Corsican Crime Lord Series by Charmaine Pauls – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read

Corsican Crime Lord Series by Charmaine Pauls – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.ilovenovels.com Fri, 15 Dec 2023 11:43:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 http://www.ilovenovels.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/favicon.png Corsican Crime Lord Series by Charmaine Pauls – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.ilovenovels.com 32 32 Kisses Like Rain (Corsican Crime Lord #4) Read Online Charmaine Pauls http://www.ilovenovels.com/kisses-like-rain-corsican-crime-lord-4-read-online-charmaine-pauls Fri, 15 Dec 2023 11:43:32 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/kisses-like-rain-corsican-crime-lord-4-read-online-charmaine-pauls Genre: Alpha Male, Crime, Dark, Mafia, Suspense Authors: Charmaine Pauls Series: Corsican Crime Lord Series by Charmaine Pauls
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Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 118965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)

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>b>I gave him my innocence and my virtue. I gave him my love and my hate. Is there anything left to give?

Angelo Russo came like a storm into my life and left destruction in his trail. The man who hates me beyond measure is the man who put a ring on my finger and gave me his name. My husband is my worst enemy.

There’s nothing left to salvage from the wreckage of our lives. He married me to destroy me, and he did an outstanding job. He took my innocence and my virtue. I gave him my love and my hate. And just when I think there’s nothing else to give, I realize how wrong I am. What Angelo wants most is the promise of life I carry inside my body. When he’s taken that last piece of me, he’ll crush me with a smile on his beautiful face and wipe my existence from his memory forever.

Note: Kisses Like Rain is the 4th and final book in the Corsican Crime Lord series. You must read Love Like Poison (Book 1), Hate Like Honey (Book 2), and Tears Like Acid (Book 3) first.

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Corsican Crime Lord, Book Three

Banished to a house Angelo’s family vandalized and abandoned at the far end of the property, Sabella finds herself isolated and alone in a country she doesn’t know. Heidi convinces Angelo to let her take food, clothes, and bed linen to Sabella. The kind housekeeper is Sabella’s only ally in her new hostile environment.

To her horror, Sabella wakes up with lice. Her only option is walking to the village at the bottom of the valley and asking the pharmacist for help. From the inhabitants’ reactions, she soon realizes that her husband is despised in the village.

On Angelo’s instruction, Heidi brings Sabella back to the old house while the new house is fumigated and cleaned. Angelo has Sabella locked in her room to prevent her from snooping and gathering information she can give to the police while he entertains guests at home. Unable to stay away from his wife, he visits her room after dinner. In the aftermath of the sex that follows, he tells her he wants an heir. When Sabella refuses to bring a child into their turbulent world, he tells her that he won’t give her a choice.

The following morning, Angelo leaves for Marseille to recruit an informant. He wants to know what transpired between Sabella and Lieutenant Lavigne when Lavigne arrested Sabella on false charges. While Angelo makes full use of his wife’s respected name to further his own business, the cuts on Sabella’s feet and knee heal.

Heidi takes Sabella back to the new house where she meets Fabien, Angelo’s personal shopper, who refurbished and decorated the house. They immediately take a liking to each other. When Angelo returns from France that night, Sabella greets him like he ordered—naked and on her knees. She decides to give him obedience and her body but never a child or her heart. Bitter about the fact that he told her she’s not worthy to say his name, she vows to never speak it again.

Sabella continues her secret excursions to the village, sneaking away during the day, and finds a few casual jobs. Her objective is to pay the pharmacist and to stash away a small emergency fund. Slowly but surely, she befriends the locals. When she returns from the village one day, Fabien is waiting with a gown for a fundraiser she has to attend with Angelo. Angelo gets the wrong idea when he walks in on Sabella and Fabien where she tries on the gown in her bedroom. His jealousy erupts. The only reason he doesn’t kill Fabien is because he knows his personal shopper prefers men to women.

After discovering signs of trespassing in and around the house, Sabella manages to lure the person who helped himself to her food from the woods. To her surprise, she discovers that the dirty boy dressed in rags is a girl. On top of that, she’s not just any girl but Angelo’s niece. Sophie tells Sabella that she and her brothers stayed behind when their ‘grandfather’ moved back to his camp in the valley. The children live in a cave and survive by stealing food from the village.

Angelo is shocked to discover Sophie with Sabella. He goes in search of her brothers and find them at the camp with Grandpa, his maternal grandfather. As their parents disappeared, the grandfather agrees to sign over custody to Angelo. Sabella and Angelo disagree about Sophie’s future. Angelo wants to send her to a boarding school in Marseille while Sabella believes it will be a mistake to send the little girl away. Sabella makes a deal with Angelo, promising to help him put an important deal to bed by using her name and influence if he’ll give the local school a try.

At the fundraiser dinner in Paris, Sabella achieves her aim. The shipping company owner agrees to the deal with Angelo. Angelo moves Sophie’s brothers in with him, but it’s not smooth sailing. The three boys are a handful and difficult to handle. It doesn’t help that Angelo feels the strain of constantly being on his guard around his wife. She remains a threat to the family, something his uncles remind him of at every opportunity.

As punishment for his uncles’ suggestion that Angelo kills his wife, he orders them to kneel and prove their loyalty to him as the head of the crime organization. He orders his cousins to guard the new house. The babysitting duty is a demotion designed to put them back in their place.

As Angelo’s cousins don’t inform him of Sophie’s presence at the new house, he realizes that they’re either not doing their jobs or purposefully emitting some facts. He orders his guards to watch his uncles as well as his cousins.

During a walk, Sabella and Sophie stumble upon a graveyard with three gravestones. Sabella instantly knows who were put there to rest. Angelo shows up with Heidi. The fact that Angelo knew where to find them tells Sabella her husband is having her watched.

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Tears Like Acid (Corsican Crime Lord #3) Read Online Charmaine Pauls http://www.ilovenovels.com/tears-like-acid-corsican-crime-lord-3-read-online-charmaine-pauls Sun, 12 Nov 2023 07:05:21 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/tears-like-acid-corsican-crime-lord-3-read-online-charmaine-pauls Genre: Alpha Male, Crime, Dark, Mafia, Suspense Authors: Charmaine Pauls Series: Corsican Crime Lord Series by Charmaine Pauls
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Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)

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We’re destined to destroy each other, but we’re going to finish this game, no matter how long or what it takes.

In my line of business, every day dawns with the smell of death in the air. But it’s not a bullet that’s going to slay me. It’s Sabella, the woman who was promised to me, the woman who betrayed me.

I hate and want her in equal measure, an agonizing situation of my own making. We’re heading down a path of destruction, but there’s no turning back. At the first chance she gets, she’ll stab me in the back again. She’s a dangerous risk and a threat to my family. If I were wise, I’d eliminate that risk and leave her funeral to the sharks. I must be an idiot, because I’m going to finish what I started, no matter the cost.

Note: Tears Like Acid is the 3rd book in the Corsican Crime Lord series. Love Like Poison (Book 1) and Hate Like Honey (Book 2) must be read first. Sabella and Angelo's story concludes in Kisses Like Rain (Book 4). The story contains scenes not recommended for sensitive readers. Reader discretion is advised.

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Previously in Hate Like Honey

Corsican Crime Lord, Book Two

After the tragic car accident that claimed the lives of Angelo’s mother and sister, Angelo learns that Benjamin Edwards, Sabella’s father, paid their mechanic to cut the brake cables. Ben’s target was Angelo and his father, Santino. Santino and Angelo swear revenge.

Roch, the bodyguard Angelo employed to protect Sabella, shares the shocking news of the tragic deaths of Angelo’s family with Sabella. When she asks her brother, Ryan, about it, he tells her to mind her own business.

Growing increasingly concerned about her father’s withdrawal and absent-minded behavior, Sabella pays him a surprise visit at the office, only to walk in on a gruesome scene. Santino Russo stands over the body of her father, and Angelo is crouched next to him, holding a gun in his gloved hand.

After rendering her unconscious, Angelo informs Ryan of the turn of events. Sabella wakes up to find Ryan on the murder scene. When she urges him to call the authorities, he tells her that they can’t involve the police. Their father commissioned the hit on Santino and Angelo, which by an unforeseen turn of events claimed the lives of the mother and sister. They have to stage their father’s death as a suicide.

Sabella faints as a result of the shock. During the next two days, Ryan bribes a doctor to keep her in an induced coma for her body and brain to recover from the trauma. Santino returns to Corsica, but Angelo remains in South Africa in case damage control is necessary. When he learns that Sabella has been admitted to hospital, he slips into her room at night.

Angelo’s visits to take care of Sabella manifests in her dreams. When she wakes up, her family is present. Ryan confesses the true nature of their illegal business. Unable to share the terrible truth with anyone, the burden and guilt weigh her down. In an effort to expel the emotions torturing her, she swims out far to sea.

Roch saves her from almost drowning. In a fight that ensues, Angelo orders Roch to return to Corsica for verbally assaulting and pushing Sabella. The confrontation between Sabella and Angelo turns violent, and in the heated argument that follows, their passion gets out of hand.

Sabella hates herself for succumbing to her desire for Angelo again, especially after what had happened. While her family is arranging the funeral, they learn more devastating news. Sabella’s father had a second family that he kept secret from them. At the reading of his will, they meet his mistress and their half-sister. The betrayal cuts Sabella deep. She starts doubting her relationship with her father, not sure what was real.

Concern about Sabella’s near-drowning drives Angelo to seek her doctor’s advice. Could the incident be seen as an attempted suicide? The doctor advises Angelo not to submit Sabella to more stress. He declares that it won’t be conducive to her mental state to move her to Corsica so soon. Eager to finally claim his betrothed and marry her, Angelo is faced with a dilemma. In the midst of having to make a decision, his uncle calls with bad news. Santino had a heart attack. Angelo returns home, leaving Sabella behind once more.

Ryan takes over the business in George. He moves back into the big house with Celeste, his wife, and their son, Brad, to be close to his mother after the ordeal. As Sabella can no longer board with Ryan and Celeste while attending university in Cape Town, Ryan rents her a beautiful villa in Camps Bay.

In the meantime, Angelo is slowly unraveling. At his father’s funeral, he fires Roch for assaulting his future bride. The construction of the new house on his property is complete. He makes arrangements to have his late mother’s poor family moved into the luxurious dwelling. While biding his time to bring Sabella home, he ruthlessly grows the business into a global empire.

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Hate Like Honey (Corsican Crime Lord #2) Read Online Charmaine Pauls http://www.ilovenovels.com/hate-like-honey-corsican-crime-lord-2-read-online-charmaine-pauls Mon, 09 Oct 2023 12:39:53 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/hate-like-honey-corsican-crime-lord-2-read-online-charmaine-pauls Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Dark, Mafia, Suspense Authors: Charmaine Pauls Series: Corsican Crime Lord Series by Charmaine Pauls
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Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 89232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)

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The price I paid to claim her cost me too dearly to ever let her go.

A deal sealed with a handshake promised she’d be mine. A broken vow ripped her from my future. I made unspeakable sacrifices to claim what rightfully belongs to me. After all the blood I shed in her name, the bond that ties us is hatred. The war cost us both dearly, but the price we paid won’t be in vain. I’ll never let her go.

If she thinks she can escape her destiny, she hasn’t seen the worst of me yet.
If she thinks she knows the devil in me, she’s about to meet the monster.

Hate Like Honey is the second book in the Corsican Crime Lord series and ends on a cliffhanger. Sabella and Angelo's story continues in Tears Like Acid, Book Three.

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Corsican Crime Lord, Book One

On Sabella Edwards’s sixteenth birthday, she meets the enigmatic twenty-year-old Angelo Russo who shows up uninvited at her party. He’s dark and breathless like the ocean, the one thing she loves most in the world. Their attraction is instantaneous, but her father, Ben, orders her to stay away from Angelo. Ben claims that Angelo is from a bad family. Little does she know that her father promised to marry her to the powerful crime lord and that Angelo traveled across half of the world to meet his future bride.

Angelo manipulates Sabella’s mother into letting her keep a rescued cat. This gift means more to Sabella than the priceless gold and diamond bracelet the Russos offered her. During an intense farewell the following morning, Angelo tells Sabella that all her firsts are his. He orders her to wait for him, asking her to be patient, but refrains from telling her about the marriage contract.

When Ben refuses to acknowledge the oath he made, Angelo sets out to claim what’s owed to him, including not only a portion of the shares and voting rights in Ben’s company, but also the woman destined to be his. In order to bend Ben to his will, Angelo schemes to steal a book that contains evidence of bribes Ben made to high-ranking criminals and government officials.

Angelo gifts Sabella a phone that she keeps secret. During the next year, they have regular contact. A solid relationship develops over the distance. One year later, Angelo is back on the day of Sabella’s birthday. She lets him into the house when her family is asleep. In exchange for her first kiss, Angelo gives her his signet ring and instructs her to never remove it. When Sabella dozes off, Angelo uses the opportunity to steal the book.

Sabella is devastated when she learns the truth. She confronts Angelo at his hotel, only to discover that Angelo is having her watched. She throws his ring back at him, telling him she never wants to see him again, but he threatens to brand the insignia on her skin if she doesn’t wear the ring. No matter how hard she tries to escape the dangerous Corsican, her efforts are futile. Even though Angelo returns to his home thousands of kilometers across the sea, he effectively controls her life.

Deciding that Angelo was bluffing, Sabella flirts with an older boy at her friend’s birthday party, only for Roch, the man Angelo employed to keep an eye on Sabella, to throw the young man into the pool. The web spins tighter around her until she’s consumed with anxiety and fear.

On her eighteenth birthday, she suggests losing her virginity with her best friend and neighbor, Colin Taylor, but Colin and Sabella have grown apart since Colin hooked up with his girlfriend. Colin rejects the offer, informing Sabella he’s no longer a virgin. Her isolation from her friends and her slow withdrawal from the world is complete. A little intoxicated during her party, Sabella finally reaches a breaking point and flushes Angelo’s ring down the toilet.

The same night, Angelo shows up to claim another first. In a spiteful effort to even the score, Sabella lies about having given her virginity to someone else. The sex that follows is angry and vengeful but no less explosive. To punish her for removing his ring, Angelo renders her unconscious and brands her with his family emblem.

Sabella is woken to incredible sex and a permanent brand on her skin. Despite Angelo’s insistence to go public with their relationship, Sabella doesn’t want her family to know that she betrayed them not once but twice, first by allowing Angelo to steal her father’s book in order to blackmail him into signing over his shares, and then by sleeping with their enemy. She returns the Ferrari Angelo gives her for her birthday, inviting his irk.

While Angelo returns home and finalizes the planning of his marriage to Sabella in the European summer, Sabella enrolls into university to study marine biology, still unaware of Angelo’s intentions.

The Edwards family goes through an eventful period with the birth of Sabella’s nephew as well as her sister’s wedding. Sabella’s sister falls pregnant shortly after. Her family is far from perfect, but, despite the growing tension between her parents and her father’s preoccupied behavior, Sabella feels a sense of belonging when they gather for her brother’s birthday celebration. For once, everyone seems happy.

In the meantime, in the Russo household, the preparations for the summer wedding are in full swing. The garden has been transformed and the wedding dress delivered. On their way to sample the wedding cake, Angelo’s mother and his twin sister are killed in an accident when his mother loses control of the car and drives off a cliff. Angelo knows his enemies are behind the accident, their real target having been his father.

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Love Like Poison (Corsican Crime Lord #1) Read Online Charmaine Pauls http://www.ilovenovels.com/love-like-poison-corsican-crime-lord-1-read-online-charmaine-pauls Thu, 14 Sep 2023 21:22:38 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/love-like-poison-corsican-crime-lord-1-read-online-charmaine-pauls Genre: Alpha Male, Dark, Mafia, Suspense, Virgin Authors: Charmaine Pauls Series: Corsican Crime Lord Series by Charmaine Pauls
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Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 451(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)

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Every year on my birthday, my tormentor returns to claim one of my firsts.

A DARK MAFIA / ARRANGED MARRIAGE ROMANCE
On my sixteenth birthday, a stranger from Corsica shows up at my party. Angelo Russo looks like an angel, but more the kind who decapitates dragons than the kind with soft white wings. He’s dark like the ocean and breathless like water. He says he wants all my firsts as if he already owns them, but my father orders me to stay away from this man.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t escape him. No one can keep me safe. Every year on my birthday, he brings me a gift, each one having a detrimental effect on my life with unimaginable consequences. With every gift he offers, he claims another one of my firsts. Before I know it, he’s taken control of my existence, turning me into a nervous wreck, because when I turn eighteen, I know what first he’ll come for next.

Note: Love Like Poison is the first book in the Corsican Crime Lord series and ends on a cliffhanger. Sabella and Angelo's story continues in Hate Like Honey, Book Two.

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CHAPTER

ONE

Angelo

Most people don’t know they’re going to get married the first time they meet. Relationships develop over time. Some men and women weigh up the pros and cons to decide if they can live with someone until death do them part. Others follow their heart.

Not me.

In my family, tradition dictates differently. The decision was made for me a long time ago. That’s how the business works. Money is power, and power is everything. Power means survival. It’s the most fundamental rule of the world.

Only the strongest survive.

That’s why I’m here, why we’re driving up the road that zigzags to the top of the hill and ends in a cul-de-sac. A mansion peeks from behind high walls. Beyond, the ocean glimmers in the golden dusk. Below, to the right, the lagoon is a flawless mirror surrounding the stilt cabins on the island. The town of Great Brak River lies a kilometer inland on the bank of the river, consisting of a supermarket, a post office, an old as well as a new church, a small police station, an art gallery, a gas station, and a handful of shops and restaurants.

Anticipation tightens my gut. The reaction is involuntary. Far from being pure or innocent, it’s born from instinct, from the darker, animalistic side of me that needs to claim and procreate.

Survival.

That’s why we came all the way from Corsica to this secluded town in South Africa that’s no bigger than the point of a needle on the map.

To meet my bride.

I’ve known for ten years, but twenty or thirty couldn’t be long enough to prepare me for the moment. Whereas most human beings take the freedom of dating whoever they like for granted, I see it for what it is. A chore.

Dating is nothing but a tedious process of selection via elimination. There’s a certain calm in knowing one woman is destined to be mine. Our union will serve in fulfilling my duty. There’s logic in that. It gives stability to life in a world where little and few can be trusted. It gives meaning to existence. No soul searching or introspection are necessary.

It’s been decided.

The outcome has been predetermined.

The timing, however, could’ve been better. We left my mother and sister alone for New Year, but I understand only too well why my father is eager to see this contract to fruition. The reason for his haste eats at me too.

Instead of flying to the nearest airport, we rented a car in Cape Town and drove the four hundred and twenty-eight kilometers to George. My father wanted to see the Garden Route and stop on the way to buy wine. We took the scenic road along the coast, passing cliffs that broke off into the stormy sea and bays studded with smooth rocks and penguins. Sea bamboo drifting on the dark waters of small coves marked the whale coast. The rugged shores eventually gave way to dunes covered with Aloe Vera, their red flowers like flaming torches in the clear blue sky, and long stretches of white sand where the air smelled of salt and succulent groundcovers.

After booking into a hotel on the golf estate in the neighboring town of George, my father needed a day to rest and recover his strength. The following day, we did a reconnaissance of the area and paid our business partner—my future father-in-law—an unscheduled visit at his office. My father believes in catching his associates off guard. That way, they don’t have time to hide any unorthodox dealings they prefer to keep in the dark. “If you want to know the true nature of a man,” my father always says, “catch him with his pants down.”

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