Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
I never asked for Roman Petrov.
I made one mistake, got threats on my life, and now my brother hires me a bodyguard?
Roman is six-foot-five, pure muscle, and a gorgeous, scowling face.
I break a few of his rules on my first night of his protection.
Provoke him, ’til he pins me to the wall.
And something explodes between us when he lays his hands on me.
Our size difference sparks a pure physical addiction.
His two rules:
His family runs the mob… but we don’t talk about it.
And he’s usually 100% straight… but completely obsessed with me.
I can take a man who’s taller and bigger in every way.
As threats escalate, Roman demands I stay in his room, closer than ever.
When I’m attacked on campus, Roman’s unhinged, vowing to destroy anyone who hurts me.
He’s the heir to a powerful Bratva crime family, and war with the mafia is erupting now, too.
I know I’m in danger.
Lines blur between who I can or can’t trust.
But I have Roman close to me. And I believe it when he says I’m his
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
“I didn’t fall in love with him, I fell into him, like gravity had been waiting for us all along.”
― Arden Frost
1
Roman
Something is wrong tonight.
Someone.
The worst part of my bloodline, creating more problems for me, when I asked for none.
My eyes scan the sloping hill, the scent of recently cut grass filling the night air. I look at every empty bench dotted along the cobbled walkway skirting the hill, checking to see if Yegor brought backup tonight.
No parked vehicles.
No one on foot.
It’s second nature for me to keep a close watch on my surroundings.
It’s not that I’m afraid of whatever pathetic attempt at negotiation my cousin is planning tonight. Fear isn’t an emotion I’m capable of anymore when it comes to my family.
It just makes me fucking sick.
My skin crawled when my cousin told me to meet him here.
I still feel unclean for agreeing to it, even now.
I hate negotiating.
It requires talking, which I hate even more.
Problems are better solved with strength, or strategy, or silence. People crack under the pressure of silence, when they realize you aren’t just going to fold and give them what they want.
It’s one of my deadliest weapons.
But it doesn’t fucking work with Yegor.
“Are you going to speak?”
My deep baritone cuts through the air. I pace past Yegor’s shadowy form, standing beside a solid tree trunk, and I nod toward his dark figure the moment I clock where he’s standing.
A dank mix of cologne and incense lingers in the air around him. Inheriting millions hasn’t improved his taste.
My boots crunch on the gravel path under the canopy of trees.
Yegor cocks his head to one side. “You wouldn’t be meeting with me if you weren’t at least a little interested in what I have to offer, Roman.”
“You have nothing I want.”
“I think I might.”
“Skazhi eto, blyat,” I tell him, keeping my voice low. Fucking say it.
He knows enough Russian to understand that, even if his mother never spoke it as much as mine did.
I glance down at my phone and tap out a quick text.
Roman
It’s just Yegor. No company.
Maks Petrov
Got it.
Maks is standing 50 feet away right now.
Because I did come with company.
Maks is behind a tree, in the shadows, watching over me with a loaded gun. He’s the only one of my cousins I’d trust with my life. Maks is more like a brother to me than a cousin, and he always has my back.
Can never be too careful taking meetings these days.
“I have a job for you,” Yegor tells me, pacing around beneath the tree. When he steps out into the pale moonlight, he’s smiling at me.
“From the Bratva?”
“Yes.”
I set my jaw, then release it. “I told you not to contact me with more jobs.”
“Yet you accept them from Maks?”
“I respect Maks.”
He bites the inside of his cheek. “Then why did you meet me?”
My finger twitches at my side. When I don’t respond to him, the low chirp of crickets is the only other sound in the night air.
A breeze blows through the leaves, and cooler air kisses my skin for the first time in months.
The ending of summer can’t come soon enough. I need the cold.
“I met you here because I don’t want you showing up at my fraternity house,” I finally tell him. “And I thought you might have been stupid enough to try it.”
The fact that Yegor has come this close to the school’s edge already makes me consider sending him home with a black eye.
We’re not on the Crimson College campus anymore, we’re below it. Technically. I don’t conduct family business on campus.
One of my rules.
I’ve also told my cousins, a thousand times, not to contact me with petty new small-time jobs from within the family, but Yegor seems to think he’s an exception.