Greyson "Gotti" Mercer is already hanging on by a thread when the court tells him he's not stable enough to keep custody of the only person he has left, his sixteen-year-old goddaughter.

He's been raising the teenager after his best friend's family were murdered. He's cleaned his record, built a legitimate security business, and crawled out of the streets that nearly killed him, but none of that matters when the system still sees a thug in a suit. So when his lawyer says the words "two-parent household," something in Gotti snaps. He drives straight to the one woman he's never been able to shake. He does the most unhinged thing a man with everything to lose could do, he demands that Raya Hart marry him.

Raya "Ray" Hart is crawling out of the ashes of a marriage that damn near broke her. She's raising her daughter alone, nursing the bruises nobody can see, and trying to remember who she was before she shrank herself to survive. Freedom is one signature away when Gotti shows up on her doorstep with a marriage contract and a look in his eye she hasn't seen since they were kids. Their deal was supposed to be simple, temporary, strategic… but trouble doesn't give a damn about their paperwork. Gotti's past starts knocking, Raya's bitter ex refuses to stay gone, and the enemies Gotti made years ago suddenly remember his name. When someone threatens what belongs to him, Gotti doesn't just fight back, he becomes the man the city whispers about in fear. The man who will burn the city down before he loses Raya, Amelia, or the home he's finally building. Because once Gotti decides what's his… he doesn't lose what's his.