Defiant. Sweet. Alluring.
A business deal gone wrong brought me to her doorstep.
She's everything I shouldn't want; everything I was against after watching my mother's obsession destroy her.
Still, I can't stop myself from craving her.
I should know...
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“YOU ARE A DISAPPOINTMENT TO this family.”
Those were my father’s first words the moment I accepted his call. My jaw worked in anger, but I remained silent, letting him get all his anger and frustration out because this time, I did fuck up.
“Is this how you plan to take over when I step down?” He spat, his voice deep with anger.
He then proceeded to spew rapid-fire Russian at me, displeasure rolling off every syllable.
I heaved a sigh, checking the time on my wristwatch to see how much longer I had to endure this form of torture.
We still had about ten more minutes to go before he decided he’d said enough. I zoned him out, trailing my fingers over the paperweight on my desk, doing anything at all to distract myself from this one-sided conversation.
I mentally listed off all the work I had to get done tomorrow while my father’s voice buzzed incessantly in my ear. He could talk for days, that one.
“Do you understand?” He paused to ask as if sensing I wasn’t listening to a word he said.
I hummed in reply to throw him off my tail as I shot off an email to my assistant. Did he fire the bouncer at the fight club as Mikhail had requested?
“Good.”
He promptly hung up after that, deciding that he’d said enough. I checked the time again. That was surprising. He still had about two minutes more to go.
I threw my phone on the desk, pushing to my feet. If that was not a heart-warming father-son moment, then I didn’t know what was.
I made a quick detour to my bedroom to grab a quick shower before I fixed dinner for myself. I’d given my staff the day off after my assistant's suggestion. He said it boosted their morale, so here I was, left to fend for myself because I wanted the morale of my fucking staff to be boosted.
I ran a towel through my wet hair as I strolled into the kitchen to heat up some of the food the cook had made before she left for the weekend. My stomach growled with a vengeance after I refused to feed it for almost twenty-four hours.
I skidded to a halt when I came face-to-face with my cousin, Viktor, seated at the kitchen island, his face mirroring a blank canvas.
He was a mean fuck who acted as my father’s eyes and ears in the Bratva. The scar that ran down his temple to his jaw was testament to his brutality, and it was enough to deter people from him, and damn if he didn’t wear the scar like a badge of honor.
He claimed he didn’t like conversing with people, and the scar was his one-way ticket to escape socializing.
All of that wasn’t what surprised me.
No, his presence here did.
My father lived in Russia, so that meant Viktor had to be there at all times. Igor was a paranoid man and he only trusted a handful of people. Viktor happened to be at the top of that list.
