Explore every episode of the podcast Empire of Ashes — A Dark Mafia Arranged-Marriage Romance

They came to collect on the morning she buried her father. She married the heir to make them pay. Lena Russo knows exactly who ruined her family: the Marchettis. So when the debt comes due and Dario Marchetti — the cold, dangerous heir to the crime dynasty — offers marriage to settle it, she says yes, and walks into the lion's house carrying the one secret that could burn it to the ground.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

They came to collect on the morning we buried my father, which tells you everything you need to know about the Marchetti family and the kind of mercy they keep.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

I read my father's second book at the kitchen table at three in the morning, alone — because some things you have to learn the way he learned them. By yourself. In the dark. With the city asleep and no one left to perform for.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

I agreed to save the empire over breakfast, the way other couples agree to repaint a room.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

I'd spent eight months building a wall around one name, and my wife took it apart with a bank statement in four days.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

Greco's house made the Marchetti glass house look like a confession.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

I didn't sleep after Greco's dinner. Neither did Dario.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

"It's Nico," I said.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

They dressed me like a queen for a wedding that was really a transfer of property, and I let them, because a woman learns early that the costume you are put in tells you exactly what role you are expected to play — and the moment you understand the role, you can decide how to ruin it.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

A marriage, I learned in my first week, is mostly a matter of breakfasts. You can learn more about a man across a breakfast table than across a bed, because at breakfast no one is performing; they are only tired, and hungry, and briefly, accidentally, themselves.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

The Marchettis kept a box at the opera, and on my eleventh night as a married woman I learned what the box was really for, which was not music.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

Tomas Vela died with a name on his lips, and the name was not the one I had built three months of hatred around, and I knelt on the floor of my father's old harbor office holding a dead man's hand and felt the entire architecture of my revenge come down around me like a building with its keystone pulled.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

There is a particular exhaustion to living in a house where one man wants to kill you for what you know and another is falling in love with you for what he doesn't, and I wore it, that week, like a second dress under the first.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

My father used to say that there are only ever two moves on the board — you can give them what they want, or you can become something they want more — and that the whole art of staying alive in this city was knowing which game you were in before you opened your mouth. I had eleven days, two families who wanted a dead man's ledger, and a husband I'd decided to keep alive, and so I did the thing my father had trained me for since before I understood I was being trained.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

My father said the Marchettis built everything out of heat and force, and then they owned you. He meant it as a warning. He never lived to learn that a warning, in this city, is just a recipe — and that his honest daughter had been paying attention.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

My father taught me that everything a man loves is a door someone will eventually walk through to gut him. I spent thirty-three years deciding he was wrong, one careful brick at a time. My wife unbuilt it in a cannery in under a minute.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

I sat across from the man who killed my father, and I did the hardest arithmetic of my life: deciding whether to have him killed.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

The worst three hours of my life were the ones I spent not knowing whether I'd just handed Vittorio Greco the weapon that would kill us all.

Empire of Ashes is a serialized dark mafia romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.