The Paper Don

Mira Kalbasi is eleven weeks behind on protection money and she has already decided which oven she will sell first. Then Constantin Balan walks through her bakery door. He is fifty-one, he wears the same grey coat every day, and he owns every wall she has ever rented. He is not here for the money. He is here for six months of her name on a marriage license, so a nineteen-year-old girl does not end up in a rival family's house. Mira says no. He says he just bought the building. Six months, one stepdaughter, one borrowed townhouse, and a man who eats nothing until she bakes him the wrong thing. The Balans always get what they want. Mira is starting to wonder if she counts as a Balan. A mafia age gap romance about marriage on paper, bread in the oven, and a woman who re-files the paperwork herself.