Never Hollowed By The Stare

Clemenza Family: The Beast Who Bought Me – Leighton Greene

I used to be a mafia prince. Now I’m marked as prey.

Someone is systematically eliminating my Family bloodline, and I’m the last heir standing.

No money.
No allies.
No way out…except one.

An underground auction where the wealthy and the wicked bid on desperate, untouched men like me.

I expect to be sold to a stranger. Used and discarded.

Instead, I’m bought by a man with a two-decades-long vendetta against my dead father. A beast who drops ten million dollars to own me, then drags me home to a prison he built just for me.

He wants vengeance. He wants to break me. But I’m not as easy to break as he expects.
And when danger follows me into his territory, he becomes something I never expected.

A protector.
A possessor.
He keeps me safe, even while he keeps me caged.

I’m starting to think the most dangerous thing isn’t being owned by him.

It’s wanting him to keep me…

The Beast Who Bought Me is book 1 of an ongoing-couple trilogy and ends on a cliffhanger. Expect dark dealings, obsession, possessiveness, toxic dynamics, and all the red flags. These antiheroes will earn their happily ever after, but they’ll fight hard to get there.

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Rating:
4.5 Stars – perfection is only half a step away

Soundtrack: Unleash The Rage
Artist: Tash Sultana
Album: Return To Roots

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Clemenza Family: The Beast Who Broke Me – Leighton Greene

I escaped the beast who bought me at auction. I thought I could take my throne back alone. I was wrong.

I only have one option left.
Go back to the beast.

But this time, I have a muzzle for the monster.
A choke-chain to bring him to heel.
I’ll use him. Control him. Pray that he’ll keep me alive long enough to take what’s mine.

But every night I’m under his roof, the line between strategy and surrender gets thinner. And every fight ends the same way: with his hand at my throat and me begging him not to stop.

He bought me.
He chained me.
He’s still the only thing standing between me and whoever wants me dead.

Losing him would end me.
But letting him break me might be worse.

The Beast Who Broke Me is book 2 of a dark MM romance trilogy following the same couple and ends on a cliffhanger. Expect captivity, obsession, possessiveness, toxic dynamics, and all the red flags. These antiheroes will earn their happily ever after, but they’ll have to fight hard to get there.

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Rating:
4.5 Stars – perfection is only half a step away

Soundtrack: Unbreakable
Artist: MIYAVI
Album: WHAT’S MY NAME?

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Clemenza Family by Leighton Greene is a mafia romance trilogy set in the interconnected NYC organized crime world. Born from the fallout of the Morelli Family series, where Luca Di Amato killed the Clemenza Don and rose to lead the Commission, this follows the last surviving heir, Caligula Clemenza (love the name).

The Beast Who Bought Me opens with Caligula, on the run with killers hot on his heels after the rest of his family was killed. Penniless and desperate, he offers himself up at auction for protection and to everyone’s shock, Damiano Orsino, the Giuliano enforcer outbid everyone with a staggering $10 million.

Unknown to Cal, Damiano has been bidding his time to get his hands on the son of the man who killed his father. Expecting the worst, Cal’s Clemenza pride made him defiant, determined to get the upper hand on his owner, until his one-year contract is up.

The Beast Who Broke Me picks up after Cal escaped and ran into unlikely allies and the remaining Clemenza loyalists who crown him the new Don. His relationship with Damiano grows dangerously complicated, the Giuliano is the only one who can protect him, yet the irresistable pull toward each other blurs the line between hate and desire.

I loved that we get the perspective of one of the Families affected by the upheavals in the NYC Commission. Cal, grandson of the feared Don Louis, is haunted by the spectre of the old man. He’s a 21-year old virgin born with a silver spoon whose sexuality the old don scorned. Canny and manipulative, he discovers he shares more with his infamous grandfather, wielding seduction and steel alike.

Damiano is massive, tattooed, and hella determined to exact his revenge. Like a serial killer collecting trophies, he obssessively gathered pieces of the Clemenzas, with Caligula Clemenza the piece de resistance of that collection.

He will risk everything to protect that precious piece even as the aristocratic Cal pushes all his buttons. Dami who came from humbler origins and had built himself up still felt inadequate in the face of Cal’s innate hauteur that spoke of old money and privilege even in collar and leash.

Damiano is more bark than bite. There’s the build up of omininous pronouncements, promises of unspeakable tortures, and a contract whose implications made me sick to my stomach, but when it’s time for fangs to come out, Damiano holds himself back.

Dami and Cal’s connection is built upon a twisted blend of obsession, possession and revenge. A riff on the Beauty and the Beast trope, if Beauty is a viper and the Beast is a grizzly, it is a game of who breaks who. While the hatefucks are not exactly nuclear, the lust is explosive, the feels a slow-burning simmer spreading across two installments. They’re still not officially a couple at the end of the second book but by this time, the bond is unbreakable.

Dami’s found family of Rosa, Sammy, and Vito shows a softer side to the hard man and Cal uses that to his advantage, although he is also protective of them, especially Sammy, a victim of Clemenza hate crime. The ending of Book 2 had me worried about their fates.

The plot blends mafia politics with captive romance, excelling at both. The pacing is deliberate but the prose is compelling, capturing the delicious swirl of antagonism, danger and want with twists that kept me hooked.

I did not expect the books to end in cliffhangers so best to wait for the series to be completed if cliffhangers are not your thing. I also recommend audiobooking this, Michael Ferraiuolo knocked it out of the park as usual. It’s also best to read Morelli Family first, the events there resulted in Cal’s predicament here.

Clemenza Family is the ongoing saga of the fate of the last Clemenza. Shamelessly devious, ruthlessly single-minded, overall, a captivating tale of survival and obsession.

P.S.

Clemenza Family must be read in order. Also, I recommend picking up the Morelli Family first because who doesn’t melt a little everytime Luca calls Finch baby bird. Michael Ferraiuolo is narrating this too so best consumed as audiobook.

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THE BEAST WHO BOUGHT ME: Amazon UK | Audiobook
THE BEAST WHO BROKE ME: Amazon UK | Audiobook

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