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His Dark Vendetta

Luca Moretti is a blood demon with a vendetta and absolutely zero chill — and honestly, that’s the whole vibe. He kidnaps the woman he wanted as his future and tells himself it’s revenge. Siobhán says she doesn’t need saving, doesn’t need him, and then proceeds to demolish every wall he has anyway. It’s almost-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers at its messiest and most satisfying, with a slow burn that actually pays off when he finally pulls his head out of his ass. The paranormal element here isn’t window dressing — blood demons have rules, and those rules feed directly into the tension and the spice. The mafia world is gritty and cinematic, the chemistry is electric, and that ending? Pure chaos. Go in knowing this is book two of a quartet and the cliffhanger is savage — but the HEA is guaranteed for this couple, and the ride there is absolutely worth it.

Book Description

SIOBHÁN

Once upon a time, I thought he’d be my happily ever after. Now, I’m not sure I’ll survive his dark vendetta.

I’ll never be safe. My found family is as dangerous as the one I escaped. I need to run, but Luca Moretti has other plans. My family murdered his father, and he wants me to pay the price.

Kidnapped and trapped by the man I wanted as a lover but is now my enemy, I wait for him to break me like he broke my heart.

We’re a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Except in our version, Romeo tries to kill Juliet.

LUCA

Desire. Obsession. Revenge. The end of my blood feud is within reach. And it starts with her.

The New England dons granted their blessing—if I play by the rules, vengeance is mine. One life for my father’s.

But blood demons need Sources, and as a capo, I need to earn. Even with the feds breathing down my neck.

Each day I dodge bullets and the law, she chips away at my walls until there’s nothing left but the truth. An unwanted truth that shatters my resolve to break Siobhán Connelly and instead make her mine.

******

HIS DARK VENDETTA is the second book in the Bonded in Blood quartet. Each Paranormal Mafia Romance ends with an HEA, but the books are closely interconnected with an overarching series-wide plot.

Genre, Tropes & Kinks
Triggers
⚠️ DETAILED TRIGGERS ⚠️ (contains spoilers)

Content Warnings

The central premise is kidnapping and captivity — Luca abducts Siobhán with the stated intention of killing her as payment for a blood debt, so kidnapping/abduction and captivity/imprisonment are front and centre. There is significant violence and gore throughout, consistent with both the mafia setting and the blood demon element (reviewers specifically flag blood, brutality, and gun violence). Murder features prominently — Luca's father's murder is the inciting event and is referenced repeatedly, with additional on-page deaths. The power imbalance of the captivity situation means coercion, power dynamics, and dub-con are present in the romantic/spicy elements. Both leads carry heavy baggage: trauma/PTSD underpins their character arcs, and emotional/psychological/verbal abuse and manipulation/gaslighting occur during the captivity period before Luca's arc shifts. The relationship has toxic relationship elements that resolve toward the HEA. Luca's obsessive fixation on Siobhán prior to the kidnapping reads as stalking. A pregnancy reveal features near the end of the book and appears to be a plot pivot point. Blood play is inherent to the blood demon mechanics and is woven into the spice.
Book Meta
Publication Date2026-05-01 Relationship Pairing(s)MF Darkness Score6/10
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Here is something most of us learned the hard way. A dark romance can be a four-star read on the page and a five-star read in your ears, or the exact reverse. The book never changed. The voice did. That gap is wider in this genre than almost anywhere else in fiction. And right now the entire audiobook industry is arguing about who — or what — should be doing that voice work. So let's talk about it. ## Why Voice Matters More in Dark Romance Most genres treat audio as a simple delivery system. You are driving to work or folding laundry, and the story goes in through your ears instead of your eyes. That is fine, and it is why audiobooks exist. Dark romance does not work that way. **In this genre, the voice is part of the threat.** Think about what our books actually run on. A man says something calm and completely terrifying. A heroine says no and means it, or says no and does not mean it, and the entire scene turns on which one it is. A stalker hero narrates a conversation the heroine has no idea he is overhearing. None of that is plot, and all of it is tone. On the page, you supply that tone yourself, using whatever your imagination hands you. In audio, a stranger supplies it for you. When that stranger is the right performer, the book becomes noticeably sharper. When they are wrong for the book, a scene that should feel genuinely dangerous ends up sounding like a man reading a grocery list in a low register. That is the whole argument in one sentence. **A narrator is not reading your dark romance to you — they are performing a second lead character.** ## Single, Dual, Duet: Know What You Are Buying Plenty of readers use these three words as though they mean the same thing. They do not, and the difference changes the whole listen. **Single narration** means a single performer voicing every character in the book. That is fine for single-POV stories, but it gets risky in dual-POV dark romance. 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As of 2026, the standard ACX upload path still asks for human narration, while Amazon's separate Virtual Voice program is where most AI-narrated titles live. Other retailers generally require authors to disclose AI narration at upload. So AI audio clearly exists, but it is not labeled the same way everywhere yet, and that last point is worth watching rather than treating as settled. Readers, meanwhile, have already voted. The 2026 Written Word Media reader survey found that **more than 80% of readers prefer human narrators, while under 1% strongly prefer AI voices.** I think those readers are correct, and not for sentimental reasons. Dark romance depends on the tiny details: a breath before a line, or a word delivered flat when it should have landed warm. Those choices are interpretation, not pronunciation. A synthetic voice can pronounce every word correctly and still completely miss what those words are doing underneath. There is a real counterpoint here. AI narration means smaller authors can finally afford audio at all, and a backlist that would never earn out a human narrator can reach listeners in a week. For readers with vision issues or reading disabilities, more audio is a genuine accessibility win, and that matters considerably more than my personal taste does. My honest position: **AI narration works as a floor and fails as a ceiling.** Use it to make a book exist in audio. Do not use it on the book you want people to fall in love with. ## Where People Are Actually Listening That same survey found only about **22% of readers listen to audiobooks at all**, which is dramatically lower than BookTok makes it feel. Among the readers who do listen, **51% borrow through Libby or Hoopla, and 48% use an Audible subscription.** That library number deserves far more attention than it currently receives. 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