The Italian Billionaire's Blackmail Proposal: A happy-ever-after romance

HOW FAR CAN LOVE BE PUSHED BEFORE IT'S FOREVER LOST?

Thirty-one-year-old Italian billionaire Leo Giovenco is about to find out.

At the Carnevale in Venice, Leo Giovenco is lured to a costumed woman wearing a medieval black-velvet dress and a white mask and holding a large red feather. Three months later, he marries her, and life couldn't be better.

Alicia Palmer-Stewart didn't think fairy tales ever happened -- but she was wrong. At the Carnevale in Venice, she's approached by a mysterious man dressed in a bright red satin embroidered jacket and matching short pants, a white ruffled shirt and white stockings, a long black-velvet cape, and a white mask. Three months later, she's married to him. And life couldn't be better.

But then Leo moves Alicia into his palatial villa in the beautiful hill town of Taormina, Sicily, and a serpent enters their Garden of Eden. Alicia claims that Leo's mother and three sisters, who also live at the villa, are tormenting her. Leo doesn't believe her. So after three months. Alicia flees her marriage and asks for a divorce. But Leo won't sign the papers.

To Alicia's shock, Leo reappears in her life a year after she left him and offers her a blackmail proposal: if he will grant his mother her dying wish -- which is that Alicia attend her until she dies -- he will grant Alicia a divorce.

Alicia knows that the decision she makes will mark her for the rest of her life. If she goes to Taormina, she knows that she will be in danger of losing her sanity ... or maybe worse. But if she doesn't go to Taormina, it may be one of her biggest regrets.