Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 57779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
“I don’t give a fuck about the money. It is the respect—”
“That’s also what this is about,” I interrupt, talking fast. “The sanctity of marriage and the consequences when you break your vows.”
It takes Nikolai not even a second to click to the cause of my panic. “Your ma.”
He isn’t asking a question, but I nod as if he is.
His eyes bounce between mine as he asks, “Why would she throw Miranda under the bus like this?”
“Because to her, Miranda is the one at fault here.” I wet my lips before delivering a confession I’d planned to take to the ground. “For decades, she has blamed herself for my father’s betrayal. She said if she had asked the right questions, he wouldn’t have strayed.”
Nikolai looks lost. I understand. I’ve kept quiet about my family’s dramas because it isn’t my burden to share.
“My father was married when he met my mother. She was wife number three.”
“So?” Nikolai murmurs, still confused. “Having more than one wife is the norm in the bratva.” Suddenly, his cheeks whiten. “Just don’t tell my ahren that.”
His hand itches to trek his knife across my throat when a singsong voice asks, “Don’t tell me what?”
Justine waddles into his office.
No, you didn’t hear me wrong. Her stomach is the size of a beach ball.
“Hey, Nero,” she greets before she accepts the chair Nikolai is offering her. It doesn’t have legs like the ones Nikolai and I are seated on—unless you include the one about to rise to attention when Nikolai buries his nose into her neck and breathes in deeply. “What aren’t you allowed to tell me?”
Nikolai doesn’t bother lying. You lose interest in being deceitful when you’re strung out on a drug stronger than any on the market.
“That having more than one wife is the norm in the bratva.” He pops his head up and stares straight into her eyes. “Something you’ll never have to worry about. I have enough troubles keeping up with the needs of your insatiable cunt, Ahren. I don’t want or need more.”
Justine mutters something about him being crude before she flicks her eyes to me. There isn’t an ounce of worry in them, proving she believes she is more than enough for Nikolai.
How do I know this? It is the same gleam Miranda’s eyes got when I told Nikolai I’d walk from the millions he’s lining my pockets with before I would ever place Miranda in the firing line for a crime she didn’t commit.
“Why are you discussing sister wives? Is that something you’re considering?”
I gag. “No. I refuse to share Miranda. Point blank. I don’t care if it is with a woman or a man. She is mine and no one else’s.”
Justine’s cheeks inflame over the rant I should have stopped after the first word.
Nikolai looks like he wants to be sick. He faces no issues pushing through the clump of vomit in his throat, though.
“Nero thinks his mother stole our missing coke.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
He twists his lips. “It isn’t the words you speak, Nero. It is the confirmation on your face.”
The nonchalant way he refers to our world reveals why I was so at ease with discussing its semantics with Miranda.
If the darkness of our industry doesn’t scare away the women we love, nothing will.
Justine’s brows lower as her nose crinkles. “Your mother?”
When I nod, I use the sorrow on her face to my advantage. “But Nikolai won’t pardon her mistake, even if she only did it to teach me a lesson.”
“Nikolai!” She glares at him like he’s a naughty puppy who chewed up her favorite stiletto.
His ego feeds off every narrowed glare, but he tries to act coy. “Pardons aren’t how I operate, Ahren.”
Justine showcases some of the gall she hit the Popov crew with when she helmed the crusade to bring Nikolai home alive only months ago after he was taken by his enemies. “Then I guess it’s lucky you said she stole our coke. That makes it as much mine as it is yours, which frees me to say”—she locks her eyes with me—“your mother won’t face any prosecution from the Popov realm if the missing items are promptly returned.”
“Ahren…” Nikolai’s tone is full of silent warnings, but there’s no true heat in it. He loves when his angel fans her wings as much as I love when my butterfly stretches out hers.
I know this, and so does Justine.
She peers at her husband-to-be with a sultry grin stretched across her face before she says, “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
I don’t know what her saying references, but Nikolai is more clued on. A smirk plays at his lips as a gleam I never wish to see again passes through his eyes.
I’m out of his office before his demand for privacy leaves his mouth, my strides as confident as my belief Justine has what it takes to make Nikolai abide by her pledge.