At fourteen, Ana Caterina Bellandi was entered into a future-marriage schedule. At twenty-two, she discovers the document that priced her is hiding something far more dangerous: a master index tied to eighteen people living under protected identities.Luka Mihajlo Vukovic is the man named beside her. Thirty-nine, ruthless, and head of the Vukovic Registry, he can make institutions stop recognizing a person without firing a shot. He inherited part of Ana's claim. After meeting her as an adult, he chose to acquire the rest.When Ana exposes one hidden key and a stranger's carefully built life begins to collapse, Luka takes her phone, her transport, and every uncontrolled route out. He never calls it protection.He calls it captivity.Ana is an architectural conservator. She is trained to find false repairs, preserve original damage, and expose what someone tried to hide. Now the only way to understand the system that used her is to work inside Luka's locked world, using his records while resisting the man who wants both her surrender and her signature.But every layer Ana removes is connected to a living person. Every secret gives her more power. And the closer she comes to breaking the pledge made in her name, the harder it becomes to separate the freedom she is fighting for from the dangerous man who deliberately made himself the only Vukovic with a claim to her.PLEDGED is Book 3 of The Bride Price, an interconnected dark mafia romance with a 17-year age gap, captive forced proximity, enemies-to-lovers tension, a possessive villain hero, mutual blackmail, chosen submission, and open-door heat.At fourteen, Ana Caterina Bellandi was entered into a future-marriage schedule. At twenty-two, she discovers the document that priced her is hiding something far more dangerous: a master index tied to eighteen people living under protected identities.Luka Mihajlo Vukovic is the man named beside her. Thirty-nine, ruthless, and head of the Vukovic Registry, he can make institutions stop recognizing a person without firing a shot. He inherited part of Ana's claim. After meeting her as an adult, he chose to acquire the rest.When Ana exposes one hidden key and a stranger's carefully built life begins to collapse, Luka takes her phone, her transport, and every uncontrolled route out. He never calls it protection.He calls it captivity.Ana is an architectural conservator. She is trained to find false repairs, preserve original damage, and expose what someone tried to hide. Now the only way to understand the system that used her is to work inside Luka's locked world, using his records while resisting the man who wants both her surrender and her signature.But every layer Ana removes is connected to a living person. Every secret gives her more power. And the closer she comes to breaking the pledge made in her name, the harder it becomes to separate the freedom she is fighting for from the dangerous man who deliberately made himself the only Vukovic with a claim to her.PLEDGED is Book 3 of The Bride Price, an interconnected dark mafia romance with a 17-year age gap, captive forced proximity, enemies-to-lovers tension, a possessive villain hero, mutual blackmail, chosen submission, and open-door heat.
