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Content warnings
The Vienna Vows is dark romance for adults. Every book in the series carries this page's address in its front matter, so this is the full, authoritative list.
What holds across all four books
These are promises, not tendencies. They are true in every book of the series, without exception.
- The love interest is dangerous. He is never a danger to the heroine.
- There is no sexual violence anywhere in this series, and none by the love interest at any point.
- There is no sexual content involving anyone underage at any point. All characters in romantic or sexual situations are adults.
- No child is harmed, on the page or off.
- No infidelity, no cheating, no other-woman or other-man drama.
- The series ends in a guaranteed happily ever after.
These themes are portrayed within a work of dark fiction, with consequence, and are not endorsements.
Book One
The Winter Contract
On the page: Organised crime and its violence, including one killing witnessed by the heroine; physical assault and intimidation of the heroine by a third party, resulting in injury; a marriage entered under coercive circumstances; a controlling and obsessive love interest; surveillance and restriction of movement; coercion through a family member’s gambling debts; grief, and the loss of a parent to cancer; alcohol use; a betrayal of trust by omission.
Referenced or off the page: A sibling’s death, human trafficking, blackmail, and financial crime.
Heat: Intimate scenes are sensual and emotionally explicit; they build fully and then close the door before graphic detail.
How it ends: Ends with the couple together and committed, on a hopeful note. Not a cliffhanger. The series ends in a guaranteed HEA.
Book Two
The Silver Confession
On the page: Organized crime and its violence; a devastating confession of a past killing; grief and survivor’s guilt; anonymous threats and sustained psychological pressure; a family member’s criminal jeopardy and addiction (in recovery); a marriage in crisis; and a betrayal of trust — by omission — that ends the book on a cliffhanger.
Referenced or off the page: Recounted in a confession rather than shown: human trafficking, including minors among the victims; a sibling’s death by gunfire during a police raid some twenty years before the book opens; and the deaths of others in that operation.
Heat: Intimate scenes are frequent and emotionally explicit; they build fully and then close the door before graphic detail.
How it ends: Ends on a cliffhanger. The marriage is broken — not the promise. The series ends in a guaranteed HEA.
Book Three
The Silent Answer
On the page: Organised crime and its violence; the aftermath of a deliberate and permanent injury done to a man during a coercive interrogation, witnessed by the heroine from a doorway; threats made against a man’s family, livelihood and business; the remand imprisonment and criminal prosecution of the heroine’s brother; his confession that he traded his sister’s name to dangerous men to save himself; a gambling addiction in recovery; grief, and the loss of both parents in the past; an elderly character in visible decline; alcohol; surveillance, anonymous pressure, and a covert recording made by the heroine at personal risk; and, in the closing pages, an abduction in which two men are gravely injured.
Referenced or off the page: Recounted rather than shown: human trafficking, including minors among the victims; a sibling’s death by gunfire during a police raid some twenty years before the book opens; and a killing witnessed by the heroine in an earlier book.
Heat: Intimate scenes are charged, sustained, and held. Nothing is consummated. The restraint is the story.
How it ends: Ends on a cliffhanger: the heroine is taken. Their story concludes in Book Four, and the series ends in a guaranteed HEA.
Book Four
The Gilded Crown
On the page: The captivity and imprisonment of the heroine by the antagonist — five days in a locked room, bolted from the outside, in a private house in another country; coerced professional work extracted under a standing threat to her brother’s life; bruising to her arm sustained when she is taken; an armed rescue before dawn, with gunfire, a serious chest wound, blood, and a lasting disability; organised crime and its violence; a coercive interrogation conducted by the love interest that includes an implied threat to another man’s child; the death of a beloved elderly woman in her sleep, and the funeral, grief and reckoning that follow it; survivor’s guilt and a twenty-year refusal of absolution; confession, and an on-the-page absolution; a criminal prosecution, testimony, and an arrest; alcohol; and a pregnancy, announced in the closing pages.
Referenced or off the page: Recounted rather than shown: human trafficking, including victims under twenty and one woman who was eight months pregnant; a sibling’s death by gunfire during a police raid twenty years before the book opens; and the long cultivation of a boy of fourteen by an adult relative for criminal purposes — that grooming is not sexual, no part of it is depicted, and it is described in retrospect by the elderly woman who watched it happen.
Heat: Intimate scenes are frequent, explicit, and on the page, between a consenting married couple.
How it ends: Everything is answered. The series ends here, in a guaranteed happily ever after — a crowning, a burned contract, and an epilogue one year on.
Anything missing?
If you needed a warning that is not on this page, tell me and it goes on — author@veramaddox.com. No explanation required.