When a Vassallo son draws blood over her name, Luisa Russo's life begins to unravel. Windows break. Neighbors whisper. And his father sends men to fix it... along with a price to make her disappear.

Marcello Vassallo was raised to be untouchable. A wolf in expensive suits, dangerous even when he smiles. He knows better than to chase a girl from the quarter. But he keeps showing up anyway—at her shop, at her church, on the streets where no Vassallo son belongs.

And when his father tries to buy her silence, Luisa does the unthinkable: She says no.

A dangerous choice. A forbidden romance. A seamstress who refused to disappear, and the man who would burn his world to keep her.

Dark & Lovely Beginnings is the atmospheric, slow-burning prequel to the Vassallo Wolves—a love story sewn in secret, whispered through shutters, and impossible to forget.