Fierce Protector

The Bianchi Chronicles, Book 3

By: Laura Bennett

Narrated by: Chloe Ryan, Aiden Snow

Doctor Katerina Mancini is a force to be reckoned with.

Surgeon by day and mob doctor by night. There's almost nothing she can't handle except maybe the man who's been assigned to deal with her stalker. It was so much easier pretending her dad's best friend wasn't everything she'd ever wanted before he became her permanent shadow.

How dare he swoop in and rescue her!

Stefano Tiero is a man possessed.

He's spent years denying his feelings for Katerina, burying them under the weight of all the reasons he can't have her. Now she's in danger, and he can't keep himself away from her.

She's his. He'll keep her safe whether she likes it or not.

The more time they're forced to spend together, the harder it is to resist the inevitable.

Fierce Protector is book three in The Bianchi Chronicles series. It can be enjoyed as a standalone, but it takes place during the same timeline of events as Broken Princess and Brutal Queen, and will contain minor spoilers.

Contains mature content. A complete list of content warnings can be found on the author's website.

©2025 Laura Bennett (P)2025 Podium Audio

Wonderful

I loved that Doc M and Stefano got their own book. The narrators were perfect. I loved that most of the book took place in the same time frame as book 1 & 2 in series.

Entertaining & dramatic. Exactly the kind of mafia romance I like to binge.

This story is an interconnected standalone to the Broken & Brutal duet.
We already met Katarina and Stefano there, so diving into their story felt extra satisfying.

Katarina is surgeon by day, mob doctor by night, sharp tongued and has the right amount of bad bitch energy. Stefano is the broody, overprotective, utterly obsessed consigliere and also her dad’s best friend.
Perfect combination, hilarious banter and their steamy chemistry was off the charts👌🏻

Tropes
Mafia Age gap (14 years)
Dad’s best friend
Fake Relationship
Grown ass characters (she 32 / he 48)
FMC in danger

Content warnings
Stalker, medical trauma, murder

This story is lighter than the duet. There is some repetitions through the book. And it’s very fast paced.
Some plot twists were easy to guess around the 60% mark, and I am not a huge fan of the daddy kink, but honestly it was entertaining & dramatic.
Exactly the kind of mafia romance I like to binge.

Excellent, Loved, Amazing performance 👏

Troy my man, you are GOAT and Female narrator also rocked it!!! Great listen, great story- although predictable plot still really good.

Loved the New story with characters that were familiar

This is a good story of characters we already knew and like scenes and things that we already knew that we’re gonna happen but like a backstory.

I love the twist on who was the stalker.

⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (3.5 stars) | 🌶️🌶️ (2/5 spice)

I picked up Fierce Protector almost exclusively because someone whispered age gap and I immediately lost all ability to make responsible reading decisions. 😂 Unfortunately… this one ended up being just fine.

Katerina is in her mid-30s, the Chief of General Surgery, daughter of a mafia don, and has been hopelessly in love with Stefano—her father’s best friend and a man fourteen years older—for years. On paper? Sign me all the way up. That’s exactly the kind of forbidden tension I love.

The problem is… there really wasn’t much tension.

They get together fairly early, so instead of years of longing finally exploding onto the page, it all felt surprisingly… easy? I never bought into this being a love that had been simmering for decades because I never felt that overwhelming pull between them. For a friends-to-forbidden, age-gap mafia romance, I wanted more stolen glances, more restraint, more “we absolutely should not be doing this.” Instead, it stayed pretty low-key.

I also made the mistake of reading this as a standalone when it’s the third book in the series. You definitely can do that, but I felt like I spent a lot of time catching up on relationships and past events instead of really getting to know Katerina and Stefano. Between the time jumps, callbacks, and existing family dynamics, their own character development never felt as fleshed out as I wanted.

The biggest storyline centers around Katerina’s stalker, and I actually enjoyed that mystery more than the romance. The final reveal genuinely caught me off guard… but it almost felt like it belonged in a different book. The ending suddenly takes a much darker turn after a story that had been relatively tame, so while I appreciated the surprise, it also felt like it came out of left field.

Overall, this wasn’t bad by any means—it just never reached the emotional highs I was hoping for. The age gap didn’t really age-gap, the mafia didn’t really mafia, and the romance never made me kick my feet or scream into my Kindle.

A perfectly decent read, but not one I’ll find myself thinking about six months from now… or probably ever rereading.