TypedByAsh
Valeria grew up in a family where power is inherited through fear. Her father calls her "the only clean one" in a family built on rot - but he doesn't mean it as a compliment. She escaped into medicine, believing she could separate herself from the Navarro name.
But when a Bratva soldier - Sergei Volkov - is brought into her hospital after a gunfight with her brother's men, she breaks every rule and saves him. Not out of pity, but because letting him die would make her like them.
Then she learns who he is. And he learns who saved him.
Now both families want them dead.
Sergei lives by two rules: never trust, never forgive. He's built his reputation on silence and precision. But when he wakes to find a Navarro patch sewn into his bandages, rage becomes his only oxygen.
He should have killed her. Instead, he threatened her - and couldn't follow through.
To Sergei, Valeria represents everything he hates: mercy, emotion, weakness.
To Valeria, Sergei is everything she despises: cruelty, control, violence.
But hate burns close to desire - and when their families drag them into a brutal proxy war, the two are forced into an uneasy alliance.