Savage Shield: A Forced Proximity, Protector Mafia Romance

By Rossella De Falco

I never forget a face. His enemies can't afford to let me remember theirs.

I work emergency medicine in Naples, and I keep every face that's ever been on my table - it's a gift, my nurses call it an archive. Then a dying man is wheeled into my trauma room, his killer walks in after him wearing a paramedic's jacket, and I do the one thing you don't do to a professional: I study him. Eleven centimeters closer than courage.

Now the most patient killers on this coast need my memory erased. Permanently.

The Santoro family sends me a bodyguard I didn't ask for: Dario Santoro. Ex-paratrooper. Three bullets last winter and a cane he's pathologically proud of. A man who counts my exits out loud, guards doors on the strength of my no, and files his feelings like casualty reports.

He calls me a package. I call him a rehabilitation project. We're both lying.

The safe houses burn one by one - a farm in the olive groves, an island his family has never lost - until the truth no one saw coming: we are the leak. His blood. My calling. The two things keeping us alive are calling the sea down on us.

He can't run. I won't hide. And somewhere between a borrowed bed with a border of wool and a mountain I carried him down in the dark, the man who swore he was only the shield started rewriting what a shield is.

They hunt what I remember.

They should ask what he remembers. Because Dario Santoro doesn't run - he arrives early. And on my shift, nobody dies unseen.

SAVAGE SHIELD is book 2 of Kings of Naples - interconnected standalone mafia romances with real Italian settings, slow-burn heat, hard-won HEAs, and suspense plots that play for keeps. Bodyguard protector. Forced proximity. Grumpy meets sunshine. Only one bed. Touch her and die.

For readers 18+: contains violence, peril, and steamy scenes. No cliffhanger on the love story - the couple's HEA is guaranteed. Book 1, MERCILESS BLOOD VOW, enriches but is not required. The series mystery concludes in Book 3, EXILED KING.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HB5LLSK4
• ISBN13: 9798188666156
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 206 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"