Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
“If he is here, then we’re not.” I turn to Brooke. “We’re leaving.”
She is already glaring at Vlad. But then she turns to me with a wicked gleam in her eyes. She’s caressing the diamond choker around her neck, stroking it.
And damn, it turns me on.
Not just the way her fingers caress the choker but the wickedness I see burning in her big brown eyes.
“I’d like to stay,” she says.
I cock an eyebrow. “You would?”
“Let him see who outbid him and who’s wearing it,” she whispers. “While you take his money from him.”
Damn, my little bunny really is a hell bunny.
I pull her into my arms and kiss her. My zayka might be bratva material, after all.
I take a seat at the table, but when Brooke moves to take a seat across the room, I pull her down onto my lap.
“Since when do women join us at the table?” Tobias asks. The old Greek is the head of a small family syndicate operating out of Astoria. He’s old school. Loyal and reliable. But he’s a grouchy sonofabitch.
“Since I became engaged and my fiancée has joined us for the evening.” I run my fingers down Brooke’s bare back, and she curls her arms around me, playing the perfect attentive bratva fiancée.
“She’s a distraction,” says Peter De Kysa, cousin to the current don of the De Kysa, a powerful family in New York City.
“I would think you should like that,” says Victor Barasarkov, a longtime friend of the bratva. “If we’re distracted, you might actually have a chance at winning a hand for once.”
“Yeah, yeah, old man,” Peter says, leaning back in his chair and taking a sip of scotch.
“Let the girl stay,” Tony the Hand says. Tony is another old-school player with ties steeped in the Italian mafia. He’ll tell you they call him The Hand because he’s good at poker. But rumor has it, it’s because he chopped off a rival’s hand for touching his wife and then sent it to him in the mail. I know which one I believe. The old man has some years on him, and I’m damn sure most of them were wild ones.
“I second that,” Vlad drawls, his eyes sweeping over Brooke as a rapacious smile slides across his lips. “Let her stay… and watch.”
His bravery is bolstered by Vadim’s presence. He thinks sitting next to my uncle is going to protect him from me. Which tells me he’s not just a slimy fuck, he’s a stupid one too.
One step out of line, and no one will be able to protect him from me. Even the bald-headed thug he’s brought with him as security.
Every muscle in my body is tense, but seeing Brooke proudly caress the choker around her neck instantly calms me. Her dark smirk reminds Vlad that he already lost once to me and will again tonight, and damn if that doesn’t make me want to take my little bunny home and show her my appreciation.
“If you ladies are about done, how about we play some poker,” says Daniil, shuffling the cards.
We settle into the poker game, and I win the first two hands, which speaks to Vlad’s primal need to be a dick. “Perhaps if I had a nice piece of ass sitting on my—”
I’m about to flip the table to get to him for disrespecting Brooke, but my uncle surprises me and stops Vlad from finishing the sentence.
“Shut the fuck up, you little shit. You are my guest here tonight. That is the pakhan’s fiancée. You will show a little more respect.”
I stare at my uncle, trying to figure out where the sudden show of respect came from.
“Of course, Vadim,” Vlad says with a laugh, draining his glass of vodka. “I mean no harm.”
His gaze drops to me, and I level him with a look that doesn’t need words to back it up.
Feeling the tension, Brooke leans closer to whisper in my ear. “Let me get you a drink.”
She wiggles off me, right across my zipper, and it makes my cock thicken with gratitude.
From my peripherals, I watch her make her way to the bar. But my focus is on Vlad and the way those beady eyes track her every step.
I grit my teeth. He’s doing this to get under my skin, and I’m fucking letting it.
Because I know exactly what he’s thinking as he looks at her lush body sashaying toward the bar—it’s written all over his ugly face. He’s fucking her ten sides of crazy in his head, and just the thought of him imagining all the vile things he would do to her makes me fucking insane with rage.
Vadim says something to him, pulling his attention away from Brooke, which is good because my temper is about to detonate.
But Vlad is drunk, and as Brooke makes her way back from the bar, carrying a vodka for me, he finally crosses the line. While one hand—the one with a ridiculous lion’s head ring on his finger—remains palm down on his cards, the other reaches out and grabs Brooke.