. I trade silence for secrets. I turn his security team into my staff and his penthouse into my war room.But as we hunt the men hunting me, the lines on our contract begin to blur. His possession turns into obsession. My resistance turns into need. And when the city burns around us, I realize the safest place in the world isn't behind a locked door.It's standing right next to the monster who holds the key.They say art is a lie that tells the truth. But this? This is a contract signed in blood.THE KINGPIN'S CONTRACT is a high-heat, high-tension romantic suspense about a possessive anti-hero and the hyper-competent heroine who brings him to his knees. No cheating, no cliffhanger, and a hard-earned Happily Ever After.TROPES & THEMES: